Mark Hofer and I started a new community to focus on curriculum-based technology integration and new teacher preparation practices. The community centers around the Edtech Co-op blog where we and other community members will share ideas on the two themes. The Co-op is also involved with Curriki as a group that members can assign their lessons and units of study to.

We will be producing a podcast every two weeks or so working to discuss an essential question on curriculum or pre-service teacher preparation. Many of the podcasts will include guests who will bring their expertise and experience to share with our audience. One can listen to the podcasts via the blog or from iTunes.

I feel very fortunate to be working with Mark who has provided so much to the educational technology community through his articles for Learning and Leading with Technology and other journals. Mark’s students at the College of William and Mary are very fortunate to have a professor who was not only a social studies teacher but also an instructional technologist. Mark’s outreach into schools around Williamsburg working with teachers and administrators to analyze and improve their practices is another way that Mark makes a difference for students in K-12 schools.

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The College Board Advanced Placement program is making the shift away from knowledge-based to more concept and problem solving learning. The New York Times shares this information and reactions from AP teachers who are reviewing the new courses. It seems like the voices from the blogosphere are being heard.

In a previous post, I wrote about a conference that included three presenters sharing their research on multitasking, social networking and the brain. This post covers the presentation by Patricia Greenfield of UCLA and the Children’s Digital Media Center. Her research focuses on social networking.

Dr. Greenfield clearly demonstrated that our youth are experiencing a very different developmental experience than previous generations. The effects of being so digitally connected are being studied now with the long term ramifications upon our society very much in question.

Here are my notes from Dr. Greenfield’s presentation:

• Social networks are where students “hang out” now.
• Demographic changes mean that students have less opportunity and places to physically meet.
• Students in general are leading ever intense lives with multiple activities and responsibilities which leaves less time in the day to travel to meet with friends.
• Narcissism has increased significantly for high school and college students in the age of social networking tools.
• Normal developmental needs such as identity formation, peer relationships, relationships and sexuality, independence from family get projected out via the social networking sites and tools. Another term is “broadcast” as social networkers have the communication tools to broadcast out to a much broader audience than previously could be done before the growth of the Internet as a publishing and communication tool.
• Seeing a trend where people create online personas where they create a different persona than their real self.
• Two big questions as we look at social networking: What is becoming acceptable as normal? What are the repercussions?
• Social networkers are not seeing the amplification of their texts, IMs, images, videos, posts, etc. as they are projected out to a much wider audience than they realize.
• There is a need to increase our teaching of the concept of abstraction to help our students grasp how sitting alone in front of a computer screen typing one’s thoughts, sharing one’s real or fake persona, etc. is like being a room is filled with people.
• The idea of fame is so powerful in youth culture. YouTube is a big part of this.
• What are the long term effects of our youth going through their stages of development in this new socially networked world? Dr. Greenfield sees less growth of empathy, less interest in others and more narcissism as we depersonalize our interactions. One striking example of this is in just how much young people are moving away from using the phone for voice communication to use text messaging instead. Oral communication at least offers voices to understand one another better as opposed to inflection and emotionless text messages.

Take Away: As an instructional technologist working in an elementary school, I continue to think of the life skills/habits of mind that we need to help our students with to help prepare them for the socially networked world. Their digital and real world citizenship calls for an ever expanding skill set. Our Information & Communication Literacies (ICL) curriculum must be updated consistently to help our students understand the concepts of privacy, abstraction, multi-pathway communication, interactivity, etc. so they can make healthy decisions.

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So before I sign off until 2011 I wanted to stop and reflect on 2010…which in many different ways turned out to be a very good year.

Published my first book

Sure…it was self published but I don’t care. I wrote a freakin’ book! Still crazy…even more crazy is I’ve given away over 4500 copies and sold 150 copies to date (thank you to those that bought it!). I still have to pinch myself to think I did this….I sat down…a guy who hates writing, isn’t very good at writing, and wrote a book. If I can do it anyone can…that’s for sure. What I think surprises me the most is how much fun I’ve had giving it away. Which already has me thinking about my next book or next free PDF document (see sidebar). Whatever it is that is next I do wonder if I’ll ever “publish” in paper again.

