Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

NCSS Position Statement: Media Literacy is an Imperative

In February the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) released a position statement on media literacy, social technology and learning in the digital age. Their conclusion?

"These changes in society and the experiences the students bring into the classroom challenge social studies teachers to change both how and what we teach. One reaction is to fear these changes and try to protect our students from things we don’t understand or appreciate. Such an approach is neither helpful nor pedagogically sound.

Another response is to take advantage instructionally of the wealth of experiences that young people have making media choices by respecting those choices when consistent with democratic principles. Whether we like it or not, this media culture is our students’ culture.”

Today's Students Are Experiencing a Different Childhood

• The digital age requires new skills for accessing, analyzing, evaluating, creating, and distributing messages within a digital, global, and democratic society.

• The ubiquitous and mobile nature of information and communication technologies has resulted in a world far different from that of those of us whose childhood was once surrounded by large box televisions, rotary dial telephones, and transistor radios.

• What was once characterized as a digital divide has transformed into a digital disconnect. Outside of the classroom young people regularly engage with music and videos via MP3 players, constantly text their friends with their mobile phones, check the latest videos on YouTube, and even upload ones themselves. But, upon entering the classroom they are expected to disengage from this interpersonal, producer-oriented, digital world.

Media Literacy

• Canada, Australia, and Great Britain have taught media literacy for several decades, while the US, the world’s leading producer of media, is far behind.

• These changes in society and the experiences the students bring into the classroom challenge social studies teachers to change both how and what we teach.

• Teaching students to think critically about the content and the form of mediated messages is an essential requirement for social studies education in this millennium.

• Media literacy integrates the process of critical inquiry with the creation of media as students examine, create, and disseminate their own alternative images, sounds, and thoughts.

• Media literacy includes the skills of accessing, analyzing, evaluating, creating, and distributing messages as well as the cultural competencies and social skills associated with a growing participatory culture.

• Media literacy also includes analysis of ideology and power as students learn how media are used to position audiences and frame public opinion.

• In the 21st century, media literacy is an imperative for participatory democracy because new information/communication technologies and a market-based media culture have significantly reshaped the world.

Media Literacy & the Social Studies Classroom

• Teachers need to expand their notion of “legitimate texts” and realize that it includes popular culture, advertising, photographs, maps, text (SMS) messages, Twitter, movies, video games, Internet, all sorts of hand-held devices and information communication technologies (ICTs) as well as print.

• Students should be presenting their research and learning through interactive multimedia presentations, as Internet blogs, videos, podcasts, Facebook, etc.

• The ability to differentiate between primary and secondary sources or distinguish fact from fiction is now intimately connected to the ability to analyze and create media.

• Social studies educators should provide young people with the awareness and abilities to critically question and create new media and technology, and the digital, democratic experiences, necessary to become active participants in the shaping of democracy.

Related Resources

• NCSS Media Literacy Statement
• Learning Styles 2.0: Digital, Social, and Always On
• mobileYouth: 100 Million Mobile Youth in USA
• Making mLearning Work: Gen Y, Learning & Mobile Technologies
• Social Software & Online Learning Design
• Social Media & Digital Learning Styles
• Handbook of Research on New Media Literacy
  

UK Students May Be Required to Master Twitter, Wikipedia & Podcasting

According to a story in today's Guardian, a UK school curriculum reform commission has proposed that primary students should be required to become proficient in web-based and digital tools like Twitter, Wikipedia, blogging and podcasting.

Here's more on the proposed curriculum changes:

"Children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the second world war under proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum, the Guardian has learned.

However, the draft plans will require children to master Twitter and Wikipedia and give teachers far more freedom to decide what youngsters should be concentrating on in classes.

The proposed curriculum, which would mark the biggest change to primary schooling in a decade, strips away hundreds of specifications about the scientific, geographical and historical knowledge pupils must accumulate before they are 11 to allow schools greater flexibility in what they teach.

The proposal would require children to leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication. They must gain "fluency" in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learn how to use a spellchecker alongside how to spell."

Related Resources

• The Mobile Internet Generation
• Lessons from the Most Successful Schools Abroad
• Forget the chatter about Twitter, plans for primary schools may inspire a passion for history
• Handbook of Research on New Media Literacy at the K-12 Level

Digital Storytelling: Sharing the "We Story"

Somewhere between the turkey, decking the halls, lighting the menorah, and the ushering in of a new year, countless family stories will be told and retold.

