Wikis for Cooperative Learning

Image via Wikipedia

Jon F. Orech, a teacher at Downers Grove South High School wrote in Turbo-Charged Wikis: Technology Embraces Cooperative Learning about challenges in the use of wikis for collaborative learning:

When educators first tried wikis in the classroom, the realities often fell short of expectations. Usually students were disinterested in the topics or were not familiar with the technology, or were not adept with collaborative writing. The results usually consisted of disproportionate work distribution and copy-and-pasting: in other words, very little learning. Even if the work was evenly distributed, it resembled a “quilt,” with each student stitching in their own panel with little regard for what their partners wrote.

What was missing was a sound pedagogy for learning. By infusing structured Cooperative Learning strategies (Johnson and Johnson, University of Minnesota http://www.co-operation.org/) student-generated wikis become a much more productive activity.

Orech continues in his post to describe Johnson and Johnson's strategies to collaborative wiki projects. He summarizes the approaches and provides examples from his experiences that I will try to incorporate into our iTeam work. I recommend Orech's suggestions to anyone considering wikis for collaborative learning. Orech also includes links to a couple of popular hosted wikis that encourage use of their tools for education by providing free educational spaces and support specifically oriented toward educators:

Some of the more readily usable wiki interfaces are http://wikispaces.com and http://pbwiki.com. A slick website that evaluates wikis head to head is http://wikimatrix.org. Try it!

The selection of the most appropriate tool for your situation can be a daunting task (dozens of criteria for dozens of candidates). The third link in Orech's recommendations provides a web-based wizard to help with the selection process. Unfortunately, the Wikimatrix designers have not included many pedagogical criteria. I have used PBWiki (msad75.pbwiki.com), and Wikispaces (an experimental site before PBWiki solved the challenge of accounts for students who don't have email).

Do they differ pedagogically? Does it matter in the constant development of new features?

Creative Commons Resources

Sally Loughlin helps me to understand the context for change in schools. We started with face-to-face meetings but use several modes now that I spend more time working at UNE in Biddeford. During nearly every update we exchange our latest reciprocal recommendations for readings. On the phone last week, she recommended the most recent issue (Dec 2007/Jan 2008) of the ASCD journal Educational Leadership. The theme for the issue is Informative Assessment. She observed that many of the articles connnect with pre-service candidates that will take the Technology for Teaching and Learning course that starts later this month.

As usual, Sally's recommendations are right on target. The issue contains several useful articles. Mark Overmeyer shares his insights from leading improvement of student writing in What Student Writing Can Teach Us. He recommends using a modified form of rubrics to focus on informative assessment. I like his suggestions and want to use some of them in TTL but saw that his article is protected by copyright. So, I set off on a search for Creative Commons versions of rubrics for student writing.

I found Sharon Fagan's rubric and a writing checklist at the Maricopa Learning Exchange. The MLX encourages users to add sharebacks (a variant of trackbacks) to acknowledge use of resources. I have tried to do so in the links above but am not surprised to see that few sharebacks are listed. They have tried to explain it but it takes a lot of effort.

Denise Young at the University of North Carolina provides a lesson that uses "thirty copies of the rubric for student writing". LearnNC takes a different approach to acknowledging use:

We want you to use our resources for teaching and learning! That's why we publish them. To make it easy for you, we now license most of our content under a Creative Commons BY/NC/SA license, version 2.5. When you see this icon:

you know that you are absolutely free to use the resources on that page in your classroom. In fact, you can use the resource for any non-commercial purpose whatsoever, so long as you attribute it to its creator.

They even provide a snippet of code that makes it easy to acknowledge their contributions to shared resources:



Let's find ways to build this into our work, too.

Testing XO Compatibility

I participated in the XO Give one, get one program. I have been testing it to determine the extent to which it can support the kinds of activities that I think are important for technology integration in support of learning and assessment. Here, I test blogger for its compatibility. Both the Edit Html and the Compose views work but the link tool will not open a new window so that it won't allow me to create links. The Labels for this post: tool works well by bringing up suggestions as I enter leading letters of some of my standard tags.

