RJ Stangherlin

Keystone Technology Integrator and STAR Discovery Educator

This site is for Mrs. Stangherlin's classes at Salisbury High School.

Slowing Down

(Image from Nancy White‘s ZAAZ Social Media Event Presentation, July 2008)

It is very hard to believe that a week has passed since the Discovery Educator Network Leadership Council National Institute at Discovery Headquarters in Silver Springs, MD.  Like all Discovery events, this one was a blockbuster with so much learning, so much fun.
What really impacted me so much was not only what we learned, but how we communicated as we learned.  Live blogging on Day 2, Part 1 and Part 2 redefined the use of social media for me with nearly 60 participants blogging live with presenters.  Then add to that mix that presentations were broadcast live with UStream.tv and Mogulus, (broadcast platforms that integrate into CoverItLive), with Nokia phones transmitting live multiple/simultaneous feeds into Mogulus, while we Tweeted and Purked, then updated our social networks simultaneously with Ping.fm.  Sending links and images as well, I learned that participating in live blogging redefined the concept of multi-tasking at rapid speed.  Whether geocaching with Bridget Belardi, teleporting in Second Life with the DEN SL LC, or just absorbing anything from Jennifer Dorman, I was almost overwhelmed when on the last day I viewed the projects that 60 Leadership Council members created.  Creative, cutting edge, and all classroom ready for integration.  Wow, what a powerhouse of learning opportunities.

But after that amazing week (and two in Europe shortly before LC), last week I was off-line, on a curious kind of self-imposed disconnect, feeling guilty about ignoring my digital devices, my expanding network of friends from DEN LC, requests to follow, join, and connect.  I took an online vacation, and strangely it felt good.  Jumping back to my social networks today (I always start with Twitter), I found that a whole new thread developed which explained where I had been, and even perhaps why.  Will Richardson’s July 25 Tweet led me to his post on Controlled Connectedness, which made me realize that “network separation anxiety” was my ailment.  Richardson’s link to “Nancy White’s idea of slow communities” calls into question network participation and how we communicate.  Her presentation reminded me of the importance of slowing and controlling our social connections.

Her slides, “Thinking about ‘Slow Community’” are listed below:

So, where does all of this lead me.  Simply to a reminder to myself that I sometimes need to slow down, to control my connectedness, to take an occasional “time out.” I know that I cannot learn all that is “out there.” I barely keep up with the 5 bloggers I promise to read every day.  Still, reflecting on Richardson and White, I feel better about slowing down enough to lend manageability to my endeavors.  I owe my social network a huge indebtedness every day because I continue to learn from them.  A very special thank you to the Discovery Educator Network for a perfect week, and to all the participants at the Leadership Council Institute for opening a whole new world of social media and PPLNs.

Remembering Amy Reinert

To say we will miss her would be a serious understatement.  She is an extraordinary teacher, humanitarian, and eco-activist who lives what she believes.  And she is our friend.  California bound, Amy is remembered in the video of the New Zealand, Australia, and Hawaii trip last summer.  I still do not understand rainbows, but that certainly isn’t because Amy didn’t try to explain them (many times). 

Students and Teachers Learning Together: DENs New Kind of Webinar

Cross posted on Pennsylvania’s Discovery Educator Network Blog and Changing Connections.

Steve Dembo been planning this event for ages and he’s thrilled that on Wednesday, April 9, at 11:00 AM EST, it will finally happen.  On my wish list for ages was a event that would bring students and teachers together to learn collaboratively. Leave it to DEN to make wishes come true.  So, I am really thrilled to remind you that in two days, teachers and students across America can tap into the power of Discovery and participate in America’s Army and the Rise of Video Games Webinar through Discovery Connect. If you are looking for a webinar that you and your students will really love, then you want to join us.  Steve says you won’t want to miss this one--and let’s face it: our DEN SuperSTARS (who are in Pennsylvania as I type) always deliver the goods.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.  (The rest of this blog is shamelessly copied from Steve’s original post.)

According to Dembo, the Discovery Channel featured a mini-series entitled Rise of the Video Games. America’s Army, a computer game developed by the U.S. Army was featured prominently because of its ultra-realism and how it was being used for training purposes.

