Sylvia

Do you want to take your students on an adventure to save the world’s oceans that they’ll never forget? An adventure that will empower them through knowledge and activism? An adventure that doesn’t cost a penny? Well, your holiday wish has come true! Stand for Tomorrow is an organization that will provide educational multimedia content on plastic’s impact on the ocean’s that is free to students and teachers! The best part? Your students will have the opportunity to participate virtually with researchers on expeditions, explore the oceans through the eyes of expert scuba divers, and acquire knowledge and experience that they would have never been able to access before. So what are you waiting for! Sign up for our monthly newsletter where we will update you on the latest news and keep you informed of our upcoming release of free lesson plans. Follow us online: Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube.

Stand for Tomorrow aims to create environmental stewardship through eco-awareness and education. Students are the leaders of tomorrow and Stand for Tomorrow is focusing on educational content to educate, excite, and involve students to Stand for Tomorrow that they want and deserve.

Stand for Tomorrow will create K-12 lesson plans focused on pollution and it’s impact on marine ecosystems that demonstrate the impact that pollution has on our oceans with a focus on the current failure to prevent plastic from impacting marine ecosystems. The curriculum will allow students to understand elements that contribute to this environmentally destructive issue and how they will be able to make a difference. The curriculum will incorporate critical education skills for today’s 21st century learner as well as to cover mathematics, history, geography, and science. Stand for Tomorrow will support their educational efforts with multimedia and a documentary to reach a larger audience and provide an more in depth look at the impact of plastic on marine ecosystems and subsequently it’s impact on our larger eco-system, Earth.

Plans are shaping up for an amazing 3rd Annual Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute, July 12-15, 2009 in Manchester, NH USA (near Boston).

In addition to master educators and edtech pioneers, the Constructing Modern Knowledge 2010 faculty includes history educator James Loewen and bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me; popular provocateur and author, Alfie Kohn; MacArthur Genius and incomparable school reformer, Deborah Meier; and children’s author, illustrator and animator, Peter Reynolds. Cynthia Solomon, Brian Silverman, Sylvia Martinez (that’s me!), Gary Stager and John Stetson round out the amazing faculty.

Constructing Modern Knowledge is a minds-on institute for educators committed to creativity, collaboration and computing. Participants have the opportunity to engage in intensive computer-rich project development with peers and a world-class faculty. Inspirational guest speakers, pre-conference expedition and social events round out the fantastic event.

Constructing Modern Knowledge is about action, not listening to speakers. Attendees work and interact with educational experts committed to maximizing the potential of every learner. The rich learning environment is filled with books, computers, robotics materials, art supplies, toys and other objects to think with.

The real power of Constructing Modern Knowledge emerges from the collaborative project development of participants. Each day’s program consists of a discussion of powerful ideas, on-demand mini tutorials, immersive learning adventures designed to challenge one’s thinking, substantial time for project work and reflection.

21st Century educators need to develop their own technological fluency and understand learning in order to meet the changing needs and expectations of their students. Constructing Modern Knowledge will help participants enhance their tech skills, expand their vision of how computers may enhance the learning environment and leave with practical classroom ideas.

Spend four cool summer days in New England making puppets roar, robots dance, animations delight, movies move, simulations stimulate, photos sing and leave with memories to last a lifetime!

Each participant receives a suite of open-ended creativity software from Tech4Learning, LCSI, Inspiration Software, FableVision and other members of The Constructivist Consortium free-of-charge for use at Constructing Modern Knowledge and beyond. The software alone is worth the registration fee!

There is also a July 11th preconference Science and History Tour of Boston available for a nominal fee. Explore the future at the MIT Museum and visit the past during a private guided tour of the Boston Freedom Trail.

The institute is less than an hour’s drive from Boston in picturesque Manchester, New Hampshire. Free transportation is available from the convenient and affordable Manchester Airport. Discount hotel accommodation has been arranged at the institute venue.

Constructing Modern Knowledge is sensitive to the budgets of schools and educators by keeping registration costs affordable and by offering school/district team discounts. The institute is appropriate for all K-12 educators, administrators and teacher educators – private or public. CEUs are available for an additional fee.

Save $75 on early bird registrations! Register online now!

Sylvia

Reflections from previous years:

• Constructing Modern Knowledge 2009
• Constructing Modern Knowledge 2008

“Our research suggests a strong correlation between kids using technology and wider patterns of reading and writing,” Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, told BBC News.

“Engagement with online technology drives their enthusiasm for writing short stories, letters, song lyrics or diaries.”

Mr Douglas dismissed criticisms about the informal writing styles often adopted in online chat and “text speak”, both of which can lack grammar and dictionary-correct spelling.

