Ustreaming and Live Blogging Daniel Pink Video Conference

Update 2-28-08: Well, it looks like we pulled it off. I'll reflect on it in another post eventually, but a few quick links. First, the CoverItLive live blog is archived below. Second, thanks to Kristin Hokanson the Ustream chat is also archived. Third, the Ustream archive is in four parts, available on Ustream or on the wiki. I haven't watched through them, but I think they're all there.
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Well, I�m a little worried that we�ll look back at this and say, �We should�ve quit while we�re ahead,� but we�re going to give it a shot anyway. This Thursday is our students� live video conference with Daniel Pink. They�ve finished A Whole New Mind and this is their chance to ask Mr. Pink some questions directly, as well as further discuss the book with their classmates. We�ll have all four classes of students (about 110 or so) in our Forum and will conduct a video Skype call with Mr. Pink. (One tech concern there � feedback. We�re asking him to wear headphones on his end, but on our end we have to broadcast the audio to the whole room, so we�re worried he�ll get a lot of feedback of his own voice when he speaks. In limited testing in-house, Skype does a fairly good job, but if anyone has any ideas we would appreciate it. Because we hope it will be conversational, it's tough to mute and unmute the microphones.)

Students will come up to the microphone one at a time and ask a question of Mr. Pink. He�ll respond and the student will have the opportunity to ask a clarifying or follow-up question if necessary. If not, then the fishbowl inner circle will have the opportunity to discuss the question if they have anything to add, with Mr. Pink a virtual participant in that inner circle. We�re hoping to get through about twenty questions or so in about ninety minutes, and then leave Mr. Pink time to reflect on this experience with the students.

Everything so far was in the original plan, but after some reasonable success with Ustream and CoverItLive last weekend for Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation, we�ve decided to push our luck a little bit. So, we�re going to attempt to Ustream the whole thing. We�ll point a camcorder and a microphone at the inner circle discussion and the big screen, so hopefully Ustream viewers will be able to hear the questions the students ask, Mr. Pink's response, and the inner circle discussion. We are doing this primarily so that the students� parents can watch and listen in, but of course it will be open to all of you. Here�s the Ustream channel we will be using and we'll be broadcasting from approximately 8:30 am MST through about 10:15 am MST on Thursday, February 28th.

While we�ve attempted to allow the Ustream chat through our firewall, sometimes we get it and sometimes we don�t, so we won�t be using or monitoring the Ustream chat. Instead, some of our students will be live blogging the fishbowl discussion using CoverItLive. I will be chat-jockeying the CoverItLive blogging (embedded below) and approximately thirty of the students who aren�t in the inner circle or asking one of the twenty or so questions will be commenting. I�ll be approving the comments as fast as I can and we�ll also hopefully have the live blog up on the big screen next to the Skype window so that all the students in the Forum can see the live blog if they wish. Again, this is primarily for our students to live blog, but other folks can choose to participate if they wish � we just ask you to not dominate the discussion and to make sure you attach your name to each of your comments. (If you haven�t used CoverItLive before, there�s a line for your name and then a box for the body of your comment. Once you comment once, it seems to remember your name.)

Now, a few caveats. Our primary goal is to simply get the Skype video conference and discussion with Mr. Pink to work. If the Ustream and/or CoverItLive don�t work, I�ll briefly troubleshoot those but then let it go and simply focus on the rest. And, again, the primary purpose of the Ustream is for the students� parents to be able to observe, and the live blog is for the students to use to discuss (and for the parents to be able to virtually watch the blog discussion). So, while we�re inviting the network in, we�re also asking the network to play nice.

So, wish us luck, and here�s the CoverItLive blog (if things go swimmingly, it will go live at about 8:30 am MST on Thursday).

Not Your Parents� Parent-Teacher Conferences

At Arapahoe, we hold parent-teacher conferences in both the fall (two nights) and the spring (one night). Teachers are available from 4:00 until 7:30 each night for 5-7 minute conversations with parents. Parents are strongly encouraged to attend, but it is optional.

Many teachers at Arapahoe have been frustrated by how often those conferences tend to focus on grades, with parents wanting to know what students need to do to get their C to a B, or their B to an A. We are asking our students to really focus on the learning, not the grade, so it�s frustrating when this opportunity to talk with parents so often focuses on the grade (especially because they have real-time access to teachers� gradebooks through our Infinite Campus Parent Portal).

This year Anne Smith was one teacher that decided to try something different.

Instead of concentrating on my students' progress via their grades in class, I conducted conferences with their learning as the focus. I asked my students to reflect on their learning based on the following questions:

• Assess your learning in class so far this semester. Look at your participation, growth in writing, comprehension, etc..
  
• Where, in terms of your learning, do you want to be at the end of the semester?
  
• How are you going to get there?
  
• What can I do to help?
  
• Write a message to your parents.

The students then were asked to bring home a copy of their learning assessment for their parents to read before conferences as well as place a copy in my class drop box for me to access at conferences.

It seemed to work well.

What was difficult about this whole process was that 5 minutes for conferences was definitely not long enough. I had actual conversations with parents about their child and feel like I took away more from them about how their child is growing as a learner, or how their child needs to grow as a learner. I felt like I listened as much as I talked which is a huge change from the way I participated in conferences before. I was the one relaying all my information to the parent rather than allowing them to give me insight into their child and react to what their child had written.

Click through to her post to read samples of what some students� wrote, and also read the 47 comments (as of this writing) from both students and parents. Because Anne took it a step farther,

I am going to ask my students and hopefully their parents to comment on this process as well. Yep, that's right I want the parents to create blogger accounts as well so they can participate in the conversation. After all, that was my goal all around to create a conversation about learning.

Definitely not your parents� parent-teacher conferences.

From talking with Anne I think this worked very well, but I agree with her that 5-7 minutes is not enough for these important conversations (it was usually more than enough to talk about grades.) I also think we should have students at these conferences, although what Anne did was the next best thing. The more we can have students, parents, and teachers involved in conversations centered around learning, not simply grades, the better.

Creating Personal Learning Networks: Part 1

One of the things we really want to explore this year is the idea of both students and staff creating personal learning networks. (Note: Clarence Fisher has a much better handle on this than we do, we're just getting started here, so you may go want to read his blog to get a more advanced education). For this post, I want to focus on the students. I have at least one teacher (Anne Smith) that�s ready to do this with some of her freshmen in their Language Arts class. I�m sure this will evolve (in fact, partially why I�m writing this is to get more ideas), but at the moment here�s what we�re thinking.

She�s going to help them set up an aggregator (more on the tool question below) and we�re going to seed them with a few feeds to get them started (suggested feeds in the comments, please). Then, once they're comfortable with that, Anne�s going to ask them to find some feeds of their own, on any topic they are passionate about (school appropriate but not necessarily school-related, if that makes any sense). At this point I�m thinking that�s plenty to get started with. From my own experience, it�s very easy to get overwhelmed, so while we won�t limit them, I think we will highly recommend they don�t subscribe to too many feeds.

They will then be responsible for reading their feeds each week, thinking about them, and then reflecting on them in their personal blogs. They will get some class time to do this, but will also be expected to do this outside of class. They will also be responsible for presenting interesting articles/themes to the rest of the class, probably twice each semester. After each student presents, the class will then react to that presentation by commenting on that student�s personal blog.

Anne�s written a first draft (Word, PDF) of what she�s going to distribute to students in a week or two (including the seed feeds that we have so far for students to choose from). Please take a look and we�d love to hear your constructive comments.

Our goals are two-fold. First, these are students in a Language Arts class, and they will be reading, thinking, writing and presenting on information that they find personally interesting and relevant. Critical thinking skills, information literacy skills, reading, writing, presenting skills � all fit well in our Language Arts curriculum.

Second, we hope to help them to begin to build their own personal learning network. To help them find trusted sources (and how to evaluate them in the first place to figure out if they trust them). To help them find multiple sources on the same topic, to help them compare and contrast and try to get multiple viewpoints on issues. To help them construct their own knowledge, to learn not just because it�s an assignment for school, but because it�s just too darn interesting, meaningful, and fun not to.

And this is a two-way street. They should not only be constructing their own personal learning network, but they should be learning how to be part of someone else�s learning network. How to provide relevant and meaningful information and analysis to others. We have a sign in our cafeteria that says, �Add to the sum total of the world�s knowledge.� While I don�t particularly like the way it�s phrased (the idea that knowledge is this huge collection of stuff that can be counted and summed), I do agree with the intent: they should be contributors and producers, not just consumers and users. Or, as Kurt Hahn said, �We are crew, not passengers.�

I�ve really struggled writing this post for two reasons. One, I�m insanely overwhelmed at the moment and haven�t had any time to read or think myself, and I can�t seem to get the ideas in my head onto the screen in any way that resembles the original brilliant thoughts.

And two, I�ve been struck with �tool paralysis.� I kept hoping that I would have the time to really evaluate Bloglines and Google Reader, Pageflakes and Netvibes and iGoogle, all from the perspective of a student, not for myself. But I can�t find the time to do it. And while I know the tool is not the important thing, I did want to pick the �best� tool available to help them be successful at this. But since I don�t have the time I�m thinking we may just go with Google Reader and ultimately iGoogle. I think Pageflakes and Netvibes may actually be better, but iGoogle has the G.A. (Google Advantage � trademark pending). Our students use Blogger, so they already have a Google Account. Google Reader is a nice aggregator. We are beginning to use Google Docs a lot more. If I ever find time to play with it, I think we�ll use Google Notebook. If they don�t have web-based email, Gmail is a great choice. And on and on. This can all come together with one login and in one place on iGoogle and maybe, just maybe, might be simple enough that the technology doesn�t get in the way of the learning (which is a big fear of mine right now). Finally, I think I may pick it for the same reason we picked Blogger a couple of years ago � I don�t think Google is going away anytime soon. I hope Netvibes and Pageflakes don�t either, but I think Google is the safest bet. Now, I know there are a lot of Netvibes and Pageflakes fans out there (and probably fans of other tools as well), so feel free to chime in on the comments. But I�m betting we�ll stick with Google Reader/iGoogle for the G.A.

So, I feel like this post is somewhat half-baked, as I can�t completely get my head around this idea or get my ideas out, so that�s why it�s titled Part 1. I�m really, really, really hoping my personal learning network will chime in with some wonderful comments that I�ll then feel compelled to pull out into a separate � and much better � post in a week or two. Also, I would love it if folks would submit suggested feeds that are of general interest to high school students that we could include in our seed list that they�ll be choosing from.

So, help me out here. Submit your comments and help me write an amazing Creating Personal Learning Networks: Part 2 post in a few weeks.

Blogging: In Their Own Words

At the end of the school year we were asked to try to get a video together about blogging to show at a conference for administrators in our state. The idea was that we were going to introduce them to live blogging and then actually have some folks in the audience live blog the keynote, with the keynote speaker being occasionally fed questions/thoughts/ideas from the blog. The details were a little fuzzy but, nice guys that we are, we scrambled to try to get something together.

So, about two days before finals, we hurriedly videotaped some students and teachers talking about blogging and then tried to figure out when we'd have time to put this together before June 13th (the first day of the conference), not to mention how to setup the live blogging, make sure they had enough info for it to work smoothly, get the wireless working, etc.

As it turns out, they decided to not go with this idea, which I think was a good thing given the compressed timeline - I think there's a good chance it would've been a disaster. They are considering doing it again for their next conference in August, which would be cool since the keynote speaker is supposed to be Daniel Pink, although I still worry about all the setup issues.

In any event, we had all this footage sitting around and I wanted to do something with it. I spent a little time editing and came up with the following. Please keep in mind a few things. As I mentioned, we hurriedly filmed about two days before finals, so we were only able to grab kids from a couple of classes and a few teachers that were available. So we don't have as wide of a selection of folks as I would like, and the quality of some of the video/audio isn't the best. (We had a wireless lapel microphone, but it didn't always work - meaning a good portion of the audio was just from the built-in camcorder microphone. You may have to manually raise and lower the volume sometimes to hear.) Obviously, I decided to post it anyway, so I guess it comes under the category of "good enough to criticize." I hope that - despite some of its shortcomings - some of you might find it useful.

Also, keep in mind that we've only been blogging for about a year and a half in my school, and many folks really only in the past six months or so, so we're still learning. We're pretty much still in the stage of moving and extending traditional classroom activities online, which I think can add value and enhance the learning when done well, but our next step is really to help our students develop their own personal learning networks through blogs and various other Web 2.0 tools. I hope that we will make some progress with that next school year.

I'm posting two versions, the long version, which is 15:30 (I have a hard time cutting students when they say such thoughtful things), and a shorter version (where I slashed - it was painful for me). I'm embedding the Google Video versions below, but you can also download Quicktime versions of both of them (320 by 240).

Long Version (Quicktime, 15:30, 67.3 MB)
Short Version (Quicktime, 8:16, 38.1 MB)

Part of the video talks about the fishbowl discussion technique (no relation to me!) used in conjunction with live blogging, you can learn more at these posts (1, 2 and 3).

Google Video Long Version (15:30)




Google Video Short Version (8:16)