Ability to Travel and Teach

I’ve only been using tripit.com for a little over a year, but in 2010 I traveled 165,899 miles according to Tripit…and still have 8,000 miles to go tomorrow before my travel for 2010 is over. I’m lucky enough to work at a place that values my thinking and work ethic enough to allow me to travel and teach others, and I’m excited that I’ll be back here next year to build on the foundation and relationships I’ve started working on here in the high school. I’m excited to see that two days ago I lost the foursquare mayorship for our school to an 11th grade girl. That and the launch of ISB Radio means we’ve got some geeks in the school and I’m exciting to pull them in and see what we can build and have fun with around social tools.

I love to travel…I love flying and I love teaching teachers. It’s been a great year, although I think of all the presentations I gave this year my best one was done right here in Bangkok for the TEDx conference back in September (Video here). As educators we’ve all been there. The perfect lesson, the perfect day…everything just clicked….about 90 seconds into this story I was feeling it. The scary thing is afterwards my wife came up to me and said “You were feeling it weren’t you?” She knows me way to well. I hope as 2011 rolls around I’ll be able to do more presentations/more consulting…right now….that’s where my passion is….helping teachers/schools near and far think about these kids in our schools today and how we need to be engaging them differently. I’m having fun motivating people….of all ages.

Top Blog Posts

Here are the top blog posts for The Thinking Stick in 2010 from Google Analytics:

1. Facebook

2. The Thinking Stick Home Page

3. Pre-Paid Data Plan on SIM Unlocked iPhone in the USA

4. Plan for SIM unlocked iPhone with data plan iOS 4.1

5. ’11 the Year of the QR Code

6. Evaluating Technology Use in the Classroom

7. Online Community Manager: A New Position in Education

8. Best plan for SIM unlocked iPhone in the US

9. Free Book Download

10. End of the Year Summative Assessment

Looking ahead

I have to say I’m just as excited about 2011 as I was about 2010. It’s a great time to be in education…and to have your passion be technology. Things are changing so fast and I love the pace….I wonder what will happen if it ever slows down.

2011 will see a new theme to The Thinking Stick (in development now), as well as more travel (hopefully) with my now reduces 90% contract here in Bangkok.

It’s a great time to be in education…and I’m excited to see what the new year brings.

Happy Holidays to all of you…thank you for reading…..and we’ll see you in 2011!

Cheers,

Jeff

Related posts:Best Plan for SIM Unlocked iPhone in the USA Pre-Paid Data Plan on an Unlocked iPhone NOW possible in America The Stick Turns 4!

International Teachers are different…we’re weird….we don’t like stability, we like change and challenge. We like travel, culture and to be honest I think we all like just being different. If you’ve met an international educator you’ll know what I’m talking about. Countries, airports, and airlines are just common conversation. We talk about “Bali Belly” the “Shanghai Shits” and the “India Illness” like it’s common conversation….seriously never start a conversation about being sick with an international educator….we share way more than you ever wanted to know.

But that’s us…..we live on year by year contracts, don’t try to make us sign a multi-year deal….cause that’s a deal breaker in itself (part of the reason we left Shanghai). We’re renegades, we’re individuals, and nobody is going to tell us where we’re going to live or that we can’t leave….cause we will just to prove you wrong. Yeah….International Educators are different. We expect open bars at conferences (over 50% of our food budget for Learning 2.010 was spent on alcohol…cause if you don’t have it people won’t come). We expect conferences to be in amazing locations. Borneo, Bangkok, Greece, Shanghai, Singapore, Egypt, Nice, etc. Yeah…..international conferences are rough.

And then there is the friendships you create. Deep meaningful friendships with people who become your family. My best friends little brother, who I’ve known since he was in 6th grade graduated from University at an elementary teacher and decided to try out the international teaching thing. His first posting has been Kuwait where he’s in his second year, meaning that he’s now having to decide whether to stay another year or decide if it’s time to move on. He wrote a blog post, a couple lately actually, talking about his decision and how attached one becomes to friends, a country and these amazing kids we have the honor of teaching. Some very reflective blog posts from a young teacher trying to figure out life, education, and the meaning of it all.