Some of the stories you've heard a thousand times. And perhaps this year, some of the stories will be shared for the first time.

Telling the "WE story"

Storytelling is a collaborative, social learning practice that strengthens family and cultural ties while also providing a context for information to be carried forward to future generations. These family stories (folklore, food traditions, and oral histories) are a mirror of where we have been and shape where we are going as families, society, and individuals.

Even things you wouldn't suspect, like cherished family recipes, may exist only in a verbal format. If you don't ask grandma how she makes that incredible pumpkin pie, chances are it could be lost forever.

In his book, The Art of Possibility, Benjamin Zander calls the invisible threads that hold us together "the WE story."

As Zander explains:

"The WE story defines a human being in a specific way: It says we are central selves seeking to contribute, naturally engaged, forever in a dance with each other. It points to relationship rather than to individuals, to communication patterns, gestures, and movement...Like the particle-and-wave nature of light, the WE is both a living entity and a long line of development unfolding.

By telling the WE story, an individual becomes a conduit for this new inclusive entity, wearing its eyes and ears, feeling its heart, thinking its thoughts..."

An Orange for Christmas

A few years ago I asked my grandma why she always put oranges in our Christmas stockings. I mean, we lived in Southern California, so we always had oranges. We had an orange tree in our yard and even if they were out of season, we could always just go to the store and get one.

So it always seemed strange to have that orange stuffed in the top of the stocking. Even stranger, nobody in the family--including her own children--had ever asked her why we always had oranges in our stockings.

My grandma explained to me that as a child growing up in Nebraska, during the Great Depression no less, an orange was an exotic, welcome, and indulgent treat. In the depths of a Great Plains winter, an orange from California or Florida was a reminder that the snow and frigid winds would soon give way to days filled with playing in the sun, tall prairie grass, and climbing her favorite tree.

At that moment, the family ritual was set in stone and the orange in the stocking became a necessary part of our shared Christmas experience. And this year, our first without her, we will put an orange in the Christmas stockings and share the story with my niece and nephew.

Families, History, & Digital Storytelling

GreatSchools.net, in conjunction with Yahoo! Education, have put together an oral history resource guide to help you collect, record, and preserve your family stories. GreatSchools has even compiled a list of interviewing tips and questions to help you get the memories flowing.

There are lots of digital technologies out there to help you save these stories--iPod, YackPack, wiki, or even the good old tape recorder.

So this holiday, take some time to sit down and preserve some of your family stories. Engage in the dance of the "WE story." It doesn't matter how you preserve these stories, it just matters that you do!

Links

• GreatSchools.net
• Center for Digital Storytelling
• Technology Kills Storytelling (...but wait!)
• Yahoo! Education
• Wes Fryer > Digital Storytelling

Tweet U: College Twitter Directory

CollegeTweetUp is a grassroots community effort to create a directory of college and university students who use Twitter. Anyone is free to add their @handle to the directory.

To add your name, just send a tweet with the message "college tweetup" and "school name" to @resawu or add it directly on the CollegeTweetUp PBwiki page.

Related Resources

• Nine Great Reasons Why Teachers Should Twitter
• News Flash: Teens Don't Give a Tweet About Twitter
• Using Twitter as a Tool to Motivate Student Learning
• UK Students May Be Required to Master Twitter
• Directory of Learning Professionals on Twitter
• Tweeting about Twitter
• Knowledge Essentials Media > CBS News 9 > Should Your Teen be Tweeting?

PBwiki 2008 Back to School Challenge

Don't forget! PBwiki is giving away a free premium wiki to educators as part of the 2008 Back to School Challenge. You can also win all sorts of prizes and other cool things. Plus, get a free online professional development course just for signing up!

Setting up a PBwiki is as easy as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! You can learn more about all the ways you can use a wiki in your classroom to enhance and support student learning over on the PBWiki Education page, or the PBwiki Educator Community. PBwiki's are 100% ad-free and totally private.

Educators can also use PBwiki Plugins to add multimedia content with a few clicks, including spreadsheets, calendars, chat rooms, videos, Pixton comics, maps, photo slideshows, and more. If you have other embeddable widgets (like Google Gadgets), you can also insert them in your PBwiki.

To claim your free wiki, simply sign up using the following URL where you will be automatically be guided through the process of creating your free premium educational wiki: http://pbwiki.com/?special=87937&refwiki=ningedu

Once you create your wiki, you will also be eligible to participate in PBwiki's Back-To-School Challenge, which will offer teachers like you a chance to win free school supplies and other prizes by sharing lesson plans, blogging, and offering tips on creating a collaborative classroom or library.