This webinar will feature some of the creative geniuses BEHIND the computer game. They will discuss how they created the game, how they took real Soldiers and real Army locations and put them into the game, and how Soldiers are using game technology to train. They will also answer questions students have about the development process or what courses (or schoolwork) are needed to become a game developer.

While all age levels are invited to participate, this webinar is recommended primarily for middle school and secondary school students.  .

Dembo Delivers the Goods

Cross-posted on STSD Curriculum & Technology, DEN PA, and ChangingConnections.

If you missed Steve Dembo‘s (aka Teach 42) Discovery Education webinar, Something for Nothing: The Best of Web 2.0, then you might not know you no longer need to use your telephone to connect to a DiscoveryWebEx presentation. Nothing beats hearing Dembo direct, but if you missed the streaming--or you want to revisit a packed hour of great new tools--you can check out the Discovery Webinar Archives.  If you are new to the Discovery Educator Network, you really want to explore the wealth of resources available to you when become a STAR Discovery Educator, because the DEN takes social networking to the next level. Now would be the perfect time to pitch a plug for tomorrow’s history-in-the-making Virtual Conference National Event, ground-breaking with local break out sessions at 30 different sites. It’s not too late to register.  Thank you, Tracy Standhart, for a great blog. (I borrowed your image.)

Steve’s list of cool tools began with 6 photo-related sites. Want to capture your stories and save them permanently? Then you want OurStoryWidget, created by Word Press, the weblog platform Discovery uses. OurStory lets you save stories, photos, and videos on a collaborative timeline. And that notion--collaboration--was a theme running throughout most of what Steve shared, an indicator of how embedded social networking has become in our lives.

When Steve mentioned the K12 Online Conference, I connected, because I used a segment on social networking by Jeff Utecht in my Digital English class. K12 Online made a big splash when it premiered, but has since lost some of its buzz. You really might want to revisit this site, because it hold a wealth of 21st century learning we can all use in our classrooms.

Kerpoff is a great early childhood tool that takes digital storytelling into a different kind of venue. But don’t let the elementary school look-and-feel fool you; it’s just a great tool with lots of built-in elasticity for mindful yet playful super-doodling, helping kids to connect online and create together. For the children in your lives, or the child in you, this easy web 2.0 site will engage and delight!

We all know Flickr and most of us probably use it for photo sharing, but according to Steve, there are 3 new tools that will make Flickr your first choice for managing your photo world, if it isn’t already. Uploading and organizing was always easy because you could +Add Notes, but now you can edit your photos as well.  Flickr’s edit defaults to Picnik, one of Steve’s earlier blog best-of-the-week sites. What’s great about Picnik: edit in a click, no registration, education friendly (not blocked in most schools), adjusts red eye and colors. Got to love Picnik, which you can, of course, use independently of Flickr.

If Steve loves FlauntR, that’s good enough for me.  When he says, “incredibly robust,” he wasn’t kidding.  How about it integrates with facebook, Picasa, flickr, myspace, orkut, hi5, Windows Live Spaces, Word Press, Live Journal, Blogger, and iGoogle. Not enough reasons to love FlauntR yet? It can make images for mobile devices. Or your best ever Valentine’s Day card. This one’s just got to be my new favorite tool.

By invitation only (email Steve, but after tomorrow), you can browse collaboratively with others inside your own Photophlow room.  Interesting way to browse photos, however, because if you are online within your room (account), you see everyone else’s photo uploads. Despite a short browse through this site, it is definitely the most interesting social browsing I’ve seen yet. Definitely a network, because acceptance to the site, for now, is a very private by invitation only. Can you imagine the possibilities for collaborative learning with the CFF Mac laptops. We just had our one day Apple Out-of-the-Box training, and I can’t remember which application had the option to share with your wireless network your photos, but Photophlow and Mac should be a great combination.

The next 2 websites are not Web 2.0 tools, but neat.  The World Clock has an almost unlimited number of uses in any discipline. You have to check out the website, and if you are a math teacher who said you could not integrate technology into your classroom, here’s the easiest and best place to start, and the tool is user-friendly. You’ll want to bookmark the website, because googling world clock will likely not get you to this one easily.

