Take Me to Your Leader(s)

I recently had the opportunity to help Will Richardson with a breakout session at the CASE Winter Leadership Conference. CASE is our statewide school administrator organization, with membership including superintendents, central office administrators and building level administrators. While Will�s keynote was the following day, our goal with the breakout was to hopefully initiate some conversations that administrators would take back and continue in their schools and/or districts.

We used Mark Pesce�s Fluid Learning blog post to spur discussion, and created some essential questions and a graphic organizer to go along with it (thanks Ben Wilkoff, Bud Hunt and Mike Porter for help with all that). We also created a wiki page with some additional readings and essential questions, to hopefully spur even more conversations among administrators, teachers, and all stakeholders about the �shifts.�

Hopefully the fifty or so folks in the room felt it was worthwhile, and with a little luck many of them will use what we did � or the additional readings and questions on the wiki � to help continue the conversations in their schools and districts. But I also got to thinking that perhaps I should share out that work here, since it�s unlikely folks would stumble upon that page on the Learning 2.0 wiki by chance.

So, in case anyone can use it, here is both what we used in the session, and the additional eleven sets of readings paired with essential questions. Please consider taking some or all of these to an administrator near you.

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Read Mark Pesce's blog post.

Essential Questions

• Capture Everything: What's worth capturing in my classrooms? My building? My district? Audio? Video? Text-based assignments? Student work? Writing?
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• Share Everything: Where can I share it? With whom? What audiences is our organization working to serve? How will they benefit from these shared items? Who needs to see what�s going on?
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• Open Everything: What are the closed silos of information in our schools that shouldn't be? What things outside of our schools have we closed (blocked)? What can we do to open both of those up?
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• Only Connect: How can I help my students and teachers connect with content, with each other, and with others outside the classroom (students, teachers, experts, mentors, the community, etc.) in a meaningful way?
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• What questions do I have for my administrators/curriculum staff? Teaching Staff? IT Staff? Students?

Graphic Organizer for this activity (Word, PDF). Feel free to download and use.

Online, editable pages for each of the questions above: (Capture Everything, Share Everything, Open Everything, Only Connect, What Questions Do I Have). As you have these discussions at CASE, at CoLearning, in your schools, and in your communities, please share out the results on the appropriate wiki page. It might take a few minutes to get the hang of editing a wiki, but you'll figure it out - give it a shot. And, don't worry, there's a history page so if you accidentally delete something, you can get it back.

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Here are some additional resources and recommended activities for administrators to continue their learning about - and sharing of - network literacy.

Additional Recommended Readings and Questions

The following is a long list of thought-provoking blog posts, articles and videos that can help administrators start or continue conversations in their school districts, schools, and communities. Each one is accompanied by a set of essential questions that can guide you as you read the article and can help further spur discussion.

1. Essential Questions
   What literacies must educators master before we can help students make the most of these powerful potentials? What�s one thing you are going to do in the next six weeks to help you begin to master these literacies? How does "authentic" assessment change when the student's audience is the world?
   
   Read Will Richardson's Footprints in the Digital Age from the November 2008 issue of Educational Leadership.
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2. Essential Questions
   We know that good teachers existed before the current wave of technology, but can a teacher today be the best teacher they can be and truly meet the needs of their students without using technology? What implications does this have for professional development and teacher evaluation? What implications does this have for the technological literacy levels of administrators?
   
   Read Karl Fisch's Is it Okay to be a Technologically Illiterate Teacher? blog post (including comment thread) and National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T).
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3. Essential Questions
   What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century? Are we as educators currently literate? If not, what implications does that have for our students, and what proposals can we put in place to get all educators to a basic level of 21st century literacy in a reasonable amount of time?
   
   Read NCTE's definition of 21c literacy along with The Partnership for 21st Century Skills English Skills Map.
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4. Essential Questions
   Do you believe schools foster inquiry and passion in students? If so, are your schools currently structured to do that? Are students regularly asked to research, collaborate, create, present and network in your schools? If not, what can you do to change that?
   
   Read Chris Lehmann's blog post Talking to 49 Superintendents along with his Ignite Philly 5 minute presentation.
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5. Essential Question
   Of the 10 things the author thinks we should unlearn, pick the three that most resonate with you. Now, how are you going to foster �unlearning� those things for you, other administrators, and teachers in your school/district?
   
