Maine Learning Technology Initiative

Image by Henrique used under a GNU Free Documentation license, version 1.2

I’m preparing for a session at next week’s MLTI Summer Institute in Castine. So I’m doing some thought processing and figured I’d take advantage of our blogging platform to make that public, and hopefully fine tune my message in the process.

Access to information is a civil right. It has it’s roots in legislative mandates, such as Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, amended in 2008 (ADA). Section 508, a 1998 amendment to the Rehabilitation Act, requires Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology, including websites and software, accessible to people with disabilities, which has broader and direct implications for organizations that receive Federal funds. Most recently and relevant to education was the reauthorization of IDEA in 2004, which has provisions for universal design for learning (UDL). The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 has a provision for UDL, as well. (As an aside, you might be interested in reading the recent “Dear Colleague” letter that the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education jointly wrote to the presidents of all U.S. colleges and universities, advising them to not use ereaders that are inaccessible to students with blindness.)

With today’s tools, including those readily available to 1:1 MLTI schools, consistently meeting the legal mandates and – more importantly – doing the right thing has never been closer to conceivable. With awareness, knowledge, and skills (typically in that order), both teachers and students can become self-organizers of practices that model, promote, and foster accessibility for all individuals. I argue that this is an integral component of digital citizenship.

Here’s a classic example: Teachers and students are increasingly creating video to convey information in engaging and innovative ways. Indeed, video is a multimodal technology that can be effective for both teaching and learning. To be a model of UDL, however, even video needs to be scrutinized for accessibility for a wide range of learner needs and preferences. What are the abilities necessary to acquire information from a video? Consider students who are deaf or hard of hearing and learners for whom English is not their first language. Add closed captioning to the video and its content becomes inherently accessible to more students, and even embeds a literacy strategy for all learners.

With some training, coordination, and support from an administrator, teachers and students can accomplish closed captioning of their videos with a product like QuickTime, and begin modeling accessibility and digital citizenship for a wide audience.

A similar “barrier to learning” analysis can be conducted for all of the electronic information and digital instructional materials that we and our students create. And if we collaborate with students in this process, we’ll model and ultimately instill a disposition for doing the right thing.

This webinar explored the underpinnings of critical thinking, asking three questions:

Is it developmental?
How do we know when we see it?
Can it be measured?

A website that provides perspective about the developmental aspect is Kids on the Net: Critical Thinking Skills for Web Literacy – An Analysis of What Kids Should Know about Cyberspace. This site explains the development of cognitive, emotional, moral, and psychological issues of different children’s age groups. Their resources show that learning critical thinking should address these issues in a developmental way, building skills step by step.

There are quite a few different models/definitions/attributes of critical thinking that attempt to make it possible to observe it in action. Every description depended on the discipline it came from, i.e. psychology, philosophy, educational theory, etc. Here are some of the exemplary websites:

Discussion and Model of Critical Thinking from Ed Psyc Interactive
Model of Information Seeking and Critical Thinking from Baltimore County Public Schools
Partnership for 21st Century Skills and Critical Thinking

How are we to deal with the issue of standardized testing and the teaching of critical thinking? In an ERIC abstract (ED312622) of “Literacy and Critical Thinking: The NAEP Literacy Studies and What We Are Not Teaching about ‘Higher Reasoning Skills,” by Craig Walton (1989,) the author states that the elements of synthesis or summary, analysis or problem solving, argumentation, and experimentation are skills that seem to be lacking in students. He sees a correlation of that lack with educators’ ignorance of those higher skills and how to teach them. That was quite an indictment, and worth challenging.

Socratic questioning is a way of helping students face the issue of critical thinking. The questioning can be used first by the teacher, and as the students start to become more aware of  how the questions help their thinking, the students can begin questioning each other and themselves. This website from Northern Illinois University Consortium for Problem-Based Learning provides the foundational precepts and a matrix of exemplary questions.

Web 2.0 has been called the Read/Write Web. That is because you become an active participant, not just a passive viewer – You interact with the information. How does this help critical thinking? By the fact that people make comments. All of the following websites provide examples of ways that teachers can provide students examples of commenting that they can see, critique and respond to.

Comments about places to stay:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/

A “safe” current event website that kids can practice making comments:
http://tweentribune.com/

International Movie DataBase – using movie reviews and forums as examples of critique:
http://www.imdb.com/

Going beyond the Wikipedia articles and looking at the discussion and history of the content:
http://www.wikipedia.org/

Responding to visual examples:
http://www.flickr.com/

Commenting both textually and visually:
http://voicethread.com/#home

Finally, any blog or wiki could be used to help kids learn and practice discourse and critique, as well as the Gallery, Discussion and Chat in Studywiz.

Measuring critical thinking can be a wicked problem, depending on what you are looking for. Perhaps you can develop small rubrics based on your deconstruction of pertinent elements of critical thinking. In that manner students could review or make comments based on individual aspects of critical thinking skills on which they are focused. Here is a higher education rubric for critical thinking that can be used as a reference for ideal goals. And here is another that has been used for higher education and business with a rationale as well. An accompanying document from Insight Assessment proposes that there are dispositions as well as skills involved in critical thinking and provides self-reflective questions.

