On-line Solutions to Everday Challenges

Yesterday I attended the Michigan Virtual University Symposium: Online Solutions to Everyday Challenges and this* (the medium I am currently using) is one of the solutions to an everyday challenge. As I was sorting out the mess of notes and information on my desk this morning, I began to share some of my enthusiasm for the new tools with a colleague. He suggested that Airset might be a great tool for organizing all the our building School Improvement Process files, calendars and communications. I agree. So here we are. This post (which was originally written in the Blog feature of Airset) is a great tool for me to debrief the staff. It occurs to me as I write this, that had my laptop been charged, my notes would have gone there live. Next time. For now, I will add them line by line as time allows.

The keynote session was delivered by Yong Zhao, MSU professor and founder of the Center for Teaching and Technology as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence. The main theme of his presentation was that we need to move from a dictatorship to a democracy. Traditionally, learning has been dictated; and technology allows us to move to become a democracy of learners with personalized learning environments and personalized learning goals.
Zhao quoted a line from the movie The Matrix : "never send a man to do a machine's job". How many machine jobs do we perform daily? This is a problem that must be solved by school leaders. Interactive technology raises "seat time" challenges as well as many other issues that are begging solutions of school leaders. Zhao maintains that our school systems have become impoverished single-species ecosystems that can be improved by a technologically diverse environment.

Zhao referenced widely publicized study that found that students who learned math via computer games did not fare better on standardized tests than students who learned the concepts in a traditional classroom. The tagline of the news item was that "computers do not increase test scores". Zhao interpreted this study quite differently and that was that computer applications were just as good as teaching math as the traditional method. The Confucius Institute at MSU utilizes Second Life, (a MMORPG ) which allows students to enter a virtual world where they can interact in Chinese.

One of the breakouts that I attended was Free Online Collaboration Tools. The presenters utilized one of the tools (Weebly) that they described as "brain dead" webpage creation to provide an on-line "handout" of the session. I strongly suggest you peruse the tools detailed below. Airset is the tool I am utilizing here that I can already tell will change my world. Buzzword is heralded as being even better than Google Docs for document collaboration. PageFlakes allows teachers to maintain a web presence and Chalksite is an on-line version Moodle or Blackboard.

You can access the on-line handout here:

onlinecollabtools.weebly.com

This year is our building's first experience with on-line courses, but I expect them to be very successful. One of the reasons is the personalization of the experience and the goals. Students will have access to the materials on their own terms in their own space and time. They will not be forced to fit into a schedule or seat and obligated to be engaged when they are sick or tired or maybe otherwise disinterested.

*This post was originally written for the Airset private blog and was adapted for this public post.