Now that we have our toolboxes, what do we build? How do we go about it?

Design and Development.

Designing a course is a bit like creating a recipe. The idea is to come up with the steps you need to end up with a desired outcome. You use a variety of tools and techniques, add in a collection of ingredients, and end up with a meal – sorta.

The problem is that while we approach teaching as if it were a recipe – use these ingredients in that proportion and the outcome is assured – the problem is that learning is too much like eating. Even if the cook does everything right, some meals just aren’t to everyone’s taste.

What are some strategies for dealing with that? How much “just hold your nose and eat it!” can a teacher get away with?

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Toolboxes are just places we keep tools. Which tool you pull out depends on several factors. We’ve talked about a lot of those factors indirectly over the last couple of weeks. One factor is the task you need to do. Another is the collection of tools you have in the box. A third is your familiarity and expertise with the tool. A fourth is your familiarity and understanding of the task. This complexity has given rise to some aphorisms about tools.

“When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
When we don’t have a tool we need, we tend to use a tool we have. While this saying is usually applied as a derisive comment, there’s a certain reality that must be acknowledged. Yes, we need a good set of tools, but the reality is that it’s rare that a person has all the possible tools. Sometimes, you just have to use a hammer.

“How many administrators does it take to change a light bulb?”
“None. Call a custodian.” This little ditty is rather a smack at administrators because afterall, everybody should know how to change a light bulb. Sometimes, a person lacks the skills or requisite knowledge. It’s a pretty savvy individual who really knows when a task is outside their area of expertise and calls in an expert.

“Tools arm the man.”
Presumably the woman as well, but this saying has to do with being prepared for eventualities. One doesn’t know where the next challenge will come from or what the nature of it will be. We take precautions in advance – for example, in our cars by packing some rudimentary tools and parts, and the knowledge to use them. Sometimes that’s just a cell phone and a AAA card. The key concept here is that when the time comes to use the tool, one knows how. That means preparation, practice, and forethought.

“To do good work, one must first have good tools.”
If you’ve ever tried to use one of those cheesy little socket wrench sets to do something meaningful, you’ll understand this one. Likewise, if you’ve ever used Microsoft Works after having access to tools like Word, Wordperfect, or OpenOffice. Good tools are robust, have the requisite features, and perform reliably.

“Jack of all trades, master of none.”
When you know a little about a lot, sometimes that means you don’t know a lot about anything. We live in a world of specialists. To really master a subject takes time, effort, and a willingness to focus. When I decided to begin working with computers back in the 60s, I knew that I’d be closing the doors completely on other venues. Over the course of the last 40 years, I’ve made other choices — degrees, credentials, jobs, locations, etc — that have focused my expertise further. I know about other things, too. Food, writing, teaching, and the miscellany that comes from being a car owner and home owner and father and husband, but my expertise is in managing these devil-boxes called computers.

Finally, one of the most important sayings isn’t about the tools at all. As we analyze the efficacy of online efforts and look at criticisms of various environments, this one is the critical issue.

“It’s a poor workman who blames his tools.”

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The value of a medium is based on its application. When considering the instructional value of audio or video resources, it’s important to consider what the purpose the resource serves.

The evocative power of audio is often under valued. Old time radio drama brought the Shadow and Green Hornet to America’s living rooms alongside works by Moliere and Dylan Thomas. From about 1920 to 1950, radio drama provided a window on the world with the voices and stories from far away. Rock and roll changed that dynamic when music – and the rapidly changing soundscape it provided – became portable. Most people over 20 years of age have a song or two that evokes a time or place, a memory of the past. From “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Leader of the Pack” to “Aquarius” to “Hotel California,” “Truckin’,” and “Milkshake”, the beat goes on.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Big “Duh” for most of this, but the interesting stuff is in the details:

Teens, Video Games and Civics.
The first national survey of its kind finds that virtually all American teens play computer, console, or cell phone games and that the gaming experience is rich and varied, with a significant amount of social interaction and potential for civic engagement.

Some highlights:
- Almost all teens play games.
- Girls tend to leave it behind.
- They don’t play just one game – not even one kind of game
- It’s a social occasion

There’s some interesting stuff there.

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The following post showed up in my ‘gator via OLDaily this morning:

Can Second Life be used as a reliable Corporate Training Tool?
Today, I set up a demonstration of Second Life for some of my senior management. I signed up for a conference on how to use Second Life for business, and went through some hoops with our IT department to get IT to open up the firewall for me.

It did not turn out well.

I realize that this is a post about corporate training and not K-12 education but how many of the “issues” are based on misconceptions and pre-supposition? Go read the whole thing and see what you think is wrong with this picture?

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As I was looking at my list of exotics, I was thinking about new tools. I compiled the original lists in 2006 and things have certainly changed in the online landscape since then.