Just to be provocative, here is a quote from a recent article to think about:

“DEMOCRATIC THINKING REQUIRES THE PURSUIT OF MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES
Much as Darwin’s theory of natural selection depends on genetic variation, any
theory of democracy depends on a multiplicity of ideas. It is the responsibility of
the citizenry, the media, and the schools to safeguard the expression of those
ideas. Schools have particular responsibilities in this regard. Healthy critical
analysis is one hallmark of a mature democracy, and educators have a responsi-
bility to create learning environments that help to realize these ideals. There are
many varied and powerful ways to teach children and young adults to engage
critically – to think about social policy issues, participate in authentic debate
over matters of importance, and understand that intelligent adults can have
different opinions. Indeed, democratic progress depends on these differences.”

“No Child Left Thinking: Democracy at Risk in Canadian Schools,” Joel Westheimer; CANADIAN EDUC ATION , Spring 2010; Canada Education Association; p 5-8

Copyright, or to be more specific, the use  and misuse of copyrighted materials, is a subject that is surrounded by much confusion and therefore fear for many educators. Students who have known nothing but the internet in schools need direct instruction and guidance on what they can be using from online sources, and also how to protect their original work they post. As educators, we should be learning as much as we can about the use of copyrighted material, and then helping our students navigate this legal mountain range.

Some of the ins and outs of copyright law and fair use are covered by information in the links below. This should not be considered a comprehensive list, and neither should you consider my attempts to explain copyright law as legal advice! Please consult as many sources as possible, and if you’re still confused, I’m sure your school has legal consults available.

Copyright overview and history:
US Copyright Office

Copyrightkids – Fun resource to get students thinking about copyright issues

Copyright and Fair Use in The Classroom – Interesting guide to copyright, from a college perspective.

History of Copyright Law – Wikipedia page does a great job pulling together a complicated history.

Copyright Infringement

Carol Simpson – Consultant on issues of copyright, has an interesting database of cases concerning copyright infringement in schools.

Do The (Copy)right Thing – Article on educator’s lack of attention to copyright from thejounal

Fair Use

Code of Best Practice for Fair Use in Media Literacy Education – Download the document from this page.
A Fair(y) Use Story-  Video mashup of various Disney movies to make a statement on fair use of copyrighted materials.

User Rights, Section 107 – Music video explaining the tenets of fair use.

Bound By Law? – Thanks to Barbara Greenstone for the link to this comic explaining copyright and fair use.

Copyright / Copywrong Quiz – Thanks to Cynthia Curry for forwarding the link to this quiz on fair use in education.

The Shepard Fairy Obama “Hope” Poster Controversy – Thanks once again to Cynthia Curry

Creative Commons

Creative Commons

Search engine for Creative Commons licensed work. Also available on the Firefox browser search tool.

Creative Commons on Flickr

Be sure to watch the recorded webinar sessions by clicking on the Webcast>Arcives tab above.

As new media forms test the boundaries of existing copyright laws, educators can be left feeling uncertain as to how they can be using media in education, what they shouldn’t be copying, and how students use media as part of their school work. File sharing, sampling and remixing, downloading and podcasting all present new methods of distributing information, but how can educators go about this without getting themselves in hot water? This webinar will look at some of the issues around copyright that affect schools, begin a discussion on Fair Use of copyrighted materials, and how to avoid any trouble with copyright altogether.

This session will be delivered on Thursday, May 6, from 3:15 – 4:15 pm and 7:15 – 8:15 pm. For information, please access the WebCasts tab at the top of this page.

Image from the Library of Congress

Our students are in an unprecedented position of being able to gather, sort and reflect upon information and data with ease and precision. Digital tools available on the MLTI devices and online give students the ability to record observations, conduct interviews, collect data and then use this information to produce meaningful results. By conducting original research, students can better understand ‘real world’ phenomenon and contribute their learning to a wider knowledge base.

My co-presenter for this webinar will be Sarah Kirn, Program Manager for the Vital Signs project, part of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s educational outreach. Sarah will be taking us through how the Vital Signs project uses original research by student and citizen scientists to build a picture of the spread of invasive species through the state. The process of collecting data through fieldwork, contributing the data to the Vital Signs database, and using the data in analysis creates a powerful learning experience for students, as well as raising their aspirations for science careers.

We will also look at other ways students can take advantage of digital tools to conduct original research, and how this can be part of a wider research process.

Please click on the Webcast link to register for or join the 3.15 and 7.15 webinar.

In addition to the webinars. MLTI and GMRI are offering a workshop that introduces teachers to working with Vital Signs data with students during the week of March 24 – 31. For more details, please visit the MLTI site.

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow! 

We realize that many schools are experiencing a snow day or an early closing today, but our webcast, Citizenship in a Connected Culture will still be held at its originally scheduled time, 3:15 PM.  You can connect from any place where you have a broadband internet connection and a phone, and we hope many of you who are enjoying a snow day will connect from home.

To accommodate anyone who cannot attend today, we have scheduled a repeat session on Tuesday, December 15 at 3:15. If you plan to attend that one, please register here.

As always, these sessions will be recorded and you will be able to access those recordings from our archives page a few days after the webcast.

Snowflake image by Julie Falk licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic license.

In partnership with Common Sense Media, MLTI is hosting a webinar titled Citizenship in a Connected Culture: How Schools, Parents, and Kids Can Work Together on December 9, 2009, 3:15 – 4:00.

We are all experiencing how digital media is profoundly changing the nature of childhood, and is bringing with it opportunities and challenges that have a dramatic impact on the ethical, physical, and social development of young people today. Are your students prepared to use new technologies responsibly – and are their parents prepared to be media mentors for their children?

Learn strategies for engaging, educating, and empowering your parent communities about digital literacy and citