One of the things school computer labs compete against

One of the things we compete against is commercial online ventures that target kids. Parents tend to manage their kids "screen time"-by which they mean the time they spend on computer games, video games, television shows, and the internet. When a kid spends four hours a day on screens, what's it do to his development? Some parents worry about this, as well they might, and try to limit the amount of time their kid spends on screens. Kids fight back. Compromises are made. Kids wind up spending a more limited period of time on the computer doing things that they and their parents can agree on. I'd like them to be doing something constructive-writing in their blog, looking at cool educational sites, or sharing what they did in school with their parents. This article (NY Times; registration may be required) reminded me of why it's so hard to compete for screen time:

Web Playgrounds of the Very Young
By BROOKS BARNES

LOS ANGELES — Forget Second Life. The real virtual world gold rush centers on the grammar-school set.

Trying to duplicate the success of blockbuster Web sites like Club Penguin and Webkinz, children’s entertainment companies are greatly accelerating efforts to build virtual worlds for children. Media conglomerates in particular think these sites — part online role-playing game and part social scene — can deliver quick growth, help keep movie franchises alive and instill brand loyalty in a generation of new customers.

Second Life and other virtual worlds for grown-ups have enjoyed intense media attention in the last year but fallen far short of breathless expectations. The children’s versions are proving much more popular, to the dismay of some parents and child advocacy groups. Now the likes of the Walt Disney Company, which owns Club Penguin, are working at warp speed to pump out sister sites.

“Get ready for total inundation,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, who estimates that 20 million children will be members of a virtual world by 2011, up from 8.2 million today.

Worlds like Webkinz, where children care for stuffed animals that come to life, have become some of the Web’s fastest-growing businesses. More than six million unique visitors logged on to Webkinz in November, up 342 percent from November 2006, according to ComScore Media Metrix, a research firm.

Club Penguin, where members pay $5.95 a month to dress and groom penguin characters and play games with them, attracts seven times more traffic than Second Life. In one sign of the times, Electric Sheep, a software developer that helps companies market their brands in virtual worlds like Second Life and There.com, last week laid off 22 people, about a third of its staff.

By contrast, Disney last month introduced a “Pirates of the Caribbean” world aimed at children 10 and older, and it has worlds on the way for “Cars” and Tinker Bell, among others. Nickelodeon, already home to Neopets, is spending $100 million to develop a string of worlds. Coming soon from Warner Brothers Entertainment, part of Time Warner: a cluster of worlds based on its Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera and D. C. comics properties.

Add to the mix similar offerings from toy manufacturers like Lego and Mattel. Upstart technology companies, particularly from overseas, are also elbowing for market share. Mind Candy, a British company that last month introduced a world called Moshi Monsters, and Stardoll, a site from Sweden, sign up thousands of members in the United States each day.

“There is a massive opportunity here,” said Steve Wadsworth, president of the Walt Disney Internet Group, in an interview last week.

Behind the virtual world gravy train are fraying traditional business models. As growth engines like television syndication and movie DVD sales sputter or plateau — and the Internet disrupts entertainment distribution in general — Disney, Warner Brothers and Viacom see online games and social networking as a way to keep profits growing.

But more is at stake than cultivating new revenue streams. For nearly 50 years, since the start of Saturday morning cartoons, the television set has served as the front door to the children’s entertainment business. A child encounters Mickey Mouse on the Disney Channel or Buzz Lightyear on a DVD and before long seeks out related merchandise and yearns to visit Walt Disney World.

Now the proliferation of broadband Internet access is forcing players to rethink the ways they reach young people. “Kids are starting to go to the Internet first,” Mr. Wadsworth said.

Disney’s biggest online world is Club Penguin, which it bought in August from three Canadians in a deal worth $700 million. At the time, more than 700,000 members paid fees of $5.95 a month, delivering annual revenue of almost $50 million.

Still, one world, even a very successful one, does not alter the financial landscape at a $35.5 billion company like Disney. So Disney is pursuing a portfolio approach, investing $5 million to $10 million per world to develop a string of as many as 10 virtual properties, people familiar with Disney’s plans said.