Twitter
Twitter is one of those tools that is difficult to explain. In a nutshell, people on twitter make posts into a common space. The posts are called “tweets” and anybody can see them — unless the person tweeting has “protected” updates, which means only those people who are designated can see them. These tweets are not longer than 140 characters.

I have about 550 people whom I follow and who follow me. About half of the people are educators and the other half are podcast related people. The upshot is that any given tweet I make is probably irrelevant to half the audience. I monitor my “friends” so I can see what’s happening around my twitterverse as it happens. The tweets range from “nomming prawns for lunch!” from a fellow writer in New Zealand to “i just got home and found my wife dead!” (I am not making this up. Those are actual tweets I’ve gotten in the last year.)

Ning
Ning is an example of “social network space” and is kind of a union of blog, message board, and Facebook without all the annoying zombies. Like other spaces, it’s a platform where one establishes an account, sets up a profile page, and joins one or more special interest groups. The implementation becomes a community space with a certain level of moderator control.

I belong to several Ning communities – Classroom 2.0, Fireside Learning, and the Podiobooks Community. The value of these places is that they serve a purpose for the members. In Classroom 2.0 (just over 11,500 members as of a few minutes ago) the members are all teachers who are interested in using technology in the classroom. Fireside Learning, by comparison, has a scant few hundred members who are mostly involved in philosophy of learning. It’s a wider demographic, including college prof, K-12, and business/industry/government trainers. The Podiobooks Community is a place where creators and subscribers can get together to talk about the works, the site, and other things of interest.

Cloud Apps
One of the tools that has gotten a lot of attention in the last few weeks are the “cloud applications” that exist on the web. These are tools that provide functions that are more commonly associated with desktop applications – word processing, spreadsheets, etc – but exist in places like Zulu and GoogleDocs. In many instances these can be shared and used collaboratively. The advantage is that the user doesn’t need storage – or the application – on their local machine, but the disadvantage is that s/he does need access to the web — and high speed access at that.

Web Capable Remote Devices
From iPhone to Kindle, more and more devices that are not – strictly speaking – computers are coming to the fore. The iPhone idea is very important from the standpoint of putting ubiquitous web access in the hands of people for whom a computer is not a viable alternative. The Kindle e-book reader may well be a ground breaking technology, allowing the user to purchase and download e-books without first having to plug in a computer. While the cost of the devices is somewhat high right now – and the cost of the books even more out of line – as this technology matures, this could be an important tool

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We talked on a comment thread about podcasting, and I posted some game related podcasts the other day, but this article explains podcasting:

Podcasting.
Podcasting didn’t exist before September, 2004. I first got interested in the technology in November of 2004 when I started listening to Adam Curry’s “Daily Source Code.” At the time, there were, maybe 200 podcasters. Today, there are thousands. The second anniversary of podcasting has just gone past and the tools are beginning to get some attention so let’s spend some time bringing you up to speed.

It’s important to understand that a podcast is not a digital archive of audio or video. While there is a payload that is usually an audio or video file, podcasts can be anything from word processing documents to powerpoints to pdf files. The key is that a podcast is a payload that’s delivered via RSS enclosure tag. No feed? No podcast.

The significance of the feed is that it is readable by a computer and can, therefore, be sorted, merged, tagged, and selected on the basis of a computerized process. This is particularly important for educators who are looking for specific content for specific purposes.

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After a week of dealing with the mundane, it’s time to get out of muggle-space and begin looking at some magic. This article provides a nice kickoff.

Exotic Tools.
Exotic is probably not a good choice of term. Maybe we should call these advanced, or specialized, tools. The reality is that the numbers of tools available in online environments has mushroomed in the last five years.

As I was re-reading this, I was surprised that it was still largely relevant. In a knowledge domain where things are moving so fast, not much has changed here.

What about you? Exotic tools?

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A couple people have disagreed with me on Powerpoint. This post outlines my basic problem with it:

Why PowerPoint is Evil.
OK. Perhaps not evil. But this is why I’ve taken PowerPoint out of my toolbox for teaching. It boils down to the reality that I can use other tools that provide me with equivalent — if not better — results.

Btw, this post was used in an 8th grade technology class to offer an alternative perspective on the use of this particular tool. I even did a guest spot in TappedIn with the group so they could ask me questions. It was a great learning experience and I think the kids got something out of it, too.

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Here’s my original toolbox post.

My Basic Toolbox.
In the interest of getting the discussion going about what should be in the teacher’s toolbox to teach at a distance, here’s my list of the basic tools necessary for TEACHING online. Note that I don’t think every class needs to use all of these, but I think a teacher needs to know this stuff as a minimum in order to teach online.

I don’t know that I’d change much. There’s some questions at the end if you’re looking for something to write about.

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