Image source a Primary 5 Student's photograph taken with an XO OLPC Galadima, Nigeria, Creative Commons license.

Collaboration and databases for learning

Doug Lynch, Chair of our department, sent the following email message to me recently calling my attention to an article that he found:

Steve: I found this article that may be of interest as we craft grant plans...but has implications for your mission as well.
http://0-proquest.umi.com.lilac.une.edu:80/pqdweb?did=1017922091&
sid=5&Fmt=4&clientId=8421&RQT=309&VName=PQD
Douglas J. Lynch, Ph. D.

The citation for the article he recommended is:

Sara Dexter, Aaron H Doering, Eric S Riedel. (2006). Content Area Specific Technology Integration: A Model For Educating Teachers. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 14(2), 325-345. Retrieved December 19, 2007, from Education Module database. (Document ID: 1017922091 [link requires UNE Network access]).

The article describes an ambitious college-wide strategy for dual integration:

This dual integration (technology integrated in the content area methods course, and the content area integrated into the technology course) is the essence of the model of teacher technology preparation we present here. The fellows were essential as they were the bridge between these two domains of knowledge as well as between the instructors of the technology and methods courses. All participants' willingness to learn and to organize their efforts around the teaching and learning of that content area was also essential.

This supports the initiatives that Heather and (and Dan to a smaller degree) have started for integrating across Social Studies Methods and Technology for Teaching and Learning.

I followed another lead in the paper from a section where the authors described their process of establishing the ways of working together

The technology course instructor, and usually the project director, met with the methods course instructors in each content area to learn about the standards, important ideas and processes in that content area, and the learning outcomes for the methods courses. During these meetings we introduced the concept of mindtools (Jonassen, 1996) and started to identify, which technologies might be best for their students to learn. The mindtools concept, and later the notion of using technology to add value to instruction and assessment (i.e., technology making possible something otherwise impossible to do or difficult to achieve) proved to be generative concepts for the faculty members' learning. These ideas helped the faculty members focus on topics in their content area where technology could really help teaching and learning. That we argued from the outset that technology wasn't a panacea, but rather a tool with capabilities that could be very helpful in carefully selected instances, also lent credibility to the project staff and technology course instructor's efforts.

Doug had marked the Jonassen citation (1996) with the comment "get." The citation refers to the book Computers in the classroom: Mindtools for critical thinking. While we wait to get the book, I searched for related work from Jonassen. He surprised me with the best justification I have found so far for my claim that databases are valuable resources for teaching and learning. For several weeks, I have been trying to help Doug understand why I think that Zoho Creator is such an important development.

Databases may also be used as tools for interpreting, analyzing, and organizing subject content by learners. Student-constructed databases using a Concept Development Strategy and an Interpretation of Data Strategy requires learners to select information to collect and to organize it into meaningful categories (Rooze, 1988-89). Student-constructed databases have been used to support history instruction (Knight & Timmons, 1986) and lessons on seashells (Goldberg, 1992), and as an inquiry tool to aid higher-level thinking in a fourth-grade American Indian studies course (Pon, 1984). Constructing database queries is a form of hypothesis testing (Katzeff, 1987). The database shown in Fig. 1 was developed by learners studying cells and their functions in a biology course. Although the intellectual benefits of building knowledge databases is obvious, more formal research on the efficacy of these activities is needed.

Designing a database requires the learner to identify a content domain, sense an information need, and develop a data structure for accommodating the information to be included. Building databases involves analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information (Watson & Strudler, 1988-89). Database construction is an analytic process which engages important critical thinking skills such as evaluating, organizing, and connecting information; a few creative skills such as analogical reasoning and planning; and several complex thinking skills such designing a product, problem solving and decision making (Jonassen, 1996).
http://www.ed.psu.edu/insys/400/ssdb.htm

Let's get designing and building!