Tinker Bell’s world, called Pixie Hollow, illustrates the company’s game plan. Disney is developing the site internally — creative executives who help design new theme park attractions are working on it — and will introduce it this summer to help build buzz for “Tinker Bell,” a big-budget feature film set for a fall 2008 release.

Visitors to a rudimentary version of Pixie Hollow, reachable through Disney.com, have already created four million fairy avatars, or online alter egos, according to Disney. The site will ultimately allow users to play games (“help create the seasons”) and interact with other “fairies.” When avatars move across the screen, they leave a sparkling trail of pixie dust, a carefully designed part of the experience.

“We wanted to come up with a way to make flying around the site feel really good,” said Paul Yanover, executive vice president and managing director of Disney Online.

Disney’s goal is to develop a network of worlds that appeal to various age groups, much like the company’s model. Preschool children might start with Pixie Hollow or Toon Town, another of Disney’s worlds, grow into Club Penguin and the one for “Cars” and graduate to “Pirates of the Caribbean” and beyond, perhaps to fantasy football at ESPN.com.

“All the stars are aligning for virtual worlds to become a mass-market form of entertainment, especially for kids and families,” Mr. Yanover said.

If virtual worlds for adults are about escaping from run-of-the-mill lives, sites for children tap into the desire to escape from the confines of reality as run by mom and dad. “I get to decide everything on Club Penguin,” said Nathaniel Wartzman, age 9, of Los Angeles, who also has a membership to a world called RuneScape.

But shopping is a powerful draw, too; most sites let children accumulate virtual points or spend their allowance money to buy digital loot. “It’s really fun to buy whatever you want inside the game,” Nathaniel said in a telephone interview. For his penguin, “like for Christmas I bought a fireplace, a flat-screen TV and a Christmas tree,” he said.

Online worlds, which typically have low overhead and fat profit margins once they are up and running, charge a monthly fee of $5 to $15 and require the adoption of an avatar. Some sites are free and rely on advertising to make money; others are advertising and subscription hybrids. Webkinz relies on the sale of stuffed animals, which come with tags that unlock digital content.

The power of the virtual worlds business was shown recently when Vivendi announced a plan to buy Activision, a publisher of video games for consoles like the Sony PlayStation 3. Vivendi owns World of Warcraft, a virtual world for adults with more than nine million members and revenue of more than $1 billion.

Still, the long-term appetite for the youth-oriented sites is unclear. Fads have always whipsawed the children’s toy market, and Web sites are no different, analysts warn. Parents could tire of paying the fees, while intense competition threatens to undercut the novelty. There are now at least 10 virtual worlds that involve caring for virtual pets.

Privacy and safety are a growing concern, particularly as companies aim at younger children. Some virtual worlds are now meant to appeal to preschoolers, using pictures to control actions so that reading is not required.

And critics are sharpening their knives. “We cannot allow the media and marketing industries to construct a childhood that is all screens, all the time,” said Susan Linn, a Boston psychologist and the director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a nonprofit group that has complained of ads for movies on Webkinz.com.

Operators shrug off worries about fads and competition. “Are features like creating an avatar a long-term advantage for anyone? Probably not,” Mr. Yanover said. “The viability and sustainability of this business comes from the shifting behavior of kids and how they spend their leisure time.”

As for privacy and safety, companies point to a grid of controls. For instance, Neopets restricts children under 13 from certain areas unless their parents give permission in a fax. Several Neopets employees patrol the site around the clock, and messaging features are limited to approved words and phrases.

“Parents know they can trust our brand to protect kids,” said Steve Youngwood, executive vice president for digital media at Nickelodeon. “We see that as a competitive advantage.”

PAY ATTENTION: to the kids

Here's another good video to remind us to consider how we engage 21st century students in what are mostly antiquated classroom settings. You'll notice many of the statistics are old - yet still shocking. (When the clip starts to play you can click on the little box to the right of the loading bar and play it full screen.)

Low Tech Telephone to the Rescue

When we're thinking about ways to use technology to enhance the excitement of content we shouldn't forget the telephone. In one 8th grade class I was in recently the students were working on year long research projects including interviews of experts in their area of study. One student is doing his research on the Tuskegee Airmen from WWII. To help students share what they're learning as well as help them develop interviewing skills we hooked up a speaker phone and the student interviewed an 85 year old Tuskegee Airman veteran during the class. After the initial interview, members of the class asked additional questions. It turned into a high interest lesson.