   Read Will Richardson�s Steep Unlearning Curve blog post.
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6. Essential Questions
   In a rapidly changing, information abundant world, what should students know and be able to do? What should �school� or �learning� look like in a world where almost all factual information is literally a click away? How do we help students create their own Personal Learning Networks? What steps are you going to make to create your own PLN? Which of the suggestions in Shift Happens � Now What? resonates with you, and how can you go about implementing them?
   
   Read Stephanie Sandifer's blog post Shift Happens � Now What? and watch this version of Did You Know?/Shift Happens (Vision Remix, Fall 2007). Also explore the Shift Happens wiki for more information.
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7. Essential Questions
   Do you agree that the culture of most educational institutions today is insulated, that it actively tries to block out the �outside� world? If so, do you believe that educational institutions can survive (and thrive) with that culture? If not, what are some steps you can take to open up the culture in your school/district?
   
   Read Bill Farren's Insulat-Ed blog post and we also highly recommend reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky.
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8. Essential Questions
   Where do you rank yourself in terms of competency on the NETS for Administrators? What do leaders really need to know about this? What are you (your school, your district) doing to help your leaders grow in this area?
   
   Read the National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A) along with Scott McLeod�s An Absence of Leadership (pdf) article from ISTE's Learning and Leading with Technology magazine.
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9. Essential Questions
   What kind of collaborative partnerships - physical or virtual - can you develop with folks outside of your school(s)? (universities, corporations, other schools, etc.) What steps can you take to engage with these collaborative technologies yourself, both to learn and to model for our students?
   
   Read Will Richardson's article World Without Walls - Learning Well with Others from Edutopia.
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10. Essential Questions
    Take a look at the seven survival skills that Wagner postulates through the lens of a typical classroom in your school (or, if you�re at the district level, a typical elementary, middle, and high school classroom). How�s that classroom do on those seven skills? Pick three of the skills and brainstorm ways to work with teachers in your building to strengthen their presence in the typical classroom.
    
    Read Tony Wagner's article Rigor Redefined from the October 2008 issue of Educational Leadership, along with this post on the Google Blog.
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11. Essential Questions
    Is it important to bring meaning and significance into the classroom? Do you think the way students portrayed themselves in these videos is fairly accurate for today�s student? How can we leverage the �networked� student, and the technological tools we have at our disposal, to empower our students to pursue real, relevant, and rigorous questions?
    
    Read Kansas State Professor Michael Wesch's blog post and watch some of his videos (A Vision of Students Today, The Machine is Using Us, and Information Revolution). Also watch Wendy Drexler's Networked Student.

Start Reading Blogs

The only way to truly begin to understand the literacy of networking is to participate. We would recommend subscribing to 3 to 5 blogs to begin with (ask your tech folks for help if you don't know how to subscribe). We would highly recommend that you subscribe to Will Richardson's Weblogg-ed and to LeaderTalk. Then find one to three more blogs that interest you, either by asking people you know, following links in Weblogg-ed and LeaderTalk, or by doing a Google Blog Search.

Read those blogs for two to three months, commenting when you're ready and have something to say. Then consider starting your own blog, either an individual blog or a group of educators in your school/district, to continue the conversations you're having about teaching and learning in the twenty-first century.

Consider attending Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation on February 21, 2009.

Publish in Wikipedia � or Perish?

Via ReadWriteWeb comes this story from Nature that any scientist that submits an article to the journal RNA Biology for their new section on RNA molecules, must also create a Wikipedia page summarizing their work.

"The novelty is that for the first time it creates a link between Wikipedia and traditional journal publishing, with its peer-review element," says Alex Bateman, who co-heads the Rfam database. The aim, Bateman says, is to boost the quality of the scientific content on Wikipedia while using the entries to update the Sanger database.

RNA Biology will require Wikipedia pages from all authors who submit work to a new section of the journal, to be launched later this week, that describes families of RNA molecules. The first paper scheduled is "A Survey of Nematode SmY RNAs"¹; its corresponding Wikipedia summary can be found here.

And it appears as though they�ve given this some thought and have experimented with other entries to Wikipedia, as there�s also a database they�ve been building that gets synchronized with Wikipedia every night.

The Sanger Institute created the Rfam database in 2005, and it now contains data on about 1,200 RNA families from some 200 complete genome sequences. Sanger last year started to experiment with the idea of using Wikipedia to improve the database. It set up an RNA subsection on the encyclopaedia, called RNA WikiProject ², which has the same entries as those on the Rfam database. The database is synchronized each night with Wikipedia, so that any changes made to the Wikipedia pages are transferred to the corresponding entries in the Rfam database.

