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Teaching Effectively Online
Lesson
Six: “The New Normal” –
How
We Can Do More With Less.
http://lone-eagles.com/teaching-lesson6.html
Return to the class homepage
http://lone-eagles.com/teaching.html
Required Submissions
for Lesson 6: 1.
Post as a reply in the Google groups discussion “Birds of a Feather
Discussion” Go to http://groups.google.com/group/teaching-effectively-online
For
example:
some of us are totally interested in elementary Ipad
apps, others in HS Math/science, others in homeschooling programs with
a
families emphasis, and others tech-training for teachers. Together we
will determine
if additional topical discussions and other collaborative content
efforts are
needed. 2.
Post to
the class listserv your best professional personal learning network
sites,
feeds, and tips - to be archived for all future class participants. (30
minutes) 3._____
Email your instructor
all the details on your generosity gifting one of your classmates with
three
great new links matching their topical preferences as listed at the top
of
their own wiki page (see sidebar menu).
Details to include in your email to your instructor:
the 3+ resource links, the link to specific classmate’s wiki page, and
the name
of the lucky giftee.
(30 minutes) 4.
Create a
3-5 minute Jing video capture demoing your pick of your own info-diet
input or
output “best practices” and post the link along with your name and a
short
description on the “Best
Tech Tips and Tricks Jings”
wiki page at our
class wiki. (one
hour) 5.
Email your
final project idea to your instructor
(30
minutes) VIEW
the 45 minute video of
the FCC Chairman’s
Announcement: http://www.fcc.gov/blog/fcc-and-connect-compete-tackle-broadband-adoption-challenge
(45
minutes)
6.
Read this lesson.
a short note identifying your greatest interests, concerns and specific
needs
regarding this class with an eye toward identifying who else in this
class
might share your priorities as the basis for mutually beneficial
collaboration
– such as starting an online discussion, working together on a
resources wiki,
and/or partnering for innovative final projects.
(30 minutes)
( OK to partner with
others as long as individual time
on task is documented)
Tightening
Our Collective
Belts to Prepare for The New Normal
Arne
Duncan, director of the US Department of Education has coined the term,
“The
New Normal” where we are all now going to be forced to do more with
less. The
economies of scale for high quality distance learning are only
beginning to be
recognized. One new reality is that all projections on the future are
off the
table. No one can predict with any confidence what’s going to happen
next year,
never mind in 5, 10, or 20 years.
If
“Less is More” and we
are asked to “Do More with Less” how’s that gonna work exactly?
We
have discussed that in the age of information overload, Less
Is More. And with the New Normal, we are now tasked to Do More With Less. The answer begs the
question of smarter ongoing
evaluation of genuine best practices, and we are in the age of
transparency,
where crowd accelerated innovation has proven
itself on the global
stage. “What matters most” is increasingly related to the quality of
best
practices we are individually aware of, and how effectively we can
learn to stay
current, noting particularly that even the information tools we are
using are
undergoing constant changes and upgrades.
Everyone,
and everything, is quickly becoming interconnected, and everything is
becoming
integrated. Egov
services may soon be available only
online, via virtual one-stop centers. And this means it has suddenly
become
extremely important for everyone to learn effective online skills
necessary to
access essential government services, particularly for vulnerable
populations.
More
with
less means integrating units to cover more standards in less time.
Community Networking
and elearning – have now
merged as learning society.
Google
and Microsoft already offer cloud-based Egov
software
systems for entire states. Wyoming’s 10,000 public employees now use
Google’s Egov suite. In
Boston, citizens can use a smartphone
to photograph pot holes
and instantly email them directly to the department of transportation.
Necessity
is the mother of invention, and we have entered an era of unprecedented
necessary innovation.
One
of many related resources: http://www.govtech.com
Relearning
Smarter
Consumerism
The
video “Collaborative Consumption” summarizes innovations made possible
by the
Internet for getting by with less, by sharing what we have with others.
The
book is recommended as it presented dozens of examples from the $100
billion
dollar global sharing economy – ways that people are making money by
providing
smarter ways for others to save money. The subtle point of the book is
that our
conspicuous consumption habits are
learned, and have been specifically taught subversively by
corporations who
stand to profit from unnecessarily wasteful consumer habits.