Getting a speaker phone hooked up wasn't trivial. The wall phone was wired into the wall with no speaker, but we took the jack from the handset and plugged it into an old speaker phone and "lo and behold" we pushed the speaker button and there was a dial tone. We also videotaped the conversation so we'd have an audio record. It's easy to forget that just using the telephone to bring experts into the classroom can create a memorable experience for the students.

What we do in the lab

A parent tour came through the lab yesterday. One of the parents asked me if I taught lessons. Just what did I do?
My answer was that what I do is support the teachers. I don't think she believed me, but its true. Every year, in every grade, there's a sprint to teach all the standards before testing begins in the spring. There's a lot to cover, there are a lot of different learning styles, and different levels of motivation. It's a huge job.
Over the years, the teachers here have found the software that they feel helps their students the most in advancing them through all the different subjects they have to learn. One of the reasons I like working here is that I agree with all of their choices. Here are some of the main pieces of software we work with:

1) Math Arena by Daren Carstens-, transformational geometry, circle graphs, Venn diagrams, symmetry, percents, money and percent of change, number sequences, and probability. One of Margo's favorite math programs because it teaches concepts that are difficult to teach without the manipulation of figures that this program allows.


2) Math Blaster: the original ultimate drill and practice math software. Mathblaster has math facts drills that the kids actually think are fun. Days that they do either of these programs in the lab, we have to pry them out of their seats when class is over.



3) Type to Learn: We start teaching the kids some keyboarding skills in 2nd grade It's difficult for them, because their hands are too small for the keys. By 5th grade, the more skilled ones are already touch typing.




4) Kid Pix-it's a great tool to get kids enthusiastic about experimenting with what a computer can do. Book covers are a favorite project.






Colonial Williamsburg-This is actually a website, but it's a crucial part of the fifth grade curriculum. Electronic field trips, slide shows, interactive flash games-it's an amazing place to visit.




We have more software (Graph club, Inspiration, Google Earth, etc.) that I'll cover another day.

Shift happens updated

A few months ago, our friend Anne Bubnic told us about a great video piece on Youtube called Shift happens. Today, I saw the new version on the Dangerously Irrelevant Blog. It's worth watching and thinking about it(Even though it came out June 22,more than three months ago. What can I say? I don't have the time to blog as consistently as I'd like.)

We miss the California Academy of Sciences most in the winter

The San Francisco Chronicle has a great article and this wonderful video which I've posted below shows what we can expect when the California Academy of Sciences reopens in Fall of 2008.
This video reminded me of how much our family, like so many others, is waiting for the Academy to reopen. I can't remember how many field trips I've helped organize: for reptiles, dinosaurs, bird skulls, earthquakes-the list goes on and on. What a great science resource we'll have to use again when it reopens! And in the meatime, isn't it great that the technology enables us to see what's coming and gives us a way to share it with kids.

Google Earth takes to the Stars

I just read in my e-school news that Google Earth has added a "sky" button which turns your gaze outward to the stars and galaxies above. You have to download a new Google Earth, and then you have to notice the new little button at the top of the Google Earth screen. It looks like this cool little Saturn button; that is, if you're looking at your screen with your telescope. In reality it's so small it looks like you splattered oatmeal on your LCD.
But once you know it's there it's very cool. Here's a movie that shows how it works.

It's these kind of tools that can make all the difference in the use of educational technology in schools. Hopefully science teachers will be inspired to explore this tool and use it to bring dynamic elements and current data into their lessons. The database alone, with information on each object in the sky, is incredible. And if teachers don't get time to to bring it into their classrooms, I imagine the students will probably bring it in for them.

Weather or not to Blog

5th Grade is researching weather, and naturally the research was on extreme weather.
The Offical United States Hurricane Centerwas a very popular jumping off spot. Also popular was the Weather Undergroundtropical storm center, and Weather Whiz Kids.Some people liked How Stuff Works.