Related Resources

• PBwiki > Education
• PBwiki > Education Directory
• PBwiki 101 > Video Tutorial
• PBwiki Help

Vicki Davis: Seven Steps to a Flat Classroom

The Seven Steps to a Flat Classroom workshop was created by Vicki Davis, recognized Web 2.0 expert and creator of the Cool Cat Teacher blog, for Atomic Learning.

In the Seven Steps to a Flat Classroom workshop, Davis herself utilizes Atomic Learning’s short, show-and-tell video tutorials to guide users through flattening their classroom by expanding it to include global communities and collaboration tools.

The workshop is a valuable resource for educators seeking to integrate technology and includes over 80 tutorials on topics such as Applying ISTE NETS standards to your project, Connecting Classrooms online, Digital Citizenship and Safety and many more.

View the workshop by clicking here.

Related Resources

• Flat Classroom Conference
• Atomic Learning
• PBwiki Back-to-School Challenge
• Flat Bobby Flickr Project

PBwiki Weekly Webinar: Get Live Help

Did you know that PBwiki hosts complimentary Office Hours each week? Yep, it's true. Join PBwiki every – Wednesday at 1 P.M EST to speak to the staff and get help getting the most out of using a wiki in your classroom.

• Sign up for PBwiki Office Hours here.

Don't forget! PBwiki is hosting a Back to School Challenge! From now until October 31st you can earn a free premium wiki plus great classroom resources. Learn more at www.backtoschoolchallenge.com

Related Resources

• PBwiki
• blip.tv > Getting Started with PBwiki
• Wes Fryer > Using Wikis for Collaboration & Learning
  

2008 PBwiki Program for Educators

"PBwiki knows that budgets are going to be tight, and we don’t want a lack of funds to deter educators from using collaborative technologies like wikis with their students.

To this end, PBwiki is giving each teacher or librarian who signs up as part of the program between August 18 and November 31, a free premium wiki (regular price: $250/year).

For example, if you sign up for a free wiki on November 1, you would receive a premium upgrade that lasts until October 31, 2009. Each fall, PBwiki plans to offer additional programs that will let participants retain their premium status free of charge."

You can learn more and sign up for the program by clicking here.

Related Resources

• PBwiki > Education
• PBwiki > Education Directory
• PBwiki 101 > Video Tutorial
• PBwiki Help
  

PBWiki, Students & Cybersafety

On Tuesday May 14th (4PM, PDT) the PBWiki team will host a cybersafety webinar for educators on keeping students safe online.

You'll also learn more about PBwiki security settings and hear safety tips from Linda Uhrenholt, an AT&T Education Advocate and leader in cybersafety at CTAP.

I met Linda Uhrenholt last summer at our Yahoo! For Teachers workshop in San Diego and she is an amazing and dynamic teacher. I have no doubt you'll learn a lot and benefit from her expertise.

This event is free, but you need to register here: Cybersafety - PBwiki guide to keeping students safe online.

Related Resources

• Daily Peanut Blog: Use wikis to build your online classroom
• Yackpack + PBWiki: Add Audio to your wiki
• debaird.net > cyberbullies
  

Social Media Edu: From the Blogosphere

The guys over at Education Revolution have posted three very good education articles over on their blog. I highly recommend the article Microsoft's Class Action. Give it a read. Good stuff.

Facebook as CMS: I ran across an interesting blog post on the Complex Rhetoric about using Facebook as an alternative to Moodle, Blackboard or other open source CMS platform. What do you think? Is this a good idea? Is this feasible? Join the Teaching & Learning with Facebook Group (on Facebook, requires registration) and share your two or three cents.

I'm a fan of Moodle, but think that for most educators getting it up and running will be too difficult. Facebook, on the other hand, requires just a login and password and they are ready to roll. Not to mention that the students are already using Facebook and it's free.

Wired "How To's": Hosted by Wired, this is a collaborative wiki where anyone can share what they know with other DYI types. Some of the hot topics include: Run Windows on a Mac, back up your Mac or find tiny dinosaur bones. Yes, dinosaur bones. Ah, the wisdom of the masses never ceases to amaze me!