The
volume of success stories makes this an interesting consumerism version
of our
class textbook related to similar successes with smarter Elearning
innovations. I.E. Everyone
both
learner and teacher, both
consumer and
producer, all the time.
Essential
Digital Consumer
Skills
QR
codes, square bar codes, are appearing on products, posters, in store
windows, and literally
everywhere. Last Christmas, 17% of shoppers
used them for instant price comparisons using apps like shopsavvy.
Simple consumerism best practices now require such a tool to assure
best prices
when shopping.
Online
innovations like Groupon.com – allow collaborative consumerism where
special
deals become available online, only if enough people literally shop
together. How
Amazon, Apple,
Google, Facebook, and
others have changed, and are
aggressively continuing to change, literally everything about our
economy –
suggests we all pay attention to best practices that literally mean
leaving money
in our pockets every time we shop.
School
budgets are increasingly supplemented by partnerships with local
businesses,
community foundations, Ebay
fundraisers, and more.
America’s
Global
Competitiveness, and Your Role as Digital Educator
To
stimulate America’s global competitiveness, the Federal Communications
Bureau
has launched Connect to Compete, to focus on use of school and library
computer
labs as the hub for establishing a local community “digital literacy
corps.”
At
issue is who will champion keeping computer labs open after school, and
decide
on the most appropriate digital literacy training for diverse community
members
– with the goal of stimulating broadband-enabled entrepreneurship,
ecommerce
and telework jobs, and
societal transformation to lifelong
learning in a knowledge society?
VIEW
the 45 minute video of
the FCC Chairman’s Announcement:
http://www.fcc.gov/blog/fcc-and-connect-compete-tackle-broadband-adoption-challenge
Footnote: The CEO of
One-Economy.com, Kelley
Dunne, has been tapped to direct the Connect to Compete digital
literacy
initiative, and is seeking help articulating youth digital literacy
initiatives
and pilot projects for Alaskan Native and Native American communities.
Kelley
Dunne is the last speaker in the above video.
While
there is no guarantee we will all be asked to contribute workable
action plans,
or receive funding, the question stands, money or not, “What’s the best
we can
do as educators, to engage our students with their community to
competently
address what “best practices” need to become common knowledge? - Such
that we
can “Do for Ourselves, Together?!” That in fact, no money at
all may be
available simply makes this survival challenge all the more important!
Innovating
how best to deal with “The New Normal” is everyone’s responsibility.
Everyone
learning to leverage the exponential benefits of effective, smarter
collaboration, may well prove to be the difference between those
communities and
villages who adapt and survive and those who disappear.
Fall,
2011, the FCC commissioner was the first to ever visit an Alaska Native
village,
hosted by senator Begich.
At issue was seeing first
hand the challenges and opportunities for faster broadband utilization.
Consider
whether the following could work in your community or village as a
local action
plan….
Proposing
a Competition for the best, first, Alaskan Native Digital Village
Proposed
is a digital storytelling competition for presenting the most
convincing
Alaskan digital village visions for the relevance of broadband via
“Bottom-Up”
video testimonies, examples of “What's working for others like you”
using “show
and tell” video capture tools, and other new forms of rich media
expression.
Creating
a
friendly villages competition for who can present the most compelling
examples
for the benefits of broadband may include; extraordinary success
stories for
rural ecommerce, telework,
and examples of culturally
appropriate rich media content creation, effective collaborative
outcomes,
overcoming social isolation for vulnerable populations, and access to
unlimited
self-directed learning and entrepreneurial opportunities.
Rapid
prototyping for broadband training best practices is a timely need. The
viral
potential for mass engagement via social media “as personal learning
networks”
has set the stage for the Top Down to partner meaningfully
with the
Bottom Up. A
challenge for
effective online peer mentoring and Train-The-Trainer programs based on
authentic measurable skills transfer outcomes would quickly produce a
great
deal of innovation and invaluable online instructional content.
Digital
literacy is not a matter of large corporations putting more training
online in
a patronizing top down manner. Digital literacy is about people
learning from
each other what they can do for themselves creating effective
collaborations
for ongoing sharing of best practices.
