Reports+from+Cyberspace

=Creating Opportunities for Learning with Newer Literacies and Technologies: Three Reports from Cyberspace= =Troy Hicks, Bud Hunt: contact info available on their Wiki.=
 * This session was incredible. The session leaders were keeping the audience on their toes and involved by participating via Twitter, the NCTE Ning, the wiki that was made for the session, delicious, Chatterous (a live chat site), and Etherpad (more about all those later).
 * First and foremost, please visit the Wiki for the session at http://reportsfromcyberspace.wikispaces.com/. The entire session is posted there, as are many links. If you click on Continuing the Conversation, you can see links to some great sites.
 * And (this is pretty cool) you can watch the entire session courtesy of uStream (which is a bit like Twitter, but for live streaming video) here:

It's hard to capture everything that was going on during this session, but I'm going to try.
 * We can support our use of Web 2.0 with research from lots of sources. One good one is [|http://tpack.org] which stands for Technological Pedagological Content Knowledge. Another great one is the MacArthur Foundation's report about Digital Media and Learning.
 * There are a few books that would be useful for teachers using Web 2.0 in their classrooms. They are:
 * //The World is Open// by Curtis J. Bonk
 * //Reinventing Project-Based Learning//, published by ISTE.
 * And one of the presenter's own book, //The Digital Writing Workshop// by Troy Hicks.
 * Spent a bit of time talking about how some schools are using technology in interesting ways. There's a high school in Colorado called Skyline High School. It's a technology-focus high school. They have these monthly video lecture series that their students can attend/view called the Skyline STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) Lecture Series. They have world-renowned experts in these fields of study deliver lectures to their students via the internet. (Think of what is possible with video conferencing!)
 * Now they talked about this dichotomy between what teachers need and want to teach and what school boards' filtering systems allow. They talked about this through the lens of how some people are nervous to adopt these new technologies into their classrooms, because they are afraid of what kids might do with the technologies. Here is how Troy put it: "When a kid goes on Facebook, it's not the internet's fault." Behavioural choices do not equal technology. The choices that students make are a behavioural management problem, it's not an inherent problem with the technology. I think this is a fantastic way to put it: it's our job as teachers to ensure that our students know what our expectations are in terms of technology use, and that there are clear boundaries about what is appropriate, as well as consequences for violations.
 * One thing we might consider doing is developing a Geek Squad, or a group of kids that we train to use the technologies at the school. I guess in the olden days, this would be called an A/V Club, but what that would look like in present time would be more technology gurus. The presenters talked about a school that had a Geek Squad that could be called upon if a teacher was stuck or wasn't able to make something work, and they had their own special Geek Squad hall passes. Obviously, if this were to be done, responsible students would need to be chosen as the students might be missing parts of their own classes upon occasion to help other teachers. The other thing the students did was learn and become experts at technologies so they could teach both the staff and students specific computer skills. The Geek Squad learned the skills and art of teaching in addition to learning the technologies.
 * Perhaps there may be FOIP issues that need to be addressed before this avenue is explored further, but we know that when students have an authentic audience, they will produce better work, and be more engaged in what they are doing. There's a website called [], and the tagline is "a meeting place where students share, distribute, and discuss their digital work online." If anything else, perhaps this site may have some ideas that you could incorporate into D2L collaborations/discussions.
 * A great website for service learning: []. Their mission is to educate and inspire urban youth to become successful students and global and community leaders by engaging them in socially dynamic, content rich learning experiences." They are incorporating technology in an interesting way.
 * Some Web 2.0 tools and what they can do:
 * Etherpad - It's a bit like Google docs. It allows people to work together in working with a document in real time. I can see the applications of this being incredible once we get wireless. You could have one laptop per group contributing to an ongoing discussion and keep record of that. People who are not comfortable contributing orally to a conversation may be more willing to contribute this way.
 * Twitter - Not sure I'd use Twitter in the classroom, but challenging kids to get their point across or summarize an idea in 140 characters is a pretty slick skill.
 * Delicious - a social bookmarking site. You can add links that people can access via your delicious bookmarks using an internet browser. A pretty cool way to share links.
 * Chatterous - A web chat site. You can create a private chat room that people need a password to access. You could have you class chatting about a topic, and then print the chat log. Interesting concept. I wonder how this would actually go.
 * Ning - A social networking site similar to Facebook, but you can create private Nings that you invite certain people to participate in. We are going to be using this with the grade 7s, so stay tuned for more information as to how successful this was.
 * Saywire - Another social networking site. I haven't investigated carefully, but it is actually built for education, as their motto says, "Saywire puts the power of social learning into the hands of educators, with safe and secure technology that makes it effortless to inspire students and to create knowledge together."
 * Elgg - And another social networking site.

Troy Hicks is quoted in this very insightful article in District Pedagogy about the New Writing Pedagogy. A great place to start if you're thinking about turning the task of writing into a more collaborative venture.