Bateman says he has been "pleasantly surprised" by scientists' willingness to edit the RNA Wikipedia pages. Most of the edits are made by a core group of around 15 researchers, but there's a long tail of other scientists who pop in sporadically, he says, often to fix or add information about molecules specific to their research.

Hopefully, this will be the start of a trend of other scientific journals doing the same thing.

The RNA wiki is a subset of a broader project, the WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, which has marshalled hundreds of scientists to improve the content of biology articles in Wikipedia. It, in turn, is collaborating with the Novartis Research Foundation on GeneWiki ³, an effort to create Wikipedia articles describing every human gene. Beyond Wikipedia itself, scientists are also increasingly using wiki technology to get scientists to help curate other biological databases (see Nature 455, 22�25; 2008).

You should read through the comments on the Nature post as well, including this one by Bill Wedemeyer from Michigan State:

Over the past two years, I and some of my students at Michigan State University have carried out an analysis of the coverage, quality and stability of the scientific articles on the English Wikipedia. We've analyzed hundreds of randomly sampled articles from the basic sciences, and have had roughly 100 articles reviewed by tenured professors expert in the field. Our data, being written up for publication, do not support Mr. Kohs' hypothesis that the RNA articles will degenerate into vandalism-riddled nonsense. On the contrary, we found that the developed articles (the so-called Featured, A-level and Good Articles) are stable and of reliably good quality. I presented our preliminary findings at a conference in July. I applaud Dr. Bateman and his colleagues for their initiative, which seems a promising method for outreach, connecting the scientific world with the public that usually pays for the research. We all hope for "broader impact", and this initiative seems likely to be effective.

Perhaps I�m just being optimistic this morning (I tend to alternate days, or sometimes hours), but I think this holds real promise for realizing the potential of Wikipedia and other socially co-constructed content.

Wikipedia Knew VP Picks Before You

The Washington Post has an interesting story about predicting who Senator Obama and Senator McCain would pick as their running mates:

In the days leading up to Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate announcement, political junkies glued to broadcasts and blogs for clues of McCain's veep choice might have done better to keep a sharp eye on each candidate's Wikipedia entry.

It turns out that some folks were watching the Wikipedia entries for clues to both picks, and both Biden's and Palin's entries saw the most substantive action in the days before the picks were announced. The story doesn't say whether this is due to insiders updating the entries to get them "accurate" before the announcement ("some of the same wiki users [that were making changes to Palin's page] appeared to be making changes to McCain's page"), or whether this is another Wisdom of Crowds situation, but I suspect it's a little of each.

I also find it interesting that there's a company, called Cyveillance, that has analysts monitoring sites like Wikipedia.

Cyveillance normally trawls the Internet for data on behalf of clients seeking open source information in advance of a corporate acquisition, an important executive hire, or brand awareness.

Now that's an interesting phrase, "seeking open source information," that I'm going to have to ponder for a while.

The Encyclopedia Of Life

1. Watch this embedded video (4:00).




2. Consider watching this TED video of E.O. Wilson (22:35).

3. Take a look at the FAQ's for the Encyclopedia of Life. Here are a few:

What does Encyclopedia of Life seek to accomplish? What are its objectives?

Ultimately, the Encyclopedia will serve as an online reference source and database for every one of the 1.8 million species that are named and known on this planet, as well as all those later discovered and described. Encyclopedia of Life will be used as both a teaching and a learning tool, helping scientists, educators, students, and the community at large gain a better understanding of this planet and all who inhabit it.

What impact will this have on science? On society?

Encyclopedia of Life should be one of the most significant developments we have ever experienced in the life sciences. It can be a �macroscope� comparable in power for discerning patterns in large amounts of information just as the microscope is for zooming to the small. Just as the biotechnology industry has been built upon the existence of large genomic sequence databases (such as GenBank), Encyclopedia of Life will have an equally catalytic effect on comparative biology, ecology, and related fields. By harnessing the research, commitment, and hard work of scientists across the world, The Encyclopedia will serve as a truly global resource for information regarding life on this planet. Such a comprehensive resource of information has never been available to the scientific community or society at large before. It will provide society at large a tool unequaled in scope and convenience for policy makers, educators, and the general public.

Who is ultimately responsible for constructing the Encyclopedia of Life?

Encyclopedia of Life is a collaborative effort. Ultimately, the tens of thousands of people with expertise around the world and their predecessors are responsible. In terms of practical accountability, efforts are currently being headed by a steering committee of senior officers from Harvard University, Smithsonian Institution, Field Museum, Marine Biological Laboratory, Biodiversity Heritage Library consortium, Missouri Botanical Garden, and the MacArthur and Sloan Foundations. The Atlas of Living Australia is in the process of joining, and we look forward to more major partners from all regions during the next year. Numerous organizations have already contributed to the conceptualization and development of the Encyclopedia.