Pilot
projects are proposed for showcasing what communities can “Do for
themselves,
together” both as individual communities in the short term, and as
functional
coordinated “communities of communities” sharing innovations, mentors,
and
mutual opportunities on an ongoing basis.
Local
Action Plan Outcomes can include:
Create
a
web directory of all local businesses
with a
web presence…Examples from Caithness,
Scotland: Caithness.org
http://lone-eagles.com/dillon.htm
Host
frequent local, web-raising events
where all
participants will create a sustainable free ecommerce website in less
than one
hour.
Web Raisings:
http://lone-eagles.com/web-raising.htm 30
second web
raising videos at http://youtube.com/fodasz
Create
a mentors roster online
to help
match those with skills with those eager to learn. Example from
McGrath, AK: http://lone-eagles.com/mentorsurvey.htm
Post
online videos of local entrepreneurs,
ecommerce
successes, Examples from Idaho, Alaska, Scotland, etc.: http://youtube.com/fodasz
The
21st
Century imperative is quite literally:
Everyone
both learner and teacher, both
consumer and producer,
all the time.
Stackable
Credentials: The
Coming Modularization of Learning
With
college costs up 600% since 1980, our class text book “The Coming
Transformation of Higher Education” and the daily TV news, both attest
to
fundamental changes in our options for getting marketable credentials
for our
acquired knowledge.
The
Lumina Foundation, funded by the Gates Foundation (who also funded the
Khan
Academy) is promoting the goal of getting more adults involved in
pursuing
college degrees. Innovations are sought to motivate adults, and to
identify and
remove barriers to re-entry.
Stackable credentials are recommended, with the option for
the
flexibility of mentored online learning. Shorter timeframes for
credentials, which
can be stacked to culminate in a final degree, have been recommended. A general trend in online
learning is
to create more modularity, and doing more with less – less time to
produce
greater measurable outcomes.
Fastcompany’s 30secondmba.com
offers 30 second video
insights from high level thought leaders as
one example of an attempt to offer the greatest value in the least
amount of
time. Twitter is a similar model, though the value depends on how well
those
you follow know how to use the tool effectively.
Another
trend is toward alternative certifications
which are
endorsed by a corporation instead of a university, such as Cisco or
Microsoft
certifications.
Context
is King: Educators
as Infobrokers.
The
video “How Web Video Empowers Global
Innovation” suggests it has become vitally important for
everyone to not
waste time on substandard learning units, when the best-of-the-best can
be at
everyone’s fingertips, updated daily.
This
shifts the role of most educators from being authors of original
curriculum, to
enhancing their role as curricular assessors, and info-brokers,
focusing more
on setting the context VS authoring the content.
Defining
Digital Literacy
Best Practices
Digital
literacy as a term sounds very last century. How we define digital
literacy and
teach it on an ongoing basis as it continues to evolve is important. We
cannot
presume that those in power are also the most knowledgeable or the best
educators. The term broadband has created a lot of confusion, but the
term
connectedness – begs the question of - to whom, what, and why?
Scripting
Your TED Talk
Viral Video:
What
each of us might contribute as a short Jing demo of our own best
practices has
the potential to be viewed by millions, even billions. Whether it is
our
personal tech tricks, or our vision for sharing across all members of
our one
human family, in the age of daily viral events…literally anything is
possible,
and we’re limited only by our imaginations.
I.E.
How can you give people More
value with Less… time,
energy, cost, and prerequisite literacy?
Educators are now challenged to develop their excellence
at creating
and/or brokering the
best… best practices.
Innovation
Diffusion in K12
is an inverted pyramid.
You
might have noticed your students know more
about information retrieval technologies than most parents and
teachers, who in
turn often know more about technology than their principals and
superintendents, who often know more than our legislators, governors
and
senators. Those who make the decisions regarding educational technology
innovation may too often be the least informed.
In
review, formal K12 education is based on
standards without ongoing assessments for use of rich media to create
instructional content that is most motivating. Informal learning shared
among
students is likely to be video and/or app-based, noting social media
and mobile
devices are prohibited in many schools.
In an
ideal world, we (teachers and students
alike) would all be better informed via peer assessments revealing the
most
motivating curricular units, that in the least amount of time, offer
the highest
possible level of insight, utility, and measurable outcomes.