“Does it damage literacy? Our research results are conclusive – the more forms of communications children use the stronger their core literary skills.” (emphasis mine)

Sylvia

I’ll be doing a new session on Wednesday, Oct 28th at 3:30 PM called, “Engage Them! Project-based 21st Century Technology Literacy Curriculum”. It’s about several ideas:

• How to develop an engaging technology literacy curriculum for the 21st century, with students in mind and with students involved
• The difference between technology literacy and fluency
• Developing a “Technology Ecology”
• Why projects and technology go together
• Showing videos of students who are doing these things in their own schools

I’m not sure I’m the first one to use the term “Technology Ecology”, but I’m starting to really like it. The big idea of this talk is that technology isn’t a subject as much as an ecology – an overarching web of opportunities that can support all kinds of subjects and areas of personal interest. So when we talk about technology curriculum, we need to stretch our minds a bit and imagine new possibilities and connections.

I think a school with a technology ecology is one that is constantly asking the participants to do more with technology, challenging the status quo, and always trying new things. A curriculum that embraces this mindset would reach outside class walls to ask students not to just learn to use a word processor, but to to create word processed documents that were meaningful and useful to the student, or perhaps to the school. Why make just movies in technology class when you could make movies that satisfy a history assignment, or help younger kids learn math, or introduce new students to your school. An ecology that looks for authentic projects and embraces the potential of youth to do important things and make important contributions, using the digital tools that they know and love.

After this session, I’ll post more about it here.

Generation YES is a co-sponsor of the T+L conference, and we’ll be down in the co-sponsor booth area, number 118. So if you miss the session, come by and say hi!

Hopefully there will be a T+L Tweetup too – if you’d like to connect, please follow me at smartinez

Sylvia

Dr. Krashen is an activist for giving students more access to books, more time to read, and less coercion to do so. His credentials are impressive: professor emeritus at USC, a linguist and expert on literacy, language acquisition and reading. He’s in the International Reading Association’s Reading Hall of Fame.

I have no trouble admitting that his articulate positions and research resonate with me.

It struck me as I looked at this list that it’s a lot like what I believe about children and computers: that student choice, plus time for unstructured access to lots of different computing experiences is crucial to developing literacy and fluency with computers. My vision includes a teacher or mentor modeling passion, collaboration, interest in the subject, and offering experiences that challenge students without coercion, tricks, or rankings. If I had to come up with a catchy acronym, I’d call it Sustained Tinkering Time (STT).

Picking through his generalizations about reading, it occurred to me that some of them are very applicable to students using computers, and some seemed not to translate too well at all.

Hallmarks of Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) (adapted by me from Krashen’s list)

• Free access to lots of different kinds of books
• Comic books and magazines are OK, hard and easy books fine, minimum censorship
• The teacher reads too
• No tests, book reports, logs, comprehension quizzes
• Comfortable space to read
• More often and short is better than long, but rare
• For all kids, not a reward or remediation
• Supplement with interesting experiences about reading – trips to library, discuss literature, conferences, etc. (not skill building)
• Good readers tend to be narrow readers (they stick to one genre)
• Look for “home run” books

So, looking at this list, there are some things that seem really relevant to the kind of computer fluency I would like all students to have. Wouldn’t it be great if students had:

• Free access to lots of different kinds of books software and hardware
• The teacher reads works on computer projects too
• No tests, book reports, logs, comprehension quizzes
• Comfortable space to read work on computer projects
• and that this was for all kids, not a reward or remediation?

I’ve skipped over some hard questions…
But not everything seems to perfectly translate. In FVR, the students are allowed to read pretty much anything (within reason). But for technology, I certainly would hope that aimless surfing or watching random YouTube videos isn’t what happens.

Is this being hypocritical? Is this just a way for me to pass judgement on applications that I like and think are “important” vs. ones I deem trivial and a waste of time? If I say, “no games” – am I just doing the same thing as a teacher demanding that kids only read “good” books for SSR, and thereby undermining the process?

I know in my head what I’d like to see – mindful interaction with the computer, making good things, focused collaboration, working on projects. Something that rises above drill and practice, clicking on stuff, or just watching. But what about chatting? Looking at email? What about playing “good” games? If you want technology literacy, does it matter if one student becomes fluent in making Wordles and another learns to program?

What’s the verb?
What is it that the student is doing that’s equivalent to reading? If you show language literacy by reading and writing, you show technology literacy by … what? Computing? Touching a mouse? Technologizing?

There’s something I’m trying to capture here that goes beyond the mere physical presence of a child sitting in front of a digital device. I really think this elusive concept is at the heart of what many have been struggling with as we all try to define “technology literacy.” Especially if we try to make the definition more than a checklist of skills.