Who will do the writing?

Unlike conventional encyclopedias, where an editorial team sits down and writes the entries, the Encyclopedia will be developed by bringing together (�mashing up�) content from a wide variety of sources. This material will then be authenticated by scientists, so that users will have authoritative information. As we move forward, Encyclopedia of Life and its board will work with scientists across the globe, securing the involvement of those individuals and institutions that are established experts on each species.

How will you ensure information on this website stays current?

Encyclopedia of Life and its staff intend to work with leaders in the scientific community to ensure that all content is accurate and current. Each day, we learn more about the species with whom we share this planet. For the Encyclopedia to succeed, it must receive regular and continued contributions from the field � from scientists across the globe � to ensure it stays current. Advanced software tools are being developed to mine the scientific literature in order to provide regular updates. In addition, the scientific community will use Encyclopedia-developed tools in their own research endeavors; when they are ready, they can submit updates with the push of a button.

What are you doing to ensure functionality in different languages/cultures?

A primary goal is to ensure that the content on the Encyclopedia is available in a wide variety of languages, so it can be accessed and utilized in communities across the planet. This is a global resource, and the ever-evolving product will express that. The Encyclopedia will work with individuals and organizations around the globe to translate the content into local languages. Also, a great benefit of standard formats for web pages is that it makes them easier to understand. We put a premium on good visualization, so that even those who may not appreciate text can still extract a lot of information. Finally, we will design the content in ways that it can be accessed usefully on handheld devices as well as on desktop screens.

Is this just for the scientific community?

No. Encyclopedia of Life is being developed to serve as a comprehensive resource for everyone, scientist, teacher, student, media, any interested party. It will be developed in a wide range of languages. Once completed, we believe the Encyclopedia will be a valuable learning and teaching resource for anyone who has an interest in Earth�s species.

How will scientists use this?

As a reference library and as a macroscope. For decades now, scientists in the biological community have called for the establishment of a database similar to what the Encyclopedia will become. They have developed many partial encyclopedias, covering different plant or animal groups. But the Encyclopedia will be the first common resource where scientists across the globe can both access and share information on all species. Encyclopedia of Life will unite key scientific communities throughout the world, improving communication, information sharing, and collaboration. It will allow researchers to explore and perceive patterns too large or complex to have been studied effectively with our old tools.

How will students use this?

It will allow a student to browse all of nature. The site will provide students one common web location where they can learn about every species that has populated the planet Earth. This one-stop shopping unites mammal, bird, bug, plant, bacteria, etc. in one location, providing a clear understanding of how our ecosystem works and improving student learning. Students and educators will be provided with a wide variety of tools for using the information on the species pages as well as for feeding their own information back into the system. Wherever a species name occurs, there may also be a hyperlink to its page in the Encyclopedia. So if you read a name of a flower in a poem or about an insect affected by global warming, you will be able to get a species biography instantly.

How will the public at large use this?

It can be a handy field guide that people take with them on hikes on a personal digital assistant. It can tell you all the plants that might be found in your neighborhood. In recent years, we have witnessed the impact that a website like Wikipedia can have on humanity, providing a common location for information on all things great and small. Encyclopedia of Life has the potential to be a similar phenomenon, serving as a catalog, database, and learning tool about every organism that has ever lived on the planet. In the same way that dictionaries help literacy, the Encyclopedia can help biodiversity literacy.

What about Wikipedia?

Wikipedia inspired us. Wikipedia accumulated about 1.5 million entries in English in its first four years. That gave us confidence that our tasks are manageable with current technology and social behaviour, although the expert community in a lot of the subjects for pages in Encyclopedia of Life may be only a handful of people. Wikipedia has also created some species pages, as have other groups. Encyclopedia of Life will, we hope, unite all such efforts and increase their value. The Wikimedia Foundation is a member of the Encyclopedia�s Institutional Council.

4. Check out who's involved.

5. Think about how you - and your students - can use this (launches in 2008).

6. Think about how you - and your students - can contribute.

7. Think about what this - and other similar projects sure to follow - means for education. And for the world.

Wikipedia: 4 Out Of 5 Experts Agree

The Denver Post ran an article about Wikipedia this week.

To try a more objective test than my own need to find Martin Scorsese's birthdate, The Denver Post asked five Colorado scholars to review the Wikipedia entries on Islam, Bill Clinton, global warming, China and evolution.