Created on an iPad by a Kinder Teacher for me.

And then there’s me…..maybe this blog post is describing me more then the general international educator (I’m sure they’ll let me know in the comments), but I’m constantly searching for something. The perfect school (doesn’t exist BTW), the perfect balance of online and offline, and what it is I want to do when I grow up.

As I’ve done more consulting and conferences in the past two years people ask me quite often, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”

It’s a questions I honestly can’t answer because I don’t know where I see myself in 1 year. But here’s what I do know.

I know I love teaching, I know that in the past two years as I’ve presented at more and more conferences, and consulted with schools, and now running the CoETaIL program with Kim, that I love teaching teachers. It’s not that I don’t love teaching kids….I miss it every day, but as I evolve, as my thinking evolves I find myself enjoying the presentations, the consulting, the courses, and the discussions with educators near and far.

So this year when it came to deciding to sign contracts at ISB for another year we sat down with the administration to see if I could have my cake and eat it too. Could I work in a school with students and continue to consult and present? Three years ago we reached an agreement that allowed me to take days without pay up to 20% to do consulting. Which brought me to ISB in the first place. With a new contract season upon us it was time to see if we could come to an agreement again….and I’m happy to say we did.

Next year I’ll be on a 90% contract at ISB as the High School Technology & Learning Coordinator. So I’ve given up 10% of my contract to focus on following my recent passion of consulting and presenting.

I have to pinch myself to see if this is still really my life. Working at a school willing to work with me (and all my craziness), being able to do what I need to do to stay stimulated as an educator, to keep growing as an individual, to be able to follow my passion, and to be married to a woman who not only supports me in my craziness, but pushes me to follow my passion (benefits of being married to a counselor?).

It’s hard to believe that I’m actually doing this…that I’m going to try my hand at consulting and presenting and seeing where it takes me….and if I don’t book any gigs…well…I get an extra 20 days next year to blog.

Related posts:A Discovery Educator Abroad visits SAS 2010 in Review Oh the places you’ll go

Which can only mean one thing….someone else nominated her….which is VERY cool!

What really has me excited is that a student at my school has a better chance at winning an Edublog Award before I do. (nominated in the Best Ed Tech Support Blog Category)

I do hope you take a look at Haley’s blog. Even if you don’t vote for her it’s a great example of how we’re using blogs here with students at our school. It’s a great e-potfolio of her work and you can click on a category in the sidebar to go through her e-portfolio that is now two years old and growing.

Two years of reflections, thoughts, writing, learning…all in one place…..all representing her.

If you get a chance……give her a vote…she’s a heck of a kid!

Related posts:Edublog Awards What blogs are you missing? Edublog and learnerblog.org

This would be the most time I’ve spend in front of the entire high school staff this year and I wanted to try and use the time to demonstrate technology and inform them of up coming changes all at the same time.

So I created a Pecha-Kucha presentation (20 slides 20 seconds per slide) to demonstrate one way you could have students create a presentation in the classroom. No more “about 5 minutes” or “about 10 minutes” of students reading text from a slide. No…6 minutes and 40 seconds exactly…and it’s fun…and you have to know your stuff…no faking a Pecha Kucha.

Within the presentation I talked about the school board finalizing our 1:1 roll out which will see 9th and 10th graders getting their MacBook Pros in 2012-2013 and the 11th and 12th graders the following year.

I then launched into how using technology should be revolutionizing our classrooms. How we should be utilizing more reverse instruction strategies in our teaching and ways we can use Moodle, Blogs, and Google Apps more effectively.

This is my first year in the High School and I’ve spend the first semester getting to know people and building relationships.

I ended the presentation with this:

“Starting 2nd Semester I want to form a partnership with you and look at teaching and learning through a new lens. I want to team teach with you, plan with you, and be in the classroom with you. Here’s what I’m proposing. I will partner with you for 1 period over a two week (total 5 classes) and together we’ll try and apply some of these strategies I’ve just mentioned. We’ll look at how we can use technology to find time in your classroom to have deep meaningful discussions. I’m looking for 3 teachers to be my partner for 2 weeks. We might fail…we might succeed…but one thing I can tell you…we’ll learn something.”