Steve’s taught us to teach our students about their new permanent record.  We get to see the updated version at PETE&C, where Steve is Tuesday’s Keynote Speaker. So I think about my digital footprint, but now we can think about our eco footprint at the same time using Blackle, which is Google gone black. Same search engine, just black. Why? Because it’s environmentally friendly. Google is a white screen, and white uses the most wattage; black uses the least. If your eyes can tolerate the black screen and you life Firefox, there’s a Brackle plug-in waiting for you to install.  At the moment that I accessed Blackle, 438,890.943 Watt hours had been saved.

Back to Web 2.0.  Poll Everywhere.  Just like it sounds.  Free for 100 votes; after that, it’s a purchase, but the site is considering offering educators a package deal, making it your new best poll tool, and economically friendly as well. What makes this poll fun and different: online polling, text messaging polling, embedded into a website, PowerPoint; download results as a spreadsheet or RSS feed. I wish I knew about Poll Everywhere two weeks ago when I made my mid-term for my digital English class.  Yet another bona fide educational opportunity to legitimize cell phones in the classroom. And a better polling tool, by far.

‘Tis the conference season, so a timely reminder from Steve about David Warlick‘s hitchhikr, the virtual way to hitchhike onto a conference and blogs connected to it.  Hitchhikr for PETE&C: right here.  Back to Steve’s kindergarten teacher roots for his next pick: Kindersay. Is there a better way to learn to read? You see the word (or letter), image, and you hear a person say it. There’s a word bank of 300-400 and growing, but this site is hard to beat for first-level language as students learn to read and write, collaboratively.

Not just another social network chat, Twitter is a solid educational tool, or can be.  Steve’s Twitter group is a collection of educators almost without exception. Or they are technology integrators, or both. The learning that happens inside this group is off the charts. Steve said that he sent a twitter feed yesterday, asking his group if they could list their favorite Web 2.0 tools. That’s how he found World Clock and now we all have it. The value of this kind of collaborative learning: priceless.

Zamzar is one of my favorites. I use it so frequently that I cannot imagine life without it. A great converter, it is fast, free, educationally friendly. It converts almost anything to anything else you want it to be. The list is endless, so for one stop conversions, this is my pick as well. The last item, like Zamzar, is a converter. ConvertTube will allow you to convert online video like YouTube to more popular formats like wmv, mov, mp4,mp3, 3gp. If you haven’t joined us for a Discovery webinar, you really should. Discovery Education always brings you cutting edge technology, before the edge is cut.

Technorati Tags: DEN DiscoveryEducatorNetwork Education Technology VirtualConference Conference Learning

Changing the World, One Teenager at a Time

NOTE: I cross-posted this entry to my new blog, Changing Connections.

Global humanitarian outreach.  Interscholastic collaboration.  Conflict resolution.  Multidisciplinary.  Standards-based learning.  Position papers.  Resolution writing, speaking, listening. Project-driven.  Real-life / life-long learning.  Teacher as facilitator.  Students controlling learning.  Language application that makes sense in crisis simulation.  Parliamentary procedure.  Passage of motions.  Inquiry-based learning.  Un/moderated caucuses.  Speakers’ list.  Essential Questions seeking Essential Global Answers.  Debate and closure.  Dividing the question.  Un/friendly Amendments.  Approval of amendments.  Passage of resolutions.  Engagement.  21st century topics with 21st century tools. 

Thirty-eight Salisbury students attend Kutztown University.  They join 13 other school districts on SATURDAY, January 18, from 8:30—4:30.  To get here, they worked with their advisor, Miss Brinson, every Friday morning before school, and then put in hours of preparation at home. 

What is it that drives them?  A desire to change the world through KU Model United Nations Conference.  What makes this experience unique?  KUMUNC gives high school students the opportunity to engage in dealing with world issues to try to develop unified global solutions, changing the world, one teenager at a time.  Authentic learning through collaboration.  A chance to move beyond what if you could change history to being the change agents.

What does the day look like? 

