Moving at the Speed of Creativity Podcasts

At EduBloggerCon 2008 in San Antonio, Texas, on June 28th, some controversy arose regarding the presence of videographers hired by Pearson Education. Steve Hargadon, who was the primary organizer of EduBloggerCon, gave permission to Pearson to attend and videotape many of the sessions pending permission from the presenters and speakers themselves. Today I had an opportunity to interview Dr. Elaine Roberts, the Director of Product Development and Professional Growth for Pearson, about the video recording which took place at EduBloggerCon this year and Pearson's plan for utilizing this video content. In my view, it is a real compliment that a respected and large educational publishing company like Pearson views the conversations and ideas discussed by educators at EduBloggerCon to be important enough to document and share. If we, as change agents in our schools and communities, want our voices and ideas to gain a broader and more mainstream audience, I think we should embrace opportunities like this to both share our perspectives as well as further educate educational publishing companies themselves. Respecting intellectual property rights is VERY important, and the conversations which took place before, during, and after EduBloggerCon regarding the recording and sharing of ideas are needed. How do we change? Through conversations. Hopefully the opportunity to have Pearson record and share participant perspectives at EduBloggerCon on Friday will lead to more constructive conversations about learning and educational change in the 21st century in the classrooms and educational board rooms around our nation and world. We've still had LOTS of great opportunities for "unconference" conversations at NECC 2008, and things are just getting underway here in San Antonio!

This podcast is a recording of a presentation by John Jones on June 12, 2008, titled Drupal for Education. John presented this session at the Trends, Tools, and Tactics for 21st Century Learning conference in Wichita, Kansas, hosted by the Educational Services and Staff Development Association of Central Kansas (ESSDACK). The conference program description of this session was: Drupal is an open source web community engine that has the power and flexibility to provide highly customized user experiences for schools and districts. This presentation will review the software, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of open source solutions like Drupal, and showcase what these sites can do. A link to John's PowerPoint presentation is available in the podcast shownotes.

This podcast is a recording of the keynote address shared by Kevin Honeycutt at the Trends, Tools, and Tactics for 21st Century Learning conference in Wichita, Kansas, on 12-13 June 2008. The TT conference is hosted by ESSDACK, the Educational Services and Staff Development Association of Central Kansas located in Hutchinson. Kevin is one of the most innovative and passionate educators I know, and is a compelling storyteller. He is able to masterfully focus educators not only on issues related to learning and educational technology integration, but even more importantly on the vital role teachers play each day forming and strengthening relationships with students. Kevin reminds me about what matters most in the classroom and in education, and that is students. Many thanks to Kevin for sharing permissiosn to podcast this session, as well as the entire ESSDACK staff for hosting a fantastic conference last week in Wichita. Be sure to also check out the Ning social network which Kevin facilitates, titled Art Snacks. (Links are available in the podcast shownotes.)

This podcast is a recording of a presentation by Steve Wycoff on June 12, 2008, titled “Natural Learning - What Schools Don’t Do” at the Trends, Tools, and Tactics for 21st Century Learning conference in Wichita, Kansas. TTT is sponsored by ESSDACK, the Educational Services and Staff Development Association of Central Kansas in Hutchinson. The official program description for this session was: How we learn naturally is far different than how we are taught in schools. If we are going to succeed in actually leaving no child behind, we’ll need to understand better how individuals learn and more importantly how schools will need to look to accommodate the learning needs we all have. We’ll also demonstrate what curriculum might look like in a learning environment designed for the way we learn naturally. We’ll also connect this new learning environment to the needs we are experiencing in society related to workforce readiness. Be prepared to have your thinking stretched.

This podcast is a recording of a presentation shared with approximately 300 eighth grade students in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, on March 26, 2008. Our topics were Internet safety and safe online social networking. I was the final speaker in Kingfisher for a day of presentations focusing on health and safety issues organized by the school counselors in Kingfisher and nearby school districts. It is quite challenging to address 300 eighth graders for almost an hour right after lunch, at the end of their learning day! (Note that in the introduction, the speaker erroneously stated I taught courses at Texas Tech University. That was incorrect. My only higher education teaching experience (to date) was for Wayland Baptist University in Lubbock, Texas.)

