Moved….

I have finalized my blog migration and am now 100% at Edublogs.

You can find me now at http://ransomtech.edublogs.org

Please join me over there for more thinking and conversation.

~Steve

Moving

I am in the process of migrating my blog over to Edublogs, so re-route your RSS feeds over to http://ransomtech.edublogs.org/ and we can continue our conversations.

Cheers!

Steve Ransom

A Little Help from Edublogs

I had forgotten about this little gem until I found it again in my inbox as I was doing some housekeeping. Edublogs has

created a new blog and user creator to facilitate the creation of blogs for others. All you need to do is fill out the details to easily create multiple users and blogs and even add yourself as admin to them if you woud like. This process makes it very easy to add blogs for your students or perhaps your colleagues. And, for students, it has the feature of being a co-administrator in their blog if that is something that would be desirable.

The tool allows you to create 15 new blogs/users at one time and couldn’t be easier.

Personal Learning Networks

Know anyone like this?

Enough With the Silly Pencil Argument!

Okay, I understand the basic premise of the pencil argument (and here). But, come on now… this is far from an equal analogy! Here is what Doug Johnson had to say about the potential risks that pencils bring into the classroom in the February 2006 issue of Learning & Leading with Technology. It was referenced in Wesley Freyer’s latest post over on his Moving at the Speed of Creativity blog.:

1. A student might use a pencil to poke out the eye of another student.
2. A student might write a dirty word or, worse yet, a threatening note to another student, with a pencil.
3. One student might have a mechanical pencil, making those with wooden ones feel bad.
4. The pencil might get stolen.
5. Pencils break and need repairing all the time.
6. Kids who have pencils might doodle instead of working on their assignments or listening to the teacher.

Now, again, I understand the rationale behind this argument, but let’s compare:

1. Only psychopathic students would gouge out another’s eye… with anything. However, teachers have been known to be violent pencil wielders. Imagine what they could be capable of with an iPod in their hands!

2. A written insult or profanity is seen only by the one who holds the written note. We all fully understand the far-reaching implications of digital bullying!

3. One simply cannot compare pencil-envy with things of high value that create classes of students and do create envy (high-fashion clothing, shoes, and yes… electronics!)

4. In fact, pencils do get stolen all the time. I have rarely seen a student fall to pieces over it. However, if it were a $250 pencil, I could see why that could happen.

5. Pencils break. So you sharpen them again. The “repair” is done in seconds. Electronics break and are repaired with greater cost, time, and learning interruption/disruption.

6. I would much rather have a student doodle with his or her pencil than be consumed with the vast array of on-line distraction. And, most other classmates don’t usually get distracted by one student’s doodling. Not so with a laptop or other electronic device.

So, if we are to present a compelling rationale for issues surrounding freedom to learn and teaching/learning innovation, we at least need to bring valid and sound arguments to the table. To do otherwise only serves to make light of real and pressing concerns of many stakeholders. If a pencil is the equivalent of any other learning device, then I say, let’s stick with the pencils. They are cheaper, easily replaceable, quite reliable, disposable, efficient, highly portable, facilitate collaboration and sharing of information, they have excellent battery life – heck, they don’t even have lead in them anymore, making them environmentally friendly to boot!

But, if there is a significant difference here (and I would agree that there is), then we had better not be making such silly comparisons. Folks might just want to settle for the pencil, then.

Note:
Freyer’s blog post is otherwise right on the mark.

Ch. 6 – The Age of Show Business

(Continuing with my book blog club…)

Presidential Debates as Entertainment

In this chapter of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman begins with the claim that “Television does not extend or amplify literate culture. It attacks it.” He also continues on with his thesis that technologies are merely machines and that a ‘medium’ is the social and intellectual environment a machine creates. If this is so, then the computer and Internet are the “machines” that create a new medium of social and intellectual discourse. Since Postman clearly argues how the television has detracted from intellectual discourse and literacy throughout the world, I want to contrast this with the powerful emergence of the social and intellectual environments created on-line.