Many people wrote about tornadoes. Hail was another popular subject. One group studied vulcanism and it's effect on the weather. I saw one report on lightning. We found some interesting videos on hurricanes. Finally, a california classroom would have to have at least one report on the "El Niño / La Niña". weather phenomena. More detailed information can be found here.

We go bats in the lab

This week, the third grade team decided to research Bats. Some of this research was done in the Rancho lab. We especially enjoyed viewing Batworld, Bats4kids, Megabats, and Vampire Bats.

Our favorite bats are the Vampire Bat, the Fruit Bat, and the Pallid bat(also known as the groundfeeding bat).
Our favorite bat facts are

"Vampire bats suck blood".
"When they suck blood,the animals don't wake up."
"California has lots of brown bats"

Here's a picture of our favorite bat:

Hope this doesn't drive you batty!

More on YouTube and UC Berkeley

One thing about the UC Berkeley lectures on YouTube is that we all have been inspired by great teachers at different times (though generally few and far between). But the YouTube lectures give us a chance to see great speakers who love their subject area and have a wealth of engaging stories and examples that really help us learn. If K-12 teachers had time to listen to expert lectures on topics related to their curriculum, they could acquire new knowledge and stories that create the context that makes learning stick. Here's a lecture on gravity from the "Physics for Future Presidents" course taught by Richard Muller, in which he shows a model of how gravity acts on a stream of water. He then has us consider what would happen if the stream shot out so far that it missed the earth on it's way down. This is the kind of question that would be a great opener in a classroom or around the dinner table with the kids. Bottom line: If you look at the four and five star lectures, you're bound to pick up some great information.

UC Berkeley has a YouTube channel

The San Francisco Chronicle had an article last week :

Cal offers full courses on YouTube - but not for credit

Ellen Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, October 4, 2007

You don't have to be a UC Berkeley student to be educated like one.

UC Berkeley has begun to publish its lectures on YouTube, the first university to team up with the video-sharing site to offer full courses online. It's the latest move to bring higher education to the masses through the Web.

Other institutions have used YouTube to broadcast occasional classes, but UC Berkeley is the first to offer full courses online, school officials and YouTube said Wednesday....

Some 200 clips have been uploaded to YouTube so far, representing eight semesterlong courses, including Marian Diamond's human anatomy class and Richard A. Muller's Physics for Future Presidents.

I watched one physics course and kept visualizing Science Teachers in High School assigning these for extra credit, or teachers refreshing their own knowledge; but I also wondered how this would affect the bandwidth in a High School Campus, and the fact that most Schools currently block YouTube at School. Then Margo came by and said "It's great, but if you just sit and watch it without a way to ask questions or get background info, it's kind of boring. Is this the way we learn science?" I guess like anything you have to find the good stuff. For instance, here's a clip from a UCB Search Engines Technology & Business course. It's a lecture by Sergey Brin, founder of Google. This provides a great opportunity to hear the perspective of someone you probably wouldn't get to hear otherwise.

Pulled from TechCrunch without comment

Pulled from tech crunch with out comment

kerpoof is aiming to become a leading destination site for children through a suite of activities that are enriching as well as entertaining. On Kerpoof, kids can create art, stories, and animated movies using a simple 3D interface, and when done, can save it to their gallery, share it with others, and vote on their favorites.

Krista Marks, CEO for Kerpoof presenting. Aims to change the way kids interact with the computer. Most of what kids do today is mindless, a waste of time - Kerpoof wants to change this.

Goal: to be a site where fun is not separate from learning, but integral to it. Kids can create art through the site, write their own stories, create their own movies.

Parents are no longer buying software for their kids with the explosion of broadband - they are turning to websites for them. Neopets and Club Penguin are very popular, but are not as educational as they could be. At the same time, CS majors are plummeting. Bizworld saw this trend and came to Kerpoof to create software to educate children using the web.

Easy tool for kids to make their own picture scenes - cool effects when you add particular elements to the scene (add a moon and it becomes night, etc.). You can share your pictures with friends.

To make a movie, pick a scene then a backdrop. CEO claiming the movie creator teaches kids object oriented programming. You put objects in a scene and then make the objects do things (objects and methods). Looks like a basic Flash applet creator. Still, looks impressive. You can add music to the background. You can add multiple scenes to an entire movie.