Analogous standards

Last Friday, I wrote about observing a PERB, the culminating performances of teacher candidates: Reading/Writing Workshop and GoodReads. On Monday morning, department faculty met to discuss approaches that we can use to meet the NCATE standards for diversity. Susan Hillman pointed out that we need to be able to show evidence of meeting the standards. A flash of insight took me back to SATs and GREs. The Educational Testing Service uses analogy questions because they probe higher levels of thinking than straight recall.

PERB is to Candidates as NCATE Accreditation is to Faculty.

As a department, we need to understand and show evidence of creating a program that meets the NCATE standards in the same way that we expect candidates to show how they have met the Initial Teacher Certification Standards. We talked about saving samples of student work to share with the accreditation review team. Early this morning, Tuesday, I saw that we have an opportunity to develop a win-win solution for students and the department. If we explain the analogy to candidates in the Technology for teaching and learning course, they will understand easily based on their prior knowledge of standards as they experience them. Then the shared resources that students create in the course can also serve as evidence for meeting the NCATE standards. We model using standards to continuously improve our practice at the same time we ask students to use standards to improve theirs.

Reading/Writing Workshop and GoodReads

Noelle Richard, a very recent graduate of UNE's Department of Education, presented her work at the Professional Education Review Board (PERB) yesterday. Candidates are charged with the task of showing the PERB panel of practicing educators that they understand and show evidence of having met the Maine Ten Initial Teacher Certification Standards. Standard Five addresses instructional strategies and technology:

Understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies and appropriate technologies.

Noelle described how she used Nancie Atwell's Reading/Writing Workshop approach in reading classes she taught at Saco Middle School (SMS). Maine's Middle Schools participate in the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI) so each seventh and eighth grade student and teacher has a laptop. Noelle saw an opportunity to enhance the program with technology using GoodReads. She learned about the book-oriented social networking site from a friend and used it personally. She thought that SMS eighth-graders would probably learn from and enjoy using the site, too. She proposed the idea to her mentor and worked through details required for a pilot program (permissions, email logins, rules, ... ). She reported that students and teachers enjoyed and learned from their use of GoodReads. She certainly convinced the PERB panel that she met the Standards.

I find great promise in her experience. It shows how our students can take their experiences with recent developments in network technologies and build on them in professionally productive ways. Standard ten describes the importance of contributions to professional development.

Demonstrates a strong professional ethic and a desire to contribute to the education profession.

Noelle contributed to the professional practice of a receptive school community. She helped me identify a potential solution to an issue that Lisa Hogan and I have been discussing at the MSAD 75 wiki. By sharing her innovation with the PERB panel, she also contributed to our broader professional learning community.

Thank you, Noelle for your work and your sharing. I look forward to following your work at GoodReads.

Organization for workshop classes

In her book, In the Middle, Nancie Atwell relates a story about Donald Graves visiting her classroom and identifying the basis of her success: organization. " 'Look,' he explained seriously. 'You can't teach writing this way if you're not organized. ... You two always ran a tight ship and you still do, but it's a different kind of ship.' "

When I first read this story, I worried because I don't think of organization as being one of my primary strengths. But as I read further, I started to take heart. Several of the tools that Atwell recommends for organizing workshop classes are paper-based forms. She writes at length about the evolution of her system. Finally she asks "again and again, as a teacher, what do I really need to know?" (p. 106)

For Technology in the classroom, we can ask "what do we really need to know, and how much of that can we capture in distributed data acquisition tools?"

The School and Society By John Dewey

I am reading Nancie Atwell's In the Middle to get a better sense of how Dan Rothermel approaches teaching reading and writing. As a department, we are trying to find ways to improve integration among courses. The question for me is how can we build on what students have learned or are learning in Dan's class?