The
Khan academy videos showed measurable
tracking for student progress, student mentoring, and classroom methods
to
allow the teachers to mentor individual students in the classroom. The
Hole in
the Wall video showed how students can
teach
themselves, as is necessary when teachers are not available.
Mutual
Support Networks;
Are
evolving to keep us all
up to the same instant of progress.
In
the Smithsonian Museum of American history is a display on the
evolution of
communications technology. A
kiosk
has a sermon running continuously, from 1867 announcing the first
transatlantic
telegraph cable connecting America and Europe. The
message is that now
humankind can all keep to the same instant of progress.
Dot-dash-dot-dot, in
1867!
As
we are half-way through through
this class, some might fear being overwhelmed by too many information
feeds.
Even when relevant to use as educators, it is a fact that we can only
handle so
many E-newsletters, RSS blog feeds, listserv emails from our often
prolific
peers and *online instructors, and the growing number of other
information
flows and feeds. In addition, are our personal social networks, which
seem
destined to make it easier than ever for our friends and family to
further overwhelm
us.
Consider
the following
themes:
No
one knows as much as all
of us.
If
we all share what we
know, we’ll all have access to all our knowledge.
The
power of all of us. (Ebay’s
trademark)
Less
is MORE in our age of
information overload:
Information condenses to knowledge
which condenses to
wisdom and VALUE is created in our
age of information overload.
With
the global boom of bottom-up innovations, fueled by the new
opportunities for
anyone, anywhere to learn daily from the best innovations of others,
the
evolving dynamics for instant dissemination of the very best “crowd
accelerated
innovations” holds great promise. We are modern hunter
gatherers constantly seeking the best knowledge and
innovations of
others.
A
Prologue to Sophisticated
Simple Organizing Strategies for Social Media and for Teaching Online
Effectively.
Ongoing
feeds using multiple tools to minimize the time required to stay
current with
peers in your topic areas can be as fun as it can be useful.
What
if each of us – could be collaboratively sharing our wiki links, jings, and best professional
development and topical
curriculum content sites on an ongoing basis!
That is literally the goal of many K12 resource sites –
many
experimenting with different combinations of social media tools,
incentives to
share, and more. I.E.
Learn from
the working strategies deployed by others…like the Ning
video tutorials shared in a recent lesson.
Let’s
take a hard look at
potential best practices for a moment:
Our
class listserv has a searchable archive of all postings, so
introductions,
posted resource links, including jings,
are available
to newcomers to the class at any time. Posting Jings
in google group
messages still requires everyone to
sort through those messages.
Perhaps creating a single wiki page for just the Jing
assignment links
is the way to go? It
is just
this sort of decision making on best use of collaborative tools,
optimal organization,
etc., that teaching effectively online requires.
Think
about all the great resources we have all posted to the listserv, wiki,
ning, and google group.
Think about what might be the best way
to create a lasting collection of exceptional resources as an outcome
of this
class - and/or any future classes for that matter. How best to sort all
these
by topic, to chose the right tool for initial and sustained
organization, and
the most effective motivations and/or required submissions to achieve
the best
possible group outcome, are all on the table for your recommendations.
And
think about what model can be extended for students to conduct similar
knowledge gathering with the community.
An
elegant combination of sequenced instructional Jings
teaching the tools for ideal collaborative outcomes (wikis and Ning) might be considered. The
confusion, as one example,
resulting from threaded discussions being linked to each new topic, in
our google group,
represents the level of detail necessary to
address.
One
potential problem is with everyone working at their
own pace, literally getting everyone on the same page can be a
challenge. Keeping
it as simple as possible will likely
prove necessary.
Planning
Your 8 Hour Final Project:
Please
start thinking about what you would like to do for your 8
hour final project, and email your idea to your instructor
for possible
suggestions.
Consider
creating your own wiki to share great links on a specific topic to
share with
peers and/or your local community. Rather specifically you can post
links to
your Jings showing cool
content creation tools in 30 second
bits - one 5 minute jing
could show your top ten favorites as a compelling way for raising
awareness
for, say, your principal or superintendent or parents?