"You Tube" for Scientists: SciVee is a social network/community built "by scientist, for scientists." Members of the science community can upload and share their work as either a podcast or multimedia presentation, connect with other scientists and engage in virtual discussions. As the SciVee corpus grows, there should be some great video that science teachers can integrate into their classroom or Gobble into their Yahoo! For Teachers ePortfolio.

Generation MySpace: "New social technolgies have altered the underlying architectures of social interactions and information distribution." This is an incredible podcast of a presentation given by danah boyd at the 2007 education.au Seminar in Brisbane, Australia.

Related Resources

• education.au Seminar blog
• A Digital Ethnographer Reconsiders How Children Think
• Venturing into the new Web

PB Wiki Tutorials on Atomic Learning

You already know that PBwiki is the easiest and best wiki platform out there. But did you know that Atomic Learning has FREE tutorials on PBwiki?

These tutorials will help you learn step-by-step how to create a PBwiki. Hurry, the tutorials are only available for a short time!

Related Resources

• PBWiki
• Atomic Learning
• PBWiki +Atomic Learning
• Video: PBWiki+Yackpack
• debaird.net + wiki
• Yahoo! For Teachers + WikiEDU

Tag You're It: Yackpack + Facebook

By now you know that I'm an avid fan of using Yackpack in an educational setting. Just a few months ago Yackpack and PBWiki, my favorite wiki platform, joined forces to create a mash-up that allowed you to put audio into your wiki.
 

That was just the start!

Earlier this week, Yackpack announced a new mash-up with Facebook. But wait. It's even better. Yackpack unleashed two new Facebook apps: Tag! and Walkie Talkie.

You can get all the details over on the Yackpack blog. And be sure to check out the Yackpack groups in Facebook.

Just another great innovative idea from the Yackpack team.

PB & Y: YackPack + PBWiki

PBWiki, (the super easy to use wiki client) and YackPack (the super easy to use VOIP platform) have joined forces to create the ultimate PB & Yack sandwich: audio for your wiki !

Yep. It's true.

Tomorrow PBWiki will announce a new partnership with YackPack that will allow users to easily embed the YackPack Walkie-Talkie Widget directly into any PBWiki page. And the install of the Walkie-Talkie Widget is über simple (and free!). Go check it out!

As Gen Y continues to push education towards an "always-on" learning style, adding tools like YackPack and PBWiki to your mix of web tools will provide new avenues for students to build unity, get actively engaged, transfer knowledge with peers, and create a technology rich environment where collaboration can take place--anywhere, anytime, 24/7!

Kudos to PBWiki and YackPack for this fantastic collaboration! And get ready for the next bit of magic from the Yack Labs: Tag!

Related Resources

• YackPack + Education
• PBWiki + Education
• YackPack + debaird.net
• YackPack Blog > Tribute to Teachers of Gen Y

In the 'sphere: YackPack + PBWiki

• EduBlog Insights
• Startup Meme
• Remote Access
• CNET > Webware > YackPack

TeacherTube: Video Community for Teachers

TeacherTube, the latest service joining the Web 2.0 education boom, is burning up the edu 'sphere with rave reviews. As the name suggests, this new service is YouTube for teachers. TeacherTube also has community features via TeacherTube groups. I think this is a brilliant idea, and frankly, one that educators have been wanting for a long time.

However, moving forward, I think it will be interesting to see how well TeacherTube is able to scale and keeping up with growth. They will also face the same challenges that all other educational providers have in terms of site blocking by school administrators, user abuse, as well as the 100 pound copyright gorilla.

The TeacherTube community has created, uploaded and shared a lot of great content. For example, you can find anything from (via site or tag search) professional development tutorials on PBWiki, to a Google Earth Tour of the life of Anne Frank and her family.

Another great feature is the ability to attach support materials (handouts, worksheets, teacher notes) right on the same page as the video for other teachers to use.

TeacherTube also "plays nice" with other forms of social media by providing you with a link and/or HTML snippet so you can easily embed a TeacherTube video directly into your class website, wiki, or blog.

Fantastic!

Related Resources

• Teacher Tube Tutorial > Uploading Video
• YouTube > K-12 Group
• Jumpcut > Yahoo! Teachers Group
• Points of Viewing Children's Thinking
• YouTube in MyClass

Do you wiki?

 

Do you use a wiki in your classroom? Has it changed the way you teach? Share your thoughts on this topic or see what your peers have to say about it over on Yahoo! Answers.

Related Links

• Yahoo! Answers
• PBWiki
• PBWiki + Education Best Practices
• PBWiki + YouTube