Television appeals largely to emotional and visual gratification and entertainment. Television does not embrace conversation, dialog, or debate. The presidential ‘debates’ are not really debates at all. They are entertainment with a little substance thrown. These debates are more about looking good, giving off good impressions, being witty, controlled, speaking well, showmanship, … There is really little room in the televised format for true debate. Issues are brought up, candidates respond within the constraints of allotted time and set format, and then a new question or issue is presented. Issues are not exhausted, argued in depth, or resolved. The media seems more concerned with who beat whom with little in-depth analysis of their ideas or arguments…. because there really was no depth at all. Hillary’s tear received more press than did her ideas. Barack’s slight of Hillary at President Bush’s state of the union address was given more importance than were Bush’s ideas analyzed. During the address, the cameras had to continue with rapid cut-aways to celebrities and candidates, as their visual expressions were more interesting than what the President had to say. Perhaps the cameras could catch something that would be newsworthy for days… an untimely frown from Obama, Hillary dozing off or secretly smiling at Schwarzenegger flexing his muscles, or Kennedy and Obama playing rock, paper scissors…

As Postman writes, “Thinking does not play well on television, a fact that television directors discovered long ago. There is not much to see in it… It must suppress the content of ideas in order to accommodate the requirements of visual interest.”

Americans “do not exchange ideas; they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.”

Then there is Web 2.0…… This is a “medium” that is giving the television world a run for its money. As educators, if we can capitalize on students’ natural proclivity for working and thinking in this environment, we just may have a chance at turning them from knowing the world through the lens of television media to truly understanding the world through personal perspective, through intelligent thinking and meaningful discourse, through communication locally, nationally, and globally with others and getting first-person perspective that does not get filtered through any other lens.

If anything, Postman’s ideas here give credence to this new 2.0 medium that has emerged. I shudder to think about all of the money that has been spent on getting television into schools and the return that it has brought – the advertising that students have been subjected to and the passive entertainment that has been disguised as learning (I am not saying that television has no value in the classroom.) How can administrators NOT get on board with this new environment that begs for intelligent thought, active literacies, collaboration, conversation, connection, creation, reflection, analysis,… Of course, it takes teachers to get on board and orchestrate all of this at some level. But it also takes informed and visionary administrators and I.T. personnel to make it happen.

As an example of the level of analysis and intelligent thought that television will not ever show (since television cannot show thought), check out Wesley Fryer’s recent post over at the Moving at the Speed of Creativity blog about NCLB.

Ch. 5 – The Peek-a-Boo World

(Continuing on with by book club of 1…)

Today, I read a new post by Will Richardson on the topic of Twitter and it resounded so strongly with me (you can read my comments there) because I had just finished reading this fifth chapter of Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, and found incredible parallels between the influence of the telegraph, photograph, and television to the newer forms of information technology in this last decade . Will is wrestling with the impact of Twitter on his world, and how folks are restricted to communicating in 140 characters or less and others following up to 600 or more tweeters out there. Wow – have we ever changed from information moving as fast as physical people could carry it to seconds after the “post” or “publish” command has been invoked. Postman introduces the idea that this has produced “context free” information which holds merit simply because it is novel, interesting, our curious, “elevating irrelevance to the status of news”. I don’t think I am alone in being annoyed with the state of news in the US these days. In the morning I get 5 minutes or less of shallow news bytes and then 55 more minutes of the best macaroni and cheese recipes, 5 tips to firmer thighs, and where in the world is Matt Lauer. There is now such an glut of irrelevant information out there that instead of finding productive ways of taking action locally in our own communities, we struggle to stay afloat in the endless sea of information that seems important, but so disconnected that in the end we can’t find ways to take action on any of it. The idea of neighborhood has been replaced with “global neighborhood” – one that Postman defines as “… a neighborhood of strangers and pointless quantity; a world of fragments and discontinuities.”