If you want to add interactivity to a movie, you can have prompts at different points in the movie that change how the movie proceeds (makes it more like a game created by kids).

Kerpoof is live and freely available now.

Sailing with Call of the Sea

On Thursday, October 4th, we went sailing with the wonderful people from Call of the Sea. It was a evening cruise for educators in an attempt to spread the word about what a wonderful program they have for kids. We boarded the 82 foot Sloop Seaward at 5 and returned to the dock at 7. Here are some pictures we took:

The best students in the world

I'm at Willow Creek Academy with "the best students in the world." They're telling me what to say as I show them how to make a blog for their 8th grade projects. They also want to add: "And Willow Creek is cool."

Their Social Studies teacher has an ibook with the camera in it, so as I showed them how easy it is to make a posting we turned on "photobooth" and they all leaned into the screen to take this picture.

Embedding a document in your blog

One of the teachers here wants to be able to post her templates on this blog. My first search for a solution sent me to scribd.The document I uploaded threre does embed nicely, and it actually printed! On the other hand
1) the program requires you to "completely trust this java applet"
2)The document titles were hard to view in the upload phase,
3)there were too many steps for most teachers, and
4) the document was reduced in size about 75%. For a older guy like me, that means I need to find my reading glasses, which disturbs me.
Still, it's a start. Stay tuned for better ideas.

Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.com

We just installed a nice tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, and more.
Now, when you look at this blog, you'll notice a small dialog box on the right side of every hot link. As you mouse over this box and pause, you'll see a larger box pop up with a preview of the site. As visual thinkers, we think this makes the links far more valuable to our readers than they were before we installed this great tool. It gives the reader more choices in the navigation of this blog's content.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

If you want to install this tool on your blog, the link is here. A few pointers on installing this tool

1)The default install is for both the icon and the link to show the pop up. That turned out to be too distracting, We went back to install and chose option two: only mousing over the icon gives the pop-up box.
2)Don't worry if you didn't get it right the first time; the Snap site sends a confirming email that has a customization link in it. It took me five minutes to change my settings.
3)When the Snap site changes your settings. all it really does is place a new widget on your blog You should remove the first widget you installed before you install the second time to avoid confusion.

Afterschool Matters

Here's a video from the George Lucas Education Foundation (GLEF) about how a group in Chicago, is using after school programs to change students' lives. Technology is often part of it, but it's wonderful to see how their program serves kids interested in a wide range of areas.

How to make a rainbow

Margo and I continue to be fascinated by the tool that created this short clip on how a rainbow is created.

A fine example of a simple video blogging class project

Margo found this for me on teacher tube, and we both thought it was a great idea. The kids get to plan out, write down, and practice what they are going to say; the parents will love the video; it takes only equipment the school already has; and there are no privacy issues.




Rachel Boyd, the teacher who did this says:

Let the 6 & 7 year olds from Room 9 at Nelson Central School educate you about what they think a blog is and why they love using them! This is the introduction to my presentation for a New Zealand Online Conference. This part is the student's voice. Primarily it's an AUDIO file, we didn't want to detract away from the children's voices. I've just chosen to upload it here as a movie for flexibility. Check out out class blog here at: Room 9 Nelson Blog Or our teacher's edublog at: My journey in ICT and blogging

How to create a group in Teachertube.

One of the issues we are faced with in blogging is student privacy, which must be protected at all costs. As you may have noticed, Margo and I post our videos at Teachertube.com. There are many reasons why we do so, but here's one. Watch this short video which demonstrates how to create a "group" at the Teachertube site. This group will allow you to limit the people who can view the video you post to your classes parents and other teachers and administrators in your school. Great feature.

Inspiration for Math Education

Here's a post from Margo's blog, Inspiring Math Learning.

In light of NCLB and the standards movement, teachers are so pressed to raise test scores that it's easy to forget some of the intriguing, fun, math things we used to have time for in the "good old days". So this blog will help remind us of some of the conversations, resources, and really "cool things" that inspire math learning.