I had 8 teachers replay…..5 before I left the staff meeting.

Prepare yourself….2nd Semester is going to be a lot of fun!

Related posts:Two weeks to go Teachers and Technology Celebrating Teachers – Jim Fitzgerald

Just a quick announcement that I will be running a Webinar as part of the Intel Education Community on December 1, 2010 5:00pm PDT/ 8:00pm EDT (click on the link to register.)

Here’s the discription:

Using Cell Phones and Scan Codes in the Classroom
You’ve probably started seeing these scan codes popping up around your neighborhood, in stores, on packages, and in airports. If you haven’t then you will be seeing them soon. They’re called QR Codes or “Quick Reference” codes and they are taking the world by storm. Join Jeff Utecht and explore the possibilities of using QR Codes in the classroom and with the larger school community. Click the date below to register to attend.
December 1, 2010 5:00pm PDT/ 8:00pm EDT

Hopefully some of you can join me. We’ll have some fun…look at some sites and have a great discussion around how QR Codes can be using in the educational environment.

Related posts:AIS Conference and QR Codes in the Classroom 5 Billion Cell Phones and Poverty ’11 the year of the QR Code

My wife recently took 10 Middle School students on an Operation Smile trip into the mountains of Thailand near the Burma boarder. The Middle Schoolers spent their time playing the kids who came there to get surgery done. It’s a moving experience…the kind that shapes you as a person.

When the students get back they are given one assignment…..reflect on your experience.

Autonomy: Take as long as you need, and use the media that you want.

Purpose: Share your experience with others.

Mastery:?You can reflect anyway you want: Essay, blog post, video, presentation, etc.

One student decided to write an essay that I hope she decides to publish on her blog….it will bring a tear to any eye.

And then there is Brian. The lone 8th grader on the trip who decided to express his emotions and reflection using video. I get asked by teachers how do you have students use media and make it a reflection not just a retelling of what happened?

The answer, I believe, is in giving students a purpose. A meaningful purpose to reflect that is bigger than a grade, or an individual assignment.

Yes…I’m going to make you go to Brian’s Blog to view the video in hopes that you too will be so moved by his creativity and message that you leave him a comment or pass along the message of Operation Smile to others.

?

Related posts:When kids lead the way Videos that speak to the heart What is the purpose of a school web site?

I recently attended a conference in Washington DC on the topic of “Learning in the Digital Age: Multitasking, Social Networking and the Changing Brain”. The speakers were David Meyer of the University of Michigan, Patricia Greenfield of UCLA and the Childrens Digital Media Center” and David Rose of Harvard and CAST. Their presentations very much connected to observations and concerns that I have both as an educator and as a parent.

Here are my notes from Dr. Meyer’s presentation. I will share the notes from the other two presenters in future posts.