Atwell writes about her reasons for organizing her classes as reading and writing workshops. She quotes John Dewey's School and Society to make a point about life in and out of school. I wanted to see the context of the quote so I searched in Google and found a copy of that book. I also found a new selection tool. So I test it here as an exploration of how to incorporate it into my work. The tool is a selection box that lets me select a passage and then put the snippet into my blog or a notebook. I can choose to insert image or text. Since the copy that Google scanned included a penciled highlight, I chose image:

The School and Society By John Dewey
The anonymous reader's pencil mark gives me the sense that others have participated in this written conversation.
I don't yet understand the html code that Google Books transferred to my blog. I'll see when I publish it.

After seeing the published version of my post, I was still confused about the html. I have now resolved the issue by understanding how to use the tool. And while I am thinking about this larger community, I note that Google Books gives me more of a sense of writing community in its popular passages listing:

Popular passages

Page 27
possession of our school system. To do this means to make each one of our schools an embryonic community life, active with types of occupations that reflect...

125 books (1901-2006)

Page 28
him with the spirit of service, and providing him with the instruments of effective self-direction, we shall have the deepest and best guaranty of a larger...

156 books (1888-2006)
...

I am part of a larger community of practice that spans both time and space. Google lets makes it easy to connect to others in this community.

Search serendipity

I have been creating activities for the course "Technology in [and beyond] the classroom" for Spring semester. I am building on resources that Intel provides at its Education site. In Destination America: Our Hope, Our Future, one of the exemplary unit plans that the site provides, I saw parallels with our present situation.

At first, I thought of asking students to complete a parallel assignment choosing an autobiographical perspective or a role. But last night, I thought of another way to frame the activity: Autotechnography. So first thing this morning, I searched Google for autotechnography and found only one hit: Engl 106-xxx, a pdf describing developments of another syllabus associated with Engl 680M: New Media at Purdue. I think they have interesting insights that will serve us well:

This studio goes beyond the traditional seminar model by not only investigating contemporary theories of media and media making but by actively producing new media. Readings and discussion topics will bring up questions such as “What is the New Media?”; “Why blogs, wikis, and podcasting?”; “When did virtual worlds and video games become educational?” and many others.

Alas, I reinvented a concept but it is in the early stages of development. But I also discovered another branch of a distributed professional development community. So, I tried to see whether the term has earlier roots, too. So I searched for technography and got thousands of hits. The one that resonated most with me came from DeKoven at www.deepfun.com. While I think that copy-writing the word is unnecessarily restrictive, the concept is powerful:

We often used tools in this way at CTLT but the video clip explains why the approach may be so effective in some situations. I commented on DeKoven's page at Google Video:

The clip captures the essence of the conflict and its resolution starting at 4:09.

I look forward to using the approach in our course.

Gave one, anticipating the learning community

In an earlier post, I wrote about David Pogue's review of the XO laptop and the plan to make them available to North American residents as part of the effort to reach a critical mass for the program. Today is the first day that U.S. and Canadian residents can give one, get one XO Laptop. They warn that the organization cannot provide support. They encourage people to think of themselves as part of a world-wide learning community rather than as customers of a commercial product. That makes sense to me! I hope that pre-service teachers learning about how to integrate technology into elementary school classrooms will join the community, too!

Receipt ID: xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx	Placed on Nov. 12, 2007
Payment For Quantity Price G1G1 program donation 1 $399.00 USD Subtotal: $399.00 USD Shipping & Handling: $24.95 USD Total Amount: $423.95 USD

Templates for PBWiki

Developers at PBWiki have created an important new feature: Templates for your PBWiki

We’ve have created a quick and easy way for you to create your own templates. A template allows you to easily replicate wiki pages from the same design or style. They save time because each wiki editor does not have to create the document format on their own.

The Education Department at UNE has started a project to support students' understanding of lesson planning. I tried to identify ways to provide templates for various types of lesson plans (direct instruction, inquiry-based, problem-based, ...). PBWiki provides a set of tool across the bottom of each wiki page. They include a feed of Recent PBWiki Blog Posts that called the innovation to my attention. I'll test it for this application.