Like for instance. I just came across a very elegant simple puzzle, called Ball of Whacks - a 30-sided polyhedra made up of 30 identical magnetic pieces that just pop into place. You've got to feel it to believe it.
Check it out. Here's a little movie of it - Ball of Whacks

Education Week online is free this week!

From September 5th to 15th, you can read all the articles on the Education Week website. There's a great article on the Long Beach School district(They won the Broad award in 2003, they use professional learning communities). They also have a whole page of articles on No Child left behind. Last but not least, there's a whole section on how technology fits into your educational plans here.
Good evening reading...

Testing Qlipmedia

Margo and I meet the Qlipmedia people at Barcamp a few weeks ago, We like their tool-the "qlipboard"-and plan to start using it in the lab as soon as we can. More to follow....

Science in the news

Google news found over 282 stories on the web today about a huge spider web in texas. Most articles were very simple- they told of the place(Lake Tawakoni State Park), speculation about which variety of spider created the web(no one seemed to know), and finished off with speculation about why it happened(voodoo? new variety of Spider?).
After some searching, I finally found a web page created by the Park Ranger who found the web. Turns out it's a lot less mysterious than I thought. The spider is actually a well known one: its a member of the long-jawed orb-weavers(see photos here and here. The bug guide is a wonderful tool when you're trying to figure out what that wierd bug is that's crawling up your window). We don't have the same species of spider here in California, but we do have spiders that to the unexpert eye, look exactly like it. Check out the photo of the web these spiders wove:


According to this web site there are over 25 species of lon-jawed orb-weavers in the United States. There's got to be one in Novato..

A new feature in Google Earth

Well, two actually. The first is that now they added the ability to look at the night sky, see constellations, etc. Parts of it work very well for me(the constellations are marvelous), but parts seem underwhelming(I did not find the graphics of the planets very exciting). But it certainly makes it a more versatile teaching tool.
But what I just find out that should really make things interesting for the kids is that there is a flight simulator hidden in Google Earth.
TechCrunch has all the details:

We’ve always known that Google has wanted to challenge Microsoft’s desktop dominance in a number of areas, but to date we didn’t know that extended to gaming.

Hidden inside Google Earth is a secret Flight Simulator that takes full advantage of Google’s extensive satellite imagery.

To access the hidden feature, open Google Earth and hit Command+Option+A (note it must be capital A) or Ctrl+Alt+A if you’re using a Windows Machine.

The Google Earth Flight Simulator comes with two aircraft options, a F16 Viper and the more manageable SR22 4 seater. Players have the option of commencing the game from their current location in Google Earth or can pick from a list of pre-determined runways. Control instructions can be found here.

Overall the game play is fairly simple in terms of control, but the striking difference is flying over real pictures of locations. I took a quick flight from San Francisco International, headed North to the Golden Gate then turn back over the city before heading towards the Valley. It wasn’t perfect, but it was as good visually as the paid Microsoft Flight Simulator, and in terms of actually presenting real objects it was better.

Thanks to Marco for the how-to.

Full eclipse of the Moon this tuesday

There will be full eclipse of the moon visible from Novato Tuesday, August 28th early in the morning. We're going to try to watch it (and take pictures). The San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers site has all the information here. For even more detailed information, see the lunar eclipse page that NASA has put up here.NASA says you can watch a live webcast of the eclipse(weather permitting) here. Read the MSNBC article here to see why the moon appears red during the eclipse.
If you don't want to stay up late, download the latest version of google earth, which now allows you to search the sky as well as our planet earth.

Final word on Wikipedias "Objectivity"

Wired Magazine has just posted the WikiWatch. Kevin Poulsen writes:

Caltech graduate student Virgil Griffith just launched an unofficial Wikipedia search tool that threatens to lay bare the ego-editing and anonymous flacking on the site. Enter the name of a corporation, organization or government entity and you get a list of IP addresses assigned to it. Then with one or two clicks, you can see all the anonymous edits made from those addresses anywhere in Wikipedia's pages.

Griffith's work is a neat example of what can be uncovered just by reorganizing public information. Wired News writer John Borland has the full story here.