This podcast is a recorded interview with Tom Fryer discussing the transfer of wealth opportunities which exist for schools and other nonprofit organizations in our communities. Tom is one of the 2008-2009 trustees of the Manhattan Community Foundation (in Manhattan, Kansas) and an advocate for educational efforts focused on estate planning which include giving to community foundations as well as nonprofit organizations via endowments. According to the Kansas Association of Community Foundations, $66 billion will be transferred from one generation to the next in the state of Kansas by 2020. If only five percent of those dollars could be preserved in community foundation endowments, that would equate to $3.3 billion in funds being available for Kansas schools and other nonprofit organizations in Kansas communities in the next 12 years. The transfer of wealth (TOW) opportunity is not limited to Kansas, this is a nationwide phenomenon and opportunity. Educational leaders and other community advocates need to be both aware of and proactive about their local TOW opportunities, and partner together to allow local citizens to give back to their communities via local endowments. In contrast to one-time gifts which have a limited impact, endowments supported by community and school foundations can create and leave a positive legacy which can benefit a community in innumerable ways for years to come. Virtually everyone involved in U.S. public education today faces funding shortfalls for worthwhile programs. Community / school foundation advocacy and partnerships can help address these funding shortfalls and open up superb opportunities for learning which otherwise may be impossible for students and teachers in our schools.

For the past three years, Scott Charlson has served as the Director of Learning Support Systems at Western Oklahoma State College (WOSC) in Altus, Oklahoma. In this role, Scott has served as a facilitator and coach for college instructors teaching entirely online and in blended learning environments. In this recorded interview from May 28, 2008, Scott relates many of the successful strategies he and WOSC technology director Kent Brooks have employed the past three years to help instructors redesign their courses to integrate identified best practices for distance learning and blended learning, as well as the pivotal role which relationships and peer coaching have played in the learning revolution underway at Western. WOSC is a state leader in the utilization of Moodle as an open source learning management system, and continues to innovate with many other open source and web 2.0 technologies to help improve opportunities for learning. Scott is leaving WOSC to accept a new role at the K-20 Center at the University of Oklahoma this summer, and will continue to support collaborative learning as well as pedagogic change in the K-12 school districts working with the K-20 center to implement customized versions of its IDEALS framework. Oklahoma is lucky to have passionate, innovative, and dedicated educators like Scott Charlson helping other instructors and teachers "make the change" from 19th and 20th century paradigms of instruction to more learner centered, engaged models of learning focusing on student media products and digital interaction.

This podcast is a recorded panel discussion from the 2008 COSN conference in Washington D.C. which was facilitated by Helen Soulé. Panelists included Terry Clark, Christopher Corallo, Marianne Hauser, and Susan Norton. The official program description for this session was: Education leaders must harness the value of information and communications technology and reconsider the longstanding goals for technology integration that are systemically focused on student outcomes. What are the skills that educational technology leaders need today? In this session, panelists will discuss the 2007 revised framework of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, which offers such a vision. The panel, comprised of experts from cutting-edge districts and thought leaders from higher education and the nonprofit sector, will examine common assumptions and goals for technology integration in the context of the 21st century skills movement. More importantly, panelists will foster dialogue with attendees about what skills, knowledge, and expertise school leaders must have for evolving learning expectations.

This podcast features an interview with Rhonda, the drama teacher at Yukon High School in Yukon, Oklahoma. This past year, for the first time, Rhonda has shared her cell phone number with her high school students with clear guidelines about the hours when she checks text messages. She receives over 1000 text messages per month from her students, and they respect her boundaries for having her cell phone number. Rhonda has been able to significantly increase her communication with students before and after class as well as rehersals, and makes a compelling case for teachers (in at least some contexts) sharing their cell phone number with students and helping them learn how to appropriately and respectfully utilize a teacher's cell phone number.