Collaborative professional development - flu simulations

A case-study in continuing professional development

Tools for networked collaboration and learning develop at mind-spinning rates. As much as one might want to stay on top of all the new opportunities, programmers and system developers produce too many new ways of working. The only reasonable response that I have found is to share the responsibilities among people with common interests. Designers and analysts at the Center for Teaching Learning and Technology (CTLT) use this approach. I both benefitted and contributed to the informal cooperative learning effort.

Throughout my professional life, I have found simulations to be valuable tools for learning and research. So, that is one of the areas where I explore and share with colleagues. Several years ago, I found StarLogo and NetLogo, two variants of the Logo language, that facilitate the exploration of a wide range of phenomena using an approach called agent-based modelling. My colleague, Nils Peterson wanted to anticipate the adoption rates for the new WSU portal he and others were developing. I fired up an epidemic model in NetLogo and modified it to predict how dissemination of the new technology might develop. Theron Desrosier, another designer at CTLT, saw that work, appreciated the learning he derived from the experience, and filed the idea in his long-term memory (with few details other than an association with me).

Fast forward to this week. I have been studying the National Educational Technology Standards for Students and Teachers (NETS-S, NETS-T) as part of my preparation in developing a course to help elementary teachers facilitate learning using appropriate technologies. I may need to brush up on this topic because the new standards encourage teachers to use simulations to support learning. Yesterday, Theron indicated that he too wanted to brush up on his understanding of simulations for learning. He commented on my blog post: Institutional commitment to learning via real problems:

Do you remember the name of the tool you used to play with ant movements, evolutionary change, and tragedy of the commons. I am looking for something students can use to investigate the spread of flu.

Thanks, T

He wants to help students engage with the Flu project, an institution-wide effort to integrate learning through common reading and disciplinary extensions.

I could have responded to his question by firing off and email message with the words "starlogo" and "netlogo" and a suggestion to use one or both in a Google search. That might have met his immediate need. However, I chose to respond by writing this contribution to the examples of real cooperative learning because I think it has value beyond my serving as an extension of Theron's wetware.

Notes: I first wrote this post as a real example of informal collaborative learning for our department's new exploration of a wiki as a collaborative learning and work environment. I shared the link to the wiki page with Theron in a comment on my original post in this blog. Fortunately, I tested the link from a second machine because it reminded me that in the exploration we agreed that it be private as members of the department initially learn about wikis. Since I prefer working publicly, I copied the protected post and pasted it here with relatively little effort.

In reflecting on the voice, I see that I wrote it as if it were a blog post (personal) rather than as a disembodied wiki contribution. Maybe it really belongs here rather than in the UNE Teachers wiki. I'll have to pay more attention to the differences.

Service-learning in 2017

A visioning exercise for KIDS Conference
Learners (students, teachers, administrators, community members and others) work together as teams to identify problems and opportunities to engage in real activities that contribute to the growth and sustainability of themselves and their communities. Community organizations solicit help from student teams and provide context for engaging problems that are rich sources of learning. Students read inspiring descriptions from portfolios of past projects and lead and develop new projects.

Institutional commitment to learning via real problems

Nils, Theron, John Gardner and I have been discussing new directions for universities as global networks develop. Nils points to ThinkCycle as an exciting direction:

... it's worth looking at ThinkCycle which seems to be engaged in an Extension-like coupling of universities with creative capacity to people with real problems. They say: ...

What strikes me about this approach is the global literacies that ThinkCycle is promoting which I marked in bold in the quotation above. Not only are students gaining experience on problems, they are building evidence of their competencies in what might be called a portfolio within the system. Since the system is open for searching, one could imagine members of one team seeking out people in the system who have demonstrated expertise in a related area and enlisting their help.

What is important about this form of global university education is that it is authentic and open. Its not a closed couse in WebCT and the problems are not toys with right answers set by the instructor.

Nils emphasizes the role of the students and their motivations. These portfolios have an important institutional role, too. For example, samples of students' Operations Management projects in DecS 340 served to help faculty and CTLT staff to reconceive approaches to learning and guiding learning. Their impact with faculty motivated my support for CTLT's development of ePortfolios.