THREAT LEVEL predicts a lot of sad, embarrassing secrets will emerge from this project once netizens dive into it -- and we'd like to be a part of that. So visit the Wikipedia Scanner and do some sleuthing. Post what you find here on our wall of shame, where you can join other Wired News readers in voting submissions up or down. We've seeded the list with a few finds of our own. Happy hunting!

It's an amazing list-the top-rated edit is Diebolds attempt to edit its voting machine record,followed closely by Scientology's edits of its entry...

Wikipedia in the lab

Last year I saw many students using Wikipedia as their source for research they were doing on various subjects. I've already posted once on the other sources we can start showing the kids. Here's a link to a PBS teachers Blog discussion on Wikipedia, and here's an article I found on line that sums up what most librarians have to say on the subject:

Can We Make Peace with Wikipedia?


By Chris Harris -- School Library Journal, 6/1/2007

Every day, librarians around the world turn to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as the definitive resource. This trusted authority, however, has a shocking secret—the venerable OED began life as a wiki. Well, sort of. Thousands of volunteer readers back in the day composed more than 400,000 definitions by submitting slips of paper with quotations that detailed word usage. Lacking wiki software meant organizing over five million slips to form this collective intelligence project, a process that lasted from 1857 until 1928. Today, Wikipedia’s volunteers have published about five million articles worldwide in just six years. So these two projects appear to be distant cousins of sorts.

While librarians universally worship the OED, we, as a profession, reject Wikipedia. (See “Wikipedia, the Review,” March pp. 82–83) Many librarians distrust the online work—if anyone can contribute information, the articles will be inaccurate, they say. So many media specialists have banned using the site. There are two problems with this. For one, study after study has found that Wikipedia is, in fact, reasonably accurate as a general knowledge source. And students are just going to use it anyway. My May 2006 column for SLJ “MySpace Can Be Our Space” (p. 30) explored the futility of attempting to ban a wildly popular Web site. Even if you filter Wikipedia and its typically prominent results on Google, students will just use it at home.

In an April 2007 study, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that over a third of American homes with Internet access are using Wikipedia. Moreover, Wikipedia users are predominantly college graduates (50 percent versus 22 percent of high school graduates). So if a child comes home seeking help with a research project, it’s likely that Mom and Dad will turn to the online encyclopedia. Even if they don’t, a basic search on Google for single word topics almost always includes a result from Wikipedia. Doing a country project on France? Wikipedia’s entry is the first hit on Google. State project on Wisconsin? Again, the wiki article comes out on top.

Many schools have prohibited citing Wikipedia as a source in research papers; and Wikipedia fully agrees with this policy. After Middlebury College’s ban, Wikipedia’s Sandra Ordonez told InsideHigherEd.com that, while “Wikipedia is the ideal place to start your research and get a global picture of a topic, we recommend that students check the facts they find in Wikipedia against other sources.” Ordonez added that, although Wikipedia is a great place to check on something, it is “not a valid resource for scholarly research.”

These are the same concerns that I hear from high school librarians. We cannot, however, continue to reject Wikipedia because we aren’t comfortable with the wiki process itself. Our students and their parents are just fine with it. To be quite frank, continually bad-mouthing Wikipedia to the very people who use it—successfully—makes us look a bit daft. It would be much more productive to teach colleagues, students, and parents how to best use Wikipedia. Instead of appearing to be “behind the times” when it comes to new information sources, librarians can foster educated, high-end users who verify Wikipedia entries using the history and discussion tabs. If we can’t beat ’em, let’s join ’em—as leaders in promoting the proper use of Wikipedia. As such, here are three “rules” regarding the wiki that also serve to enhance research overall:

1) At least three sources are required to verify research.

2) General encyclopedias like Wikipedia are a great place to get started, however …

3) Serious research projects cannot cite general knowledge encyclopedias.

Toyota Math Science Podcasts went live this week

During week two of the Toyota Math Science Experience at Mills College(map here), the girls finished the first rough drafts of their podcasts.


Margo put a website up using .mac for The Toyota Math Math Science Experience showing the girls podcasts. Check out the TMSE Website Margo set up. Click on the podcast button to see the first podcasts produced by the amazing middle school girls who participated in this two week residential math and science camp.