Students representing 66 different nations research and engage in point / counterpoint debates expressed through the perspective of the countries they are representing.  Students write impromptu resolutions and then politic and/or compromise to convince other nations to support their resolutions.  Delegates sit on one of four different committees throughout the day, including: General Assembly on AIDS and HIV, Commission on Human Rights, Commission on Criminal Prevention and Criminal Justice, and Crisis Simulation: Africa Hopes.  In each committee room, arguments move quickly, since delegates are restricted to a time limit. Consequently, teams representing countries need to forge alliances so they can yield time to the countries aligned with their proposals, giving them more time to press solutions forward.  The goal is to persuade the entire committee that your country’s resolutions should be adopted. 

We’ve saved the best for last!

In GA AIDS, Sean and Garred, representing Korea, won Best Position Paper.

Matt and Luke won the award for Distinguished Delegation for the Committee on Human Rights.

The entire delegation won the award for Distinguished Delegation.  Accepting for our delegation are Lindsey, Lauren, and Dan.
It felt like winning the Oscar for Best Picture with each of these awards.  We are so proud of our students!

If you are looking for examples of 21st century learning, Model UN completely and utterly embraces it.

Think Pink: A Whole New Mind

If you have not read Dan Pink‘s A Whole New Mind, you really should.  Teachers, parents, students, everyone really should read this book.  But if time is the issue (and who ever has enough), why not join us [NOTE: DATE CHANGED] THURDSAY, DECEMBER 13 at 7:00 PM to listen to Dan Pink via a Discovery Educator Network webinar.  It just might be the smartest best hour you’ve spent in a long time.  Why?  Because Dan Pink will change your mind forever about your future.  Will empathetic right-brain thinkers create a new economy with a whole new brain?  What will drive the change?  Quick clue-->

For a good summary of his major points, click this link.  If you would like to join us [over 300 participants already registered, and some of them are my students], click here.  If you cannot attend, you can view the archived event here Just in case you ever wondered if you are left or right-brain dominant, here’s a whole new way to know. 

Future of Learning Manifesto

Check out the Future of Learning Manifesto put together by Christian Long and posted by Randy Ziegenfuss on 1-07-07. 

Or you can download and ponder the PDF version put together by Scott McLeod.

I wonder what our students would think of this? You may add your thoughts by clicking on the Comment link at the end of the post.  How about you?
Posted by Randy Ziegenfuss in • Change • Teaching & Learning

Did You Know?

Definitely worth watching.

Karl Fisch’s Did You Know?

Karl Fisch’s What If

Karl Fisch’s 2020 Vision

Jennifer Dorman’s Adaptation [with permission of Karl Fisch] of Did You Know?

Definitely Worth Visiting.

The Fischbowl

A Web of Connections: Why the Read Write Web Changes Everything

Just finished an amazing webinar with Will Richardson on A Web of Connections: Why the Read Write Web Changes Everything.  Long story short: because the web is both read and write.  The write aspect of the web profoundly changes how we learn: in social networking communities.  Richardson’s thesis is simple: today’s students are digital natives who create their own learning environments where they make global connections.  What, as educators, Richardson says we need to come to terms with is the issue of control.  Students are engaged in connectivism: building and maintaining social networks where connections hold as much [or possibly more] relevance than content.  Digital natives build communities of independent learners, unlike the way most educational systems work: on dependence [of students’ learning to teachers’ knowledge].  Richardson suggests that whether we like it or not, the web has made learning transparent, and teachers need to move forward as connectors of information inside this educational mindset. 

Perhaps, for those of you who may not have participated in a webinar, I should give you a figurative screenshot.  Think of a webinar as a videoconference without the video.  What you see is a screen that the presenter controls [content] with audio via teleconferenciog.  But that’s only the beginning.  The sidebar discussion [imagine a chat room smaller screen insert] is often as exciting as the presentation, and just as lively.  Then picture many of the participants also Skyping [yet a second chat room, but separate from the webinar host].  Let’s count: webinar, sidebar, Skyping.  Add to that taking notes and blogging.  About this point you are losing your Digital Immigrant status.  And to this most students would add texting with cell phones, working on facebook, myspace, or fanfiction, and editing their wikispace.  Definitely Digital Natives.  This is our community.  This is how they learn, or would, if we let them. 