You can smell collaboration in the air (especially in middle school)
There are other pieces of Sustained Silent Reading that really don’t work for technology, like the “silent” part. Sustained Silent Computing sounds terrifying. When I think about the kind of collaborative technology experience I’d hope to see, the kind I’ve seen in too few classrooms, it’s anything but silent. It’s purposeful, joyful noise, and you can tell the difference. But how do you articulate that?

It’s simply not good enough to say, “I know it when I see it.” But I’m not sure what to call it without tying myself up in semantic knots.

Pinning these experiences down with precise language deadens them like a pithed frog. (I was going to say a pinned butterfly, but when you can use pithed frog in a sentence, I believe it’s mandatory.)

What do you believe about learning?
And even if we got the words right, would it actually result in improved technology literacy? Would the lack of coercion raise the general level of technology literacy or lower it? In SSR, if one student is reading a comic book and another a chapter book, do they influence each other?

And is that part of the teacher’s job – to offer other activities that generate interest in more complex work? To model curiosity and trying new things? To facilitate collaboration and challenge students?

Without technology literacy skill tests, lessons on tools, and assigned projects, will students take more risks and try more complex things? Or will they do the least amount possible? I think this boils down to what you believe about learning – is it natural or does it have to be coerced.

Depth, not breadth
If you’ve stuck with me this long, do you see the technology corollaries to:

• Good readers tend to be narrow readers (they stick to one genre) – is this about depth? Letting kids explore one application or theme deeply rather than the usual if-it’s-tuesday-it-must-be-spreadsheets overview of office products?
• Look for “home run” books - is this about helping kids find the thing they really like to do? If a kid LOVES Comic Life, do you let them use it exclusively? Does the positive experience then open the door for that student to attempt other things? Or does it narrow the range of what that student will ever figure out how to do?

Yes, you…
So I’m throwing this out there to you, the dozens of folks who read this blog. Does looking at FVR help with defining technology literacy?

What would Sustained Tinkering Time look like to you?

So many questions…

Sylvia

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This time I’m headed for the New York State education technology conference NYSCATE in Rochester, NY November 23-25, 2008. I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones, most likely at Dinosaur BBQ.

If you are going to NYSCATE, be sure to check out these sessions:

NYSSTL –Technology Leadership for the 21st Century
Sunday, 1:45PM Stacy Ward
Learn how the HFM and WSWHE BOCES have created the New York State Student Technology Leaders (NYSSTL) Club in 30 middle schools. Students help their teachers learn to use technology and their classmates prove their tech literacy, creating a community of 21st century learning in our schools.

Where Teachers Learn, Where Teachers Teach
Monday, 10:45AM Sylvia Martinez
For many teachers, technology professional development happens outside the classroom and never crosses the doorstep into the classroom. This session will explore two models of professional development that cross that barrier: classroom embedded and student-led professional development.

Little Green Monsters: The XO and Its Implication For Education
Tuesday 10:30AM Brian C. Smith, Sylvia Martinez, Dr. Gary Stager
The XO low cost laptop was designed to revolutionize education in the developing world. The panel will discuss the lessons we can gain from this learning initiative and the implications for the future of education. We will also explore why such a simple idea has created such controversy.

By the way, I’m happy to have someone record, live blog, or ustream my sessions IF you can come and do it. It’s just too hard to do it AND present.

After that, it’s back to New York City for a family/friends Thanksgiving, and then some workshops in Brooklyn. More about that later!

Sylvia

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First to Chester County in Pennsylvania where I’ll be meeting with several schools about our student technology programs. One of their districts, Coatesville, will be using TechYES Science for student tech literacy certification using science projects. I’m looking forward to meeting up with some PA friends as well.

Then a couple of stops in New Jersey and on to New York. I’m honored to be a featured speaker at the New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS) Educational Information Technology Conference, NEIT 2008.

“NEIT 2008 is an unconference planned for technologists and librarians. Our unconference relies on the open space technology for creating workshops, discussions, breakout groups, etc.”

This is the first time I’ve heard of open space technology. Wikipedia describes it as a method of self-organizing that can be applied to gatherings of any size to quickly tackle complex issues. It sounds a bit like FutureSearch, which I’m more familiar with, but definitely something worth knowing about!

The EdTechTalk podcast this week featured a conversation about the plans and goals for the NYSAIS event.

Plus, this conference is at the beautiful Mohonk Mountain House and you can’t beat that for open space!

Sylvia

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Since inception, Speak Up, the national online research project facilitated by Project Tomorrow, has collected the viewpoints of over 1.2 million students, educators and parents on key educational issues and shared them with local and national policy makers.

This is your opportunity to have your students, teachers, administrators and parents participate in the local and national dialogue about key educational topics including: technology use, 21st century schools, science and media/information literacy.

For registration information, click here.