New presentations and workshops for 2013-14

Kill the cash cows. This is the only acceptable perspective for both intrapreneurs and their upper management. Cash cows are wonderful—but they should be milked and killed, not sustained until—no pun intended—the cows come home. Truly brave companies understand that if they don’t kill their cash cows, two guys/gals in a garage will do it for them. Macintosh killed the Apple II: Do you think Apple would be around today if it tried to “protect” the Apple II cash cow ad infinitum? The true purpose of cash cows is to fund new calves. Guy Kawasaki

Our state technology conference organizer, TIES, has recently sent out a request for proposals for workshops and sessions. This a great conference, full of forgiving colleagues on whom it's great to try out new "material" so I am taking some time to review.

Each year I try to toss some old sessions and add a few new ones to my repertoire. Tossing the oldie but goodie (killing the cash cow, as Kawasaki puts it) feels like abandoning a beloved child, but a speaker's gotta do what a speaker's gotta do. I've seen too many speakers who could give their keynotes in the sleep - and maybe they are. 

These sessions are being removed (or seriously remodeled) 

• Is Technology Making a Difference in Your School? 
• If You Think You Can Do a Thing: Measuring and Improving Teacher Attitudes Toward Technology Use
• Dipping One’s Toes in the Educational Networking Stream: Using the Read-Write Web in Schools 
• E-Books, E-Gads! Promises, Pitfalls, and Practicalities 

And these are being added.... 

Workshop: The Responsive Classroom: Using Tech for Feedback, Assessment, and Discussion

In this hands-on workshop, we will experience using and creating technology-enabled interactive experiences in the classroom. Using online tools like Poll Everywhere, Socrative, Padlet, TodaysMeet, and GoogleDocs, participants will design activities that make the most of a classroom in which every student has a device.

Workshop: Teck Check: Evaluating Technology Use in Your District

Ever wonder how your district compares to others in its technology use? Using five checklists, participants will complete a short but comprehensive assessment of technology implementation in their districts. From infrastructure to student skills, we will examine where schools should be now and where they should be heading. 

Presentation: Everything I Know About Engagement I Learned in Kindergarten

Surveys show that engagement levels drop precipitously from elementary school to high school. What might secondary educators learn from their elementary peers about keeping students more interested in learning? Ten practical strategies and examples will be discussed.

Presentation: A Novel Plan to Develop an E-book Collection

E-books offer some genuine advantages over their print cousins, but many publishers are reluctant to provide titles to libraries for circulation. Students and staff are using a variety of personal devices to read e-content. Yet the demand for e-content is growing. This workshop offers a pragmatic approach to developing an e-book collection in your school that takes these challeges into consideration.

I try to remind myself that the role of a teacher is not in supplying answers, but in presenting problems in such a compelling way that the student want to solve them for themselves. Good workshops and presentations are about learning not just from the voice at the front of the room, but from all participants. And good learning experiences leave one confused - but confused at a higher level.
 

BFTP: Sanctity of print

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post May 4, 2008. (With three grandsons in the house this long weekend, I'm not getting much writing done!)

What is cumul.us? cumul.us is a place to get simple, accurate, and useful weather information.

What makes it simple and accurate is that it collects weather forecasts from several sources and combines them together to give you a more accurate average, using the idea of the "wisdom of crowds". In short, cumul.us is the "wisdom of clouds". Not only is there data from meteorological sources, but people can make predictions themselves.  (from the cumul.us help page)

Monica Hess's article "Truth: Can You Handle It?" (Washingtonpost.com, April 25, 2008) uses culum.us as an example of "what happens to the concepts of truth and knowledge in a user-generated world of information saturation," questioning the "wisdom of the crowds" theory and students' attitudes toward information quality. Although the article doesn't cover tons of new ground, it is well-worth spending a few minutes reading.

Among other topics, Hess describes a number of ways teachers and librarians are working to insure students pay attention to the quality of the information they use in research projects. In one example a teacher requires that students use a certain number of print sources of information. Not an uncommon requirement.

But is requiring print sources of information in a paper or project desirable, practical or effective today? Why is print - a format - considered sacred by so many teachers and librarians?  Should we automatically assume that the quality of information in a book or magazine is superior to that "found on the Internet?"

Here are three reasons that we should drop the "must contain print resources" requirement:

1. Such a requirement does not require any analysis of information quality on the part of the student. BOTH online and print resources need to be judged by their authority, currency and objectivity. The automatic assumption that print resources are reliable is dangerous. 
2. Such a requirement may limit the questions students might explore. A few years ago, my son Brady wanted to do a term paper for a college psychology class exploring the question whether playing video games (his passion) lead to increased real-world aggression on the part of the player. Because of strict requirements on the ratio of print to online resources, he found that he could not find enough sources for the topic (or so he said.) He changed his question to one of less personal interest and relevance to him. Does this happen to many students wishing to explore contemporary issues in their research?
3. Such a requirement ignores that many resources are identical in print and online formats. As many students (but possibly fewer adults) recognize, much of what can be found in hard copy is available online. Must a Newsweek or Encyclopedia Britannica citation come from its print incarnation - and why? Does information from a Google BookSearch count as an online or a print citation? What are web-based e-books? The line is blurring.

Here is my modest proposal. Drop the requirement that students use print resources. Period. But ADD the requirement that each citation include a sentence that argues for the authority of the source.

Is requiring print resources a sacred cow that needs to be put out to pasture?

Image source: Brady Johnson

Another book arrived

My copies of the Indispensable Librarian, 2nd edition arrived in yesterday's mail.  As I reasoned when my last book was published:

In my expert opinion, everyone should buy a personal copy, especially younger educators. In only a few short years, you all will be supporting me through government programs anyway. If you buy this book, you are still supporting me but at least you are getting something in return -  firestarter, short table leg prop, emergency bathroom tissue, or business expense tax write-off. 

Oh, and maybe some helpful ideas about how to create a relevant library program that's good for kids.