Margo and I try podcasting with 30 girls

Last Thursday, we had the great fortune to work with 26 girls in the Toyota Math Science Experience at Mills College. We had a beautiful lab to work with: Thirty Intel IMacs with the most recent software loaded. I was the remote desktop Administrator; Margo taught the podcasting class. In less than 4 hours, we had 26 mac novices producing 13 podcasts.
Here's Margos-we"ll publish the girls podcasts in a few days when they've polished them up a bit. Check it out -When the new page opens, click on the play button on the top left side of the page to see Margo's first podcast...

Picasa experiment

I'm experimenting with Picasa

angus's birthday 2005

Margo's been helping out at the Toyota Math Science Experience going on at Mills College right now. Here are some slides.....

Search skills

I've noticed that most kids, when searching for information for a school assignment, all seem to search the same way. They put the name of their subject(Jackie Robinson. for example) in Google and hit return. The Wikipedia article is usually in the top ten; and because they have seen wikipedia before, it's the first link they click on. How can we get them to more fully explore the rich resources on the net?
The first thing to do is to increase their google search skills. Google Guides is a good place to start understanding how to help them craft better queries. I also like to read John Battelle's Searchblog to see if any new, great websearch sites have been announced.
Another thing you can do is show them where to fin annotated lists of websites. One of my favorites is the Librarians Internet Index(Lii).It is my personal favorite. Calisphere is getting a lot of play these days, although it seems to load slowly on my machine. The Library of Congress' American Memory is truly amazing in the depth of material it holds. Another annotated list of sites(although not as comprehensive as Lii) is the American Library Associations Great Web Sites for kids.Another annotated search engine is called Awesome Library.
Finally, the grandmomma of annotated sites is Kathy Schrocks Guide for Educators.Its size is daunting, but there is nothing that you can't eventually find here(forgive the double negative).

Intentional Learning Communities are not always

Communities, that is. Inspiration Software launched their Inspired Learning Community site at NECC.
A month later, there are over 144 lessons posted on the site, which is impressive. What intrigues me is that there are exactly two posts on the bulletin board.
I see this juxtaposition of success and failure time after time in the community building efforts of educational software companies.
The stated goal is usually to build a community of teachers who share a common passion in the software the company sells. In the Eschool article that accompanied its roll out, we read that Mona Westhaver, Inspiration's president and co-founder said "Now, with our new online community, we are offering educators a community where they can inspire one another."
But the framework of the site makes it clear to users that the primary objective is to encourage them to create free content for your site. It's easy to do . You can post all by yourself, in the privacy of your home.
But how do you start a dialogue when there's no one there? That's not so easy to do.
And teachers, being smart, get the message on what's important. And so 144 uploads, 2 posts.
I wonder how many posts there will be at the end of August?

More on Hyperstudio 5

Dr. Z has more here. I'm sure there's a lot more on other blogs. I'm seen posts about this every time I read some one's blog about what was most important at NECC.

Journaling with blogs-

One of the things we talked about in school last year was how important it was to keep parents current on what we're doing in the classroom, and how much seeing visuals of what's happening is important to keeping parents enthusiasm high.
This blog that I'm linking to here has a list of all the tools the school community needs to learn to be able to do weekly posts from each class from third through fifth grade.

What kindergarteners need to know about 1st grade.

Here's a video from out of my past: My wife, Margo Nanny, and I helped shoot this video when our son was in 1st grade. It was written, scripted, and shot by the kids. Our son's teacher, a truly wonderful teacher, created the space in time for us to do this project with the kids. Margo and I facilitated the process, but stayed out of the way as much as possible. I'm still amazed by what these kids could do.(Full disclosure: Margo did the the final edit.)
What kindergarteners need to know about 1st grade is still as true as the day these kids shot this footage, but the technology has greatly improved. I wish I could redo it again today...but my kid's in middle school now, and barely remembers this video..

Roger Wagner's Back!

Probably the biggest news for me so far out of this years NECC at Atlanta was the return of Roger Wagner, and his rejuvenation of Hyperstudio. You can read about it here, here, and here.
I can remember when every tech savy teacher I knew was teaching kids how to compose in Hyperstudio....