Although Postman’s thinking evolves into a criticism of the television world, I find meaningful connections to newer worlds as well. To quote Postman once again,

“Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation… Knowing the facts took on a new meaning, for it did not imply that one understood implications, backgrounds, or connections. Telegraphic discourse permitted no time for historical perspectives and gave no priority to the qualitative. To the telegraph, intelligence meant knowing lots of things, not knowing about them.”

As a teacher, I am compelled to help my students make sense out of both the information at their fingertips as well as the impact that the information medium has on his or her understanding and view of the world. I am challenged in new ways to help my students use new information tools in powerful and meaningful ways that do not sacrifice depth and complexity for breadth and glitz. How are we making sense of our world with the presence of such tools and glut of information? Are we struggling just to RSS the headlines and keep up the Jonses… I mean the Twitters? Do we need to be up on every RSSd headline or blog post? Or, are we tackling meaningful projects that positively impact our own communities based on meaningful and powerful uses of information. Are we contributing at all, or have we become so consumed with feeding on information that we have forgotten about our real neighbors and communities? Do we now live so much in Facebook or MySpace that the idea of community service is almost crazy? I mean, I have followers… I have an obligation here to satisfy them and their desire to know what I am doing every moment of the day. (sorry… this is getting a tad sarcastic)

Wow… this is making me think about a great deal. I have no answers at this point as I struggle with all of this. But, I am struggling, reading, and reflecting…, and that is good. What do you think about all of this?

Great Blogging Tool

MarsEdit is a tool that I discovered not long ago and I have really come to love it. So I decided that I would share it here. Here is a great (and simple) blogging tool that runs locally on your computer (OS X) and allows you to compose blog posts off-line and upload them to most major blogging services when you want.

It has great editing features for both text as well as media and could not be easier to use. The editing features are great and it also allows you to work with the full menu of media resources. Built-in text markup options are great.

Once you are ready to publish specific blogging drafts, all you have to do is publish. What I really like about this it that it allows me to work on draft posts without having to be connected. I know, except for the network necessity, all of this is feasible without a program like this one. I don’t know what it is, but I prefer it to posting live. It is more like writing your post in a word processor, then cutting and pasting into a new blog post… minus the cutting/pasting. It also allows you to easily edit and republish a post – great for those times when you see that glaring typo or think of some critical angle or detail that you forgot to include. It also works with Flickr if you have photos there. It does have a number of advantages that I have come to love.

Ch. 3 – Typographic America

(Continuing with my book club…)

In this chapter, Postman recounts some of the major changes that occurred in America with the introduction of the printing press… Yes, books. But also a ravenous hunger for newspapers. He describes the general public as being quite literate and hungry for the written word, as there were no other informative media available other than the public orator who would come and speak in public forums. They were very well attended.

In the 1770s, even the poorest of common folk could read. Reading was not considered an “elitist” activity at all. This really made me think of how things are today, where literacy rates often decline in relation to socio-economic status. Is this in part because of the competing new media (movies, video games, television…) that discourages traditional literacies ? I think this may be a direction that Postman heads in future chapters.

I found incredible parallels between the emergence of newspapers in the late 17th/early 18th centuries and blogs in the 21st century. Postman describes how in the late 17th century how newspapers became so important in Boston to “combat the spirit of lying” that was going on in politics. However, the second edition of the Publick Occurrences never happened, as it was suppressed by the Governor for being too truthful (truth hurts!). Thank goodness for our freedoms of speech. By 1730 there were seven successfully published newspapers in the 4 colonies. By 1800, 180 papers were published.