Note:
Jing videos won't upload to youtube,
etc., unless you
purchase Jing Pro for $14/year - which allows saving as Mpg4 files -
compatible
with youtube, ning, wikis,
blogs, and most everything else. However,
you can post Jing links anywhere. When in doubt - experiment.
You
might think about your opportunity to model the highest impact and/or
utility possible
via your final project, within the 8
hour window. Think
about showcasing Alaskan cultural
expression best practices examples by tool type, perhaps in the context
of
"here are 5-10 of the
best digital storytelling
cool tools." Or
showcase the
easiest new media tools and methods for creating instructional content. Imagine two five minute
video captures
or twenty 30 second jings
- each showing as briefly as
possible, the best Alaskan examples of purposeful use for cultural
expression
and/or education.
Think
about what might be of the highest value to Alaskans, right now, and
how we
might establish a simple collaborative means of engaging Alaskan
citizens and
educators in creating a national model for a grassroots showcase of
what modern
technologies have allowed Alaskans to innovatively create.
If
you think about it, TV commercials are done in rapid
fire
2-4 second cuts and what I'm talking about is rather just like that -
for the
ADHD in all of us, ideally accessible via smartphone.
In
a sense, we talked around the edges of how we can both quickly
communicate to
non-techies the essence of what they don't know that they need to know.
Creating a 2-5 minute "commercial style videos" would certainly be an
interesting challenge for both you and your students.
If
you think about the highest need for our immediate classmates – it
might be
some of us use 20+ cool tools, while most of us feel pretty much like
beginners.
If you, or ideally each of us, were to quick a fast-moving jing
showing our info-diet tools and best practices in under 5 minutes – how
amazing
would it be for most of us to actually SEE what all the rest of us are
doing?! What if everyone,
everywhere, were regularly sharing in
this fast and efficient way? It might create a Knowledge society, and
as
important, a whole new structure for a Knowledge Economy.
Politically
as of November 2011, what education can prove most effective for
broadband adoption
and best practices utilization is very much a Hot Topic!
I.E.
"What can broadband be
used for?" The
timely need is to enlighten non-technical
vulnerable populations including top leadership administrators,
governors, senators,
and legislators.
Consider
this instructional
format;
To
be accessible as a
learning app on mobile devices:
The
What and the Why it is
important:
Start
with a 30 second visual show and tell on what tool you want to
demonstrate: Example:
Twitter is microblogging
- a summative means of
following thought leaders’ one line postings. And why it is important;
“200
million tweets a day has become the preferred means many people use to
literally
follow those whose expertise they value.”
The
How - Summary:
Then,
have a link to a one minute
“show and tell” video
showing just the basics for how it works.
The
serious training on How
– in short stacked modules
Once
people know enough to make a decision as to whether they wish to learn
a tool
or skill, then link to successive short training bits on the how.
Here
are Final Project
Ideas.
Web-raisings
-
are 1 hour events where
everyone attending, regardless of age, creates their own
free ecommerce website, blog, and/or family photo album. http://www.tripod.com
- In Metlakatla,
I did this with teachers during a 5 hour inservice,
and later for 7th graders, whose homework was to create an ecommerce
site for a
local artist or business person.
Examples at http://lone-eagles.com/web-raising.htm and
several 30
second videos showing webraisings
in action are at http://youtube.com/fodasz - one with elders, and one
with First
Nations.
Elder's
digital
storytelling. Elementary
students with Ipad2's would be matched with elders to record and upload
videos
of elders' oral stories, and/or histories.
Also, narrated photos posted online at sites like
voicethread.com literally can "preserve elders' wisdom and stories for
all
future generations." A
demo
of an Elder's flipalbum
is http://www.youtube.com/fodasz#p/u/7/huWWzNz0ePM
VIEW
this
memorial blog,
http://ingallakqerrataq.blogspot.com/2005/10/in-memory-of.html
Consider
posting oral histories, fiddle music, testimonies of friends and
family, and
more.
Lesson
Feedback:
You're invited
to privately email
your instructor:
1. What areas, if any, did you have trouble with during this lesson?
2. What questions remain now that you've finished this lesson?
3. Approximately how much time did you devote to this lesson?
4. What improvements would
you like to suggest?