The results? Four out of five agreed their relevant Wikipedia entries are accurate, informative, comprehensive and a great resource for students or the merely curious.
The fifth scholar called his chosen entry "not very good," found some details to be inaccurate by omission, and said similar entries in more accepted encyclopedias like Encarta do their job better.

Who were the Colorado scholars?

Global Warming: Scott Denning, Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University.

Denning called the Wikipedia entry "a great primer on the subject, suitable for just the kinds of use one might put to a traditional encyclopedia. Following the links takes the interested reader into greater and greater depth, probably further than any traditional encyclopedia I've seen"

China: William Wei, Professor of History at the University of Colorado.

[Wei] call[ed] the basic entry on China "simplistic, and in some places, even incoherent." Wei said the Wikipedia entry mishandled the issue of Korean independence from China, for example, and the context of the Silk Road in China's international relations.

"One of its problems is relying on amateurs to contribute," said Wei, who admits he brings a rigorous perspective to the material as a specialist in Chinese Republican history. "I applaud a democratizing spirit, but quite frankly it can lead to, for want of a better word, mediocrity."

Clinton: Bob Loevy, Professor of Political Science at Colorado College (and frequent writer on Bill Clinton).

[Loevy] said the President Clinton entry was thorough and unbiased, giving fair weight to both Clinton accomplishments and scandals. The bulk of it appeared to have been written by the Clinton Museum and Library in Little Rock, Ark., Loevy said.

"It would have been a great place for a student to begin building his or her knowledge" on Clinton, Loevy said. As did the other professors, Loevy said he cautions his students to treat Wikipedia like any other single book in the library - any fact cited there should be double-checked somewhere else.

Islam: Frederick Denny, retired Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado (and a �40-year specialist in Islam�).

[Denny] was "quite impressed" with Wikipedia's 28-page entry.

"It looks like something that might have been done by a young graduate student, or assistant professor, or two or three," Denny said. He described the writing as clinical and straightforward, but not boring. Where important translations of Arabic language or fine religious distinctions are required, Wikipedia acquits itself well.

"I have a feeling there are very responsible people out there who are making sure this doesn't become" a free-for-all, Denny said.

Evolution: Jeffrey Mitton, Professor of Biology at the University of Colorado.

Mitton declared the entry "good," even if "stylistic infelicities abound." If a student read through the main entry and the primary links to supporting concepts, he would get a fine introduction, Mitton said.

Always the careful scholar, Mitton scrolled to the bottom of the evolution entry to the bibliography. The first reference cited was for the authoritative textbook on evolution by Douglas Futuyma, "so that is excellent, as it should be," Mitton observed. The rest of the source list was appropriate, and well-rounded, he added.

"Years ago, I never thought you'd be able to use a computer to find information so easily," said Mitton, who consults Wikipedia among other sources when he writes a newspaper column on plant species. "It has changed the nature of studying."

Now, obviously this is not a rigorous scientific study of Wikipedia. But I found it interesting on several fronts:

• That the reliability of Wikipedia merited a story in the Denver Post in the first place � in the entertainment section.
  
  
• That four out of five �scholars� on some pretty important and complex topics thought that Wikipedia was a pretty good resource.
  
  
• That there was no mention of whether any of the scholars contributed to the Wikipedia article they were reviewing.

That last one is always the question that I ask � and wonder why the writer doesn�t ask � after reading these types of articles. I did email the reporter that question, but haven�t heard back. It�s not like I expect the reviewers to take hours (or days) to clean up the articles, but you would think they might take an extra five or ten minutes to modify a few things since they�re there anyway. It almost seems like the thought never crosses their minds � or at least the mind of the reporter. It seems like such an obvious question to ask, and include the answer in the article.

This article was for the print newspaper, but I find it interesting that the print version doesn�t include the URL for Wikipedia (much less for the particular topics), and that the online version doesn�t include links. Again, that seems like such an obvious thing to do � at least to me. I wonder why they didn�t?

So, I guess my opinion of Wikipedia hasn�t changed much. I still think it�s an excellent resource for students � or anyone � wanting to delve deeper into any particular topic. As with any source, you shouldn�t rely on it exclusively. But think how often students (and teachers) in the past have relied on one source � often the textbook, with the assumption that it was both accurate and told the entire story. And, of course, the great thing about Wikipedia compared to a print resource is the links - you can easily find some of those other sources, which lead you to even more sources, and so on. To echo Professor Mitton, Wikipedia � and many other Web 2.0 resources like it � should change the nature of learning.