Newspapers were referred to as the “spring of knowledge. The general source throughout the nation, of every modern conversation.” Per capita at end of 18th century, there were more newspapers in the US than there were in England due to America’s newfound freedoms.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “Parties do not write books to combat each other’s opinions, but pamphlets (and newspapers), which are circulated for a day within incredible rapidity and then expire.” He goes on to write that just as the firearm equalized nobility with the “vassal”, so did printing and the post (just like blog posts). Can you imagine if the common man of the 17th/18th century had access to some medium to easily publish his/her thoughts to the culture of the times? Information has truly revolutionized our society. There are now somewhere between 50 and 150 million blogs out there.

Today, anyone with Internet access (or a cell phone) can blog. Bloggers have changed reporting and the speed at which information reaches the masses. Blogging empowers the ‘common man’ who does not have access to publish in conventional information outlets (news, published books/articles, magazines,…). It has helped, just like the firearm and newspaper, as de Tocqueville put it, to “equalize nobility with the vassal” (YouTube debates?). Along the same lines, it can empower students and give them a voice like never before. Of course, with such power needs to come responsibility – and that also must be taught in parallel. Cyberbullying, for example, is related to this newfound power of youth minus the responsibility.

I don’t think that Postman was thinking about such parallels when writing this chapter since his book was written in 1985, long before blogging, podcasting and the like truly took off. I wonder what he thinks about such forms of communication that empower the individual like never before. I don’t think this type of activity would fall in his thesis of “amusing ourselves to death”. Of course, these new information tools can be used for trivial purposes, no doubt. Our challenge is to educate our students and colleagues on the empowerment that comes from having a powerful voice without boundaries. If we have important things to say, they are not merely relegated to the bulletin board, hallway display, or faculty room/water cooler chatter. I think a major hurdle is to shift from the thinking that we either have no voice or our voice does not matter to participating in global conversations about what we are passionate about. If we have nothing to say or are not passionate about anything, that says something, doesn’t it?

Anyway, it’s amazing what this one chapter sparked in my mind. I look forward to more such tangents.

Thank You, Network!

I just want to stop and say thank you to all of you who blog about serious and relevant issues that we are all facing today in education. Over the past few days, I have been so drawn in by the many thought-provoking and intelligent narratives found in many edublogs that I routinely read and participate in.
In a recent post by Kelly Christopherson over on LeaderTalk, he shares his observation that many teachers who struggle with using new technologies to learn, collaborate, and teach are often those who have no support networks that challenge and inspire them. These are most likely the same teachers who struggle the most with change and the learning of any new things. They have often grown stale, fearful, and uninspired. He cites a few examples within his own network and writes that these networked folks are those who…

question and challenge, helping to stretch the discussion, helping us to reflect on our ideas and thoughts while providing some great tools and insights into using web2.0 tools in teaching, these relationships help us connect and develop, grow and learn, keep our perspective and motivate us. These relationships have become a large part of how we are growing and developing our teaching and understanding. These are the relationships that those teachers not engaged DO NOT have.

I have heard Will Richardson and others also attest to the importance of their networks in their own personal learning and professional development and I can certainly attest to the value of these new networks that are independent of time and space. So, here’s to all of you who have exponentially expanded my learning network. I look forward to many more inspirational, challenging, controversial, confrontative, serious, humorous, light, passionate, and heartfelt posts and conversations.

Vacation/Internet Cold Turkey

Wow… after being away for 2 weeks, and I mean 2 weeks away from any sort of Internet connection at all, I really feel behind in the world, in my social network, in my writing, email… This is the first time in a long time that I have been disconnected for so long. And, since I have become more connected on-line, this 2-week separation seemed quite hard. It now seems like quite a daunting task to catch up on all of the blogs that I enjoy following. Thanks to my RSS aggregator, NetNewsWire, this task makes it much easier. I can download all of the entries of all the blogs that I follow at once and quickly skim through entry titles and short descriptions. When something of interest catches my eye, I can read the detailed post and even visit the actual blog site from within NetNewsWire. And, all of this can be done off-line once the RSS feeds have updated. So, here’s to the power of aggregators! I still have entries to skim and perhaps read in full, but it is much less daunting this way.