Note that ThinkCycle derives from projects at MIT. As an institution, MIT, has a long and well-developed culture of engaging many students in real problems that are also academically rigorous. I suspect that culture of engagement is one of the reasons they can give away their OpenCourseWare and not worry about protecting their intellectual property and institutional reputation. Benkler's Wealth of Networks and Tapscott and William's Wikinomics argue that the principles are broadly applicable. Let's find out how far we can extend them!

Collaborative Service-Learning Projects

"3 helping one another will achieve as much as 6 working SINGLY"
Theron linked to a mind map image that he said remixed a presentation that John Seeley Brown gave at MIT. He also linked to a news story about the presentation. His post reminded me that I had read the story a few months ago. But now I see it in a new light. Seeley Brown cogently explains the approach I think we should take to building the networks for the new high school phase of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI details):

Rather than treat pedagogy as the transfer of knowledge from teachers who are experts to students who are receptacles, educators should consider more hands-on and informal types of learning. These methods are closer to an apprenticeship, a farther-reaching, more multilayered approach than traditional formal education, he said.

In particular, he praised situations where students who are passionate about specific topics study in groups and participate in online communities.

"We are learning in and through our interactions with others while doing real things," Seely Brown said. "I'm not saying that knowledge is socially constructed, but our understanding of that knowledge is socially constructed."

In one example, architecture students work on group design projects in a public setting. A professor's critique of a project is instructive to others. Collaboration is valued and encouraged along with individual achievement. Perhaps most meaningful is the students' process in completing the project, he said.

"As you work shoulder to shoulder with other kids, all the work you do and work in progress is done in public. So others understand what you're thinking," Seely Brown said.

The evolution of the Internet can facilitate this approach, he said. Web 2.0 tools, such as wikis and blogs, make information sharing and content creation easier.

I have described the irony that students are using social networking tools and schools are blocking the sites. Let's build teams of teachers and students working together as we have started at OpenProject and aim for an even greater multiplier!

More incentive for dissemination of feeds and reading

In a recent post, Viral dissemination of feeds and reading, I described how Google Reader can help with dissemination of better communication and collaboration practices.

"This 'Email an item from Google Reader' tool seems like it can help encourage use of feeds and readers."

They provided another incentive recently by adding the ability to take your reading off-line. With the click of a button in reader, your browser downloads enough blog posts to a local database to keep you busy for hours catching up on reading that you could not get to in the office.

The way they have implemented reading off-line is even more interesting because it sets up the infrastructure necessary to use a wide range of web apps off-line. The project is currently in beta but it is open-source so I expect that it will develop quickly as external developers provide feedback and new ideas.

Working in Public: Linking Knowledge to Action

In discussions about using Ning.com networking tools for school district business, Kate Greeley and I discussed several advantages and challenges. In looking for a reference link for a paper I am drafting, I discovered another advantage.

Bob Sutton and Jeffry Pfeffer identified a widespread problem in institutions and businesses that they called The Knowing-Doing Gap: managers know what needs to be done but very frequently do not implement the practices. Recently, Sutton reflected on an innovation described by Diego Rodriguez at Metacool To Do Lists: A Way to Link Knowledge to Action:

"Diego at Metacool has an instructive and inspiring new post. He has a picture and a great discussion of a 'To Do' list that was publicly displayed by the staff at the Denver Art Museum, which showed the things that they still needed to get done on a new addition. I love this because it not only advertises to donors what things they need money for, it also creates public pressure on the staff to get things done. As research on commitment shows, public proclamations are far harder to reverse than those that are made in private."

Sutton got one part of the innovation but Rodriguez took it another and more powerful step:

Even better would be to open up that to-do list to anyone. So when I find the typos on the FAA website, rather than writing a snarky post on my blog, I help 'em out by entering an item on their to-do list wiki. Now I'm part of the solution, and probably part of the brand. It's about leveraging the power of the many to create the best pile of real evidence possible about what works and what doesn't. At some point along the line this starts to feel a lot like open source. Might Mozilla really be one be one big public to-do list in disguise?