• He is a research scientist dealing with empirical evidence in his study of the brain.
• He doesn’t allow laptops in his classroom.
• There is an ever increasing pressure in our society to multitask. If we are feeling the strain now, what will our multitasking lives be like in 10 years?
• Multitasking means increasing inefficiencies.
• Learning suffers when one multitasks.
• While we know a reasonable amount about how the brain deals with multitasking, there is a lot more to learn.
• We are almost continuously in “task performance”. “The task of life with mental chatter is always on.”
• Task analysis helps us better understand multitasking.
• Definition for multitasking from a psychological scientific perspective- “Trying (but not always succeeding) to perform multiple tasks either simultaneously or in rapid alternation between them.”
• Types of Multitasking: Completely Sequential switching back and forth between tasks. Partially Simultaneous/Sequential and Completely Simultaneous.
• Multitasking is a major cultural phenomenon. Ever increasing pressure to multitask at work and at home.
• Disjointed (non-conflicting) Tasks- tasks that don’t used shared parts of the brain. Example is folding laundry while listening to music. Language versus visual/manual parts of brain. These situations are quite rare for most multitasking events.
• Conjugate (conflicting) Tasks- tasks that used shared parts of the brain. Examples are walking and texting, typing an essay and responding to IM.
• The Executive Cognitive Control portion of the brain must engage to handle multiple tasks.
• Scientists do behavioral measurement (reaction times and response accuracy) to measure and compare individuals doing single and multiple tasks.
• Scientists use PET and fMRI and EEG scans to also see the brain reacting to single and multiple tasks.
• Thus, scientists can clearly measure how individuals handle single and multitasks in how long it takes to complete the tasks and how efficient individuals are in completing them.
• The research demonstrates that multi-tasking brings in the consistent need for the Executive Cognitive Control (ECC) portion of the brain to activate which slows down the task completion process. In other words, the reaction time is increased the more complex the tasks are. Inefficiency increases when compared to doing a single task.
• Switching Time Costs- the term to describe the moving back and forth between tasks. When there is conflict between the tasks, the ECC deals with cueing tasks, goal shifting, rule activation and attention refocusing—all of these lower efficiencies and increase time spent on the tasks.
• Dr. Meyer then showed the audience via brain image scans of just how many portions of the brain are involved when multitasking takes place. He also mentioned the term “attention refocusing” which describes an additional task put up the brain as it goes from one task to another and returns which then involves a refocusing to once again engage in the original task. An image came to my mind of seeing ourselves sitting “in” the Executive Cognitive Control portion of the brain with a bank of displays and lots of control panels as we work to deal with the cueing, goal shifting, rule activation and attention refocusing that goes on during multitasking. I could see how inefficient and stressful it would be to try and handle all these “tasks” that were taking place in order to handle the real tasks our brains and bodies were taking on.
• Dr. Meyer went on to point out the obvious dangerous and sometimes deadly effects of multitasking (e.g., car accidents due to cell phones/texting, texters walking into trees, etc.). He pointed out that research shows that long term brain damage can occur due to the stress that often arises when trying to deal with too many tasks. The brain dealing with increased stress leads to the secretion of bio-chemical hormones into the blood stream that over time damage portions of the brain specifically the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus.
• Dr. Meyer gave the example of air traffic controllers as an extreme example of multitaskers who besides dealing with the stress of handling many tasks often suffer from anxiety and depression.
• To become better at multitasking, we must learn how to improve our task scheduling. Dr. Meyer did not comment further than to give the example of fighter pilots who receive massive amounts of training to deal with all the decisions and tasks that go with modern air warfare. The question is what training can we provide our students to help them choose how to prioritize tasks and to then become more and more practiced at focusing on doing one task at a time while knowing when to switch to another without going back and forth in rapid succession.

I am reminded of my first weeks working as an instructional technologist back before social networking and other Web 2.0 tools came on to the scene. I taught lessons on using presentation tools, image editing, digital mind mapping, etc. and then had the students working on projects using the various tools. It became evident how easily and quickly students moved off the primary task of project completion to attend to the bells and whistles that the various tools offered. Looking at the students from a Habits of Mind perspective, besides teaching the technology, information literacy and communication skills, I also needed to teach study skills in my lessons on how to focus on doing one task at a time while knowing when and how to switch to additional tasks that support meeting one’s primary objective.

The discipline of a focused mind not only helps get the task completed with increased efficiency but as Dr. Meyer points out leads to a healthier mind and body. Thankfully I was working in an elementary school where I could start these lessons before bad habits were in place.

The power of the computer connected to the Web means we can access the tools and information at the touch of a key that can help us do a better job in our task completion. We know the wonders that technology can provide our students. Yet, we must work to help our students gain the self-discipline to stay on the main task while working deliberately in a planned manner also access the tools and information needed to meet their objectives. In addition, accessing social networking tools, entertainment media, etc. is one area of multitasking that clearly lowers efficiencies and decreases understanding.

As I tell my sons, create a time limit to complete your work on the computer setting aside time later on to connect to your friends and media sources. In both cases, your brain will thank you and you will do a better job with all your “tasks”.

One final takeaway for me is me is that many of us are becoming like air traffic controllers in our everyday lives. According to Dr. Meyer, this is a very unhealthy situation.

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