Just one thing before I close this entry. It is unrelated, but I was interested in the idea of how employers are increasing their presence within social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace for the purposes of recruiting. This was one of the stories on the national news this morning. They mentioned that this new age of social networking is becoming very powerful for both employers seeking employees and individuals seeking to be employed. I went to Facebook and indeed, there are many social networks focused on employment. It makes me think that I may need to change my profile and page content to better reflect the professional rather than the personal side of my life. I have little there and certainly nothing that would put a potential job in jeopardy, but it certainly is not geared toward employability! Perhaps I need two distinctly separate profiles/accounts.

Anyway, Happy New Year. It will certainly be an exciting one, I think.

Don’t Blog – Pick up the Phone!

I think that blogging has the potential of falling into the same sticky territory as email does with misinterpretation. Often, when one is passionate (frustrated, angry, disappointed, excited…) about a topic, it is advisable to pick up the telephone and talk to the person rather than email them. As we all know, tone is often not readily apparent and subject to interpretation. Body language is non-existant. And, the opportunity to question/clarify one’s position is seriously delayed.

What made me think about this was all of the hot discussion going on surrounding the Vision of Students video by Mike Wesch. Gary Stager offered his take, others rebutted or supported it, and, as the discussion continues (which is great), Mike Wesch finally has the opportunity to respond and clarify things. It just seems to me that the medium of blogging has stirred up a whole lot of dust for nothing here. Had Mike and Gary just picked up the phone and had a good old synchronous discussion, things may have not transpired as they did. And, I don’t really see any new ideas come out of the discussion, as was part of Gary’s criticism of the video, too.

I think sometimes in the medium of blogging, we are trying too hard to defend or justify our positions simply because of the limitations of the medium. And, at times it feels (to me) like the professional bloggers are circling like vultures, ready to show their stuff.

Anyway, I am just venting a little here. Disclaimer: I am NOT against blogging nor stimulating discussions that blog entries may generate. [I put this in here in case you blogging vultures are hungry :-)] I do love the following statement from Mike’s clarification:

“But while teaching has not changed, learning has. Students are learning to read, navigate, and create within a digital information environment that we scarcely address in the classroom. The great myth is that these “digital natives” know more about this new information environment than we do. But here’s the reality: they may be experts in entertaining themselves online, but they know almost nothing about educating themselves online.”

He goes on to write that they may be digitally saavy, but are still naiive learners and that learning has become perhaps more complex in this highly interactive and connected digital age. I would agree. As Mike writes, our challenge has always been to make learning relevant, to inspire our students, to help them question and wrestle with information, to evaluate, to produce, to become active contributors rather than passive, half-present and highly distracted bodies filling seats. I don’t think the good ‘ol stand-and-deliver lecture can achieve this as well any more… even with PowerPoint! Disclaimer: I am not saying that lectures are worthless or are never the best choice of pedagogy. Our world is highly connected and wired (or wireless). Students are looking for a new degree of relevancy and purpose – new opportunities to express, create, produce, contribute… Let us just not put these desires ahead of being learners who seek truth, who think critically and hard, who evaluate at high levels, who produce more than just eye candy, and who make meaning that is not so relativistic or shallow that it is silly.

All this discussion is good, I know. But in the end, I blog for myself. It others are stimulated by my thoughs, I guess that is a great by-product. If others think that I am silly or wrong, that’s fine, too. I wouldn’t expect otherwise. But the minute that I begin blogging to impress the blogosphere, I’m done. And, I should still use the telephone where appropriate. Disclaimer: Don’t take all of this too seriously.

The Blame Game!