This podcast is a presentation by Barbara Wilson of Allen ISD at the ESC10 Technology Conference in Richardson, Texas, on May 15, 2008. Barbara provides an overview of the history of geocaching, explains to to get started geocaching with basic equipment and the website geocaching.com, and explores different classroom lesson possiblities for geocaching.

This podcast is a recording of a presentation shared by John Copeland of VBrick at the Oklahoma Distance Learning Association (ODLA) spring conference on April 28, 2008, in Oklahoma City at MetroTech Springlake. John discussed the company VBrick as well as their products, but also provided an excellent overview of streaming video formats, standards, technologies, and considerations to keep in mind when working with streaming video solutions. Thanks to John for both sharing this presentation as well as granting permission to share the recorded audio and his slides, which are linked in the podcast shownotes. Slides 14 through 20 are particularly good in providing an overview of what is available in terms of streaming video options today.

This podcast features an interview with Oklahoma K-12 educator Lance Ford, who has recently custom modded his Honda Element with an in-car 7" touch LCD screen, a Mac Mini computer, and an AT&T wireless network card to create his own mobile commander: A vehicle for mobile computing, desktop videoconferencing, and webcasting. In this interview (conducted from inside his Honda Element) Lance describes the functionality, hardware, software, and development process for his digitally pimped ride. Lance Ford is the director of technology for Howe Public Schools in southeastern Oklahoma, and won an Outstanding Leadership by an Individual in the Field of Distance Learning award at the USDLA 2008 National Conference held in St. Louis Missouri last week. Lance Ford is the Oklahoma Mac Jedi. I aspire to be his Padawan! :-)

Welcome to episode six of the Technology Shopping Cart podcast where educational innovation thrives on the food of creative ideas! This week Karen Montgomery and Wesley Fryer discuss the important but controversial subject of using cell phones and other mobile devices for learning in K-12 as well as university classrooms. This podcast is the first of two parts, our next episode will focus specifically on iPhones and web applications for the iPhone which are relevant for classroom learning. In this episode we address the reasons it is important to utilize cell phones for learning, including helping students learn digital etiquette with cell phones (part of digital citizenship.) Mobile devices like cell phones can be used in various ways to blend learning and extend learning beyond the traditional boundaries of the bell. Refer to our podcast shownotes for links to the resources and websites we discuss in this show.

This podcast is a recording of a conversation on December 5, 2007 with Judy Beaver, director of instructional technology at the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, about their 1:1 laptop learning initiative. Judy discusses how she utilized research findings from Dr. Robert Marzano’s noted book “Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement” when she made the case to the Punahou leaders for their 1:1 project nine years ago. She also discusses how they have effectively utilized those learning strategies in a digitally immersed environment, empowering key teachers to serve as coaches and models for other teachers as exemplary digital learning facilitators. Project based learning has been a key instructional focus of educators at the Punahou School. Many thanks to both Judy as well as Chris Watson for facilitating this conversation! I was able to meet Judy and Chris when I was in Hawaii last December for our USS Oklahoma Memorial Videoconferencing and Digital Learning Project.

This podcast is a recording of a 1.5 hour presentation I co-presented with Eric Hileman at a local Oklahoma City church about a variety of technology topics including Internet searching, debunking email myths (urban legends,) digital photography, iPods, iTunes, iTunes University, and more. We touched on a lot of topics but certainly didn’t cover EVERYTHING the program said we would! The official program description for this class was: Do you know what “text messaging” is? What are some tips and tricks for using an iPod for learning and entertainment? Learn how to download free university classes on an iPod. What is a wii? What do cell phones offer? Can your phone be a locator in an emergency? Got internet questions? Need a computer upgrade? What is available now on the market? What is a smart board? How is it used in education? Come and learn some of the technology language used today and how it can affect our future? Could a computer chip inside you store all your medical history and records? How can technology improve our lives?