Richardson believes that within the next five years, the face of education will change exponentially.  We seem to have choices: move with it or be moved by it.  I think of our group as change agents, working collaboratively to provide the best possible education for our students.  With that in mind, here’s Will Richardson’s webinar wiki:

A Changing World

Some statistics.
*1 billion people on the Internet
*China will soon be the largest English speaking country in the world.
*China has more honors students than we have students.
*Name this country
*“None of the top 10 jobs that will exist in 2010 exist today.”—Richard Riley, (Former US Sec. of Ed.)
*57 million blogs, 1.7 million posts a day.
*We can all be community journalists.
*Millionaires in virtutal worlds.
*Mark Zuckerberg, the soon to be teenage billionaire
*The problem is not change...we’ve always had change. The problem is the speed of change, and that change is cultural now. Because of that it feels like our kids are leading the way with technology

Many more questions than answers.

The Web is Changing How We Learn

*Learning is not about acquiring knowledge as much as it is about building networks. (Articulated by George Siemens.)
*We are at times teachers and at times learners. Our roles shift with each interaction.
*My blog, Weblogg-ed is an example of network creation. It’s where my most powerful learning has taken place. Here are a couple of examples: “Dear Kids, You Don’t Have to Go to College” and “Owning the Teaching...and the Learning.”
*The power of being “clickable” is that teachers can find you. (Google search)
*My good fortune is that I have potential teachers visiting from around the world.
*Our kids are already creating their own networks. Fan Fiction is one site where “affinity groups” meet.
*And like it or not, MySpace is another example of kids creating their own networks.
*But so are student role models, (Meg Cabot)

*Millions and millions of people are participating in the new social networking services. (Wikipedia)
*But we can help our kids to start creating their own networks as well and work with people around the world. (Nata Village)
*Wikiville (John Bidder) is another example. And Skype is a tool that we can use to maintain our networks.

*And networking doesn’t just have to happen through text. (ClipBandits)
*We can also build networks in virtual worlds. (Second Life)

The Web is Changing our Assumptions About Knowledge, Information and Literacy

*It’s not as much about content anymore as much as it is about context. Knowledge and information used to be scarce...that’s what our was built upon
*But today, I can learn anything, anytime, anywhere providing I have access. Knowledge is no longer scarce. (MIT)

*And we tend to look at knowledge as hard or unchanging...but these days, knowledge is soft. It’s constantly changing. (Wikipedia)
*In this world, we cannot only seek information, but information seeks us. (Pageflakes)
*But in a world where anyone can create and publish information, how do we know what to trust? (Dove Beauty)

*How do we teach our students (and ourselves) to make sense of a much more complex literacy regarding who to trust as authoritative sources. When we can be manipulated or be the manipulator.
*We can no longer be “just” readers...we must be editors as well.

*And reading is no longer a passive, linear activity that deals simply with text. How do we read multimedia and hypertext? (A Tank of Gas)
*In this world, we must read with an ear for writing and responding, engaging and interacting.

The Web is Changing our Assumptions about Classrooms and Teaching

*If teachers are no longer the arbiters of knowledge in the classroom, our roles need to change.
*Now we have the opportunity to be connectors, to bring our classrooms to the world in a variety of ways. We can find other teachers who may know more than we do. (Secret Life of Bees)

*We can also connect our students to other students around the world so they can learn together. (Flat Classrooms Wiki)
*And in a world where all of our students can be content producers as well as content consumers, we need to re-envision the work we ask them to do.
*Our students can teach in powerful ways. (Pre Cal)
*As Marco Torres says, students’ work ”should have wings.” (Buckle Up)

We Need a 2020 Vision for Education

*How do we learn to help our students leverage the technologies they are already using instead of have them check them at the door? (Especially when our students can get around our efforts anyway.)

*How do we change? How do we re-envision teaching for a vastly changed world?
*How do we the use of these technologies in our own practice?
*It starts with one small step

*******
Let’s take that one small step.