I can totally identify with Chris Lehman’s post last week on his blog, Practical Theory. At times I have been guilty of putting too much blame on individual teachers for failing to innovate their teaching pedagogies and adopt current cultural technology tools. (Check out http://despair.com for more great satirical posters like the one presented here!) I still feel that part of ‘being a teacher’ is being a learner and continually looking for ways to keep fresh and identify with his/her audience in powerful ways. There is certainly no excuse for avoiding personal and professional growth. However, Chris brings a great balanced perspective to this dilemma, as there are powerful systems in play that more than not discourage innovation and ‘outside-of-the-box’ thinking. In many cases, technology aside, we have been struggling to achieve basic reforms of pedagogy that have been laid down by the ‘greats’… Dewey, Vygostky, Bruner, Gardner to name a few. If is very hard to ‘buck the system’ in K-12 education. Teachers are overwhelmed with everything on their plates and have little time to think outside of the box. For those critics who always say that teachers are overpaid, work only 8 hr. days for only 180-200 days a year, have great benefits,.. well, live just a day in their shoes. Sure, there are some teachers out there who shouldn’t be in the classroom any more as they have lost their ‘fire’ for learning and teaching. But their are folks like that in every discipline and profession. Most teachers that I have known and worked with have been the most dedicated folks I have ever known.

I am not making excuses for failure to innovate, as many teachers continue to do just that in spite of the systems that they work under, or as a result of fantastic building principals and district administrators who have vision, are not afraid to take risks, who support teachers and create learning climates that encourage innovation,…

So, hats off to all of the terrific teachers out there who buck the system every day, who turn their classroom lights on every morning to try again, who seek to grow at every opportunity, who de-escalate volatile situations, humanize and bring dignity to every child who crosses their path (Hiam Ginot) – hats off to you! Start a blog to share your experiences with the world 🙂 Upload some photos to VoiceThread and continue the conversation, create motivating and inspiring montages with RockYou or MixerCast. Start a wiki with a colleague on some area of common professional interest. Find a classroom outside of your state, country, or continent to collaborate with using Epals. These are some fairly easy things to do to begin connecting with your students and colleagues in new ways.

See also: http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-it-okay-to-be-technologically.html

Overfed on Blogs

I love… and hate… this cartoon by Dave Walker (he has so many really great ones). It represents what I have been feeling for some time now. It’s nobody’s fault… just the nature of the beast. I think the title “Overfed” is not quite accurate for me. It is more the “need” I feel to have to read so many blogs – or keep up with them. I don’t think that here is anything intrinsically harmful about reading too much. However, I find that it sometimes takes me away from other, more scholarly reading in journals and other places that I should be keeping up on. I think partly it is a little difficult keeping up with the conversational aspect of blogging. It is one thing to read them, but when you go in and want to maintain active discussions through commenting and then have to go back to all of your comments to see if anyone responded to them… well, it all takes time. I think I just need to pick the few that I want to participate in while having others that I just read. And, I’m not even bringing technologies like Twitter into the picture here. I don’t know…

How do you manage your time with the presence of the blogosphere in your own personal space?

 

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Ripples

Well, as I wrote about in my first entry, I was not sure if I would prioritize my time enough to be a faithful blogger… at least a contributor. I have been a reader/lurker for a long time now. I have learned a great deal from reading other blogs, namely Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed, Ewen McIntosh’s edu.blogs, Tim Lauer’s Education/Technology, Scott Mcleod’s Dangerously Irrelevant, Steve Dembo’s teach42, just to name a few. There are so many more and as many folks have written, it is impossible to read and keep up with them all. And I like what Steve Dembo recently wrote about being more than a reader and even contributor to the blogosphere – rather an intellectual community whose joint contributions lead to action being taken and change taking place. I have had many impressions at times that the educational blogging community has simply digitized griping and complaining. Don’t get me wrong – this is not my overall impression at all. I just get annoyed when I read blogs that come across as digital teachers’ lounges. In the same way that these teachers’ complaints lead to nothing changed and improved, so do these types of blog entries lend themselves to the same type of discourse. However, here I am complaining 🙂  On that epiphany, I close this entry, ashamed of myself.