Back to the Denver Museum of Art. I wish they had a publicly addressable to-do list. I would add an entry right now. Something like "fix those crazy interior angled walls that everyone kept tripping over."

Hmmmm. Shall I add testing this idea to my public to-do-list?

International Student Survial Kit- gMap

Nils has engaged students from International Programs at WSU to help build Moscowwiki. Nils and I built some maps of Moscow using Wayfaring but they have stopped development. JB Krygier, a geographer at Ohio Wesleyan University in Columbus, has used projects in his course to achieve a similar goal.

So what about mapping your own data? If you can map your own data you can map what matters to you, or your organization, or your company, or your family, or your friends. Indeed, making your own maps with your own data means you are liberated from the confines of what other people think is important (and thus what data is made available) about the world.

Two students, Slesh Anand Shrestha & Trailokya Bhattarai, have created a survival guide to OWU for international students using the new Google Mapping tools. The final part of the assignment requires students to reflect on their mapping experiences:

Reflect on your project and relate it to other mapping you did on the web this semester. Is mapping your own data really more liberating than mapping with other peo/ples data? Can you forsee using the My Maps functions in the future? For what? Is My Maps and similar "map your own data" web sites going to have a impact beyond the "cool factor"?

I'd like to see some of those reflections.

The map includes fancier icons than those I have seen in the recently released Google MyMaps tools. I wonder whether they "come with" the Google Earth Pro tools that are available to educational institutions for free.

Wiki Research / Viral dissemination of feeds and reading

Nils Peterson and I have frequently discussed ways to get people to understand and use RSS feeds and readers to manage information streams. Unfortunately, we have encountered challenges in getting adoption.

Theron DesRosier and I worked closely together when we rode the bus daily but not as much at a distance. So, Theron's decision to start a new blog gave me hope for new opportunties to renew our dialogs. I learned about Theron's blog from Nils' RSS feed. This "Email an item from Google Reader" tool seems like it can help encourage use of feeds and readers.

Sent to you by SC Spaeth via Google Reader:

Wiki for Original Research

via One small step for man by nils_peterson on Apr 19, 2007

In SOTLing: Open Research Wiki? Theron DesRosier asks about a wiki for publishing original research, noting that Wikipedia explicitly eschews it in its encyclopedic mission. Its an interesting question: what are the appropriate ways to get original research published? What mechanisms of peer review are desirable? How might publication be an invitation to collaboration? I struggled [...]

Things you can do from here:

• Visit the original item on One small step for man
• Subscribe to One small step for man using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all all your favorite sites

Technology Integration Committee- Next steps?

Andrew McAfee is a professor and researcher who studies how technology can be used to improve enterprises. I read his blog and reflect on the ideas for contexts important to me.

He and a colleague have recently written a piece that argues that technology can contribute to competitive advantage. They conclude the article with a series of recommendations that leaders can take to help the transformation: Dog Eat Dog, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson:

# First, they need to look at how the company should be doing business differently. That means deciding what new tasks should be enabled with technology, and how widely they should be deployed.
# Second, managers need to lead the deployment of new procedures to success. People don't like changes to their jobs dictated from outside and embedded in software. Overcoming this inertia and resistance requires skillful leadership.
# Third, managers need to foster innovation by encouraging experimentation, collaboration, dialogue and all of the other activities that generate good ideas. That means building a technology infrastructure and an accompanying set of practices that reduce the cost of creating and replicating process innovations.

The MSAD 75 Technology Integration Committee faces a similar challenge. Sally Loughlin described the next phase of our work as follows.

TIC group will be meeting at the District Offices. We will review the tech plan and discuss how our group may support the new tech goals and new tech staffing.

How should we modify McAfee and Brynjolfsson's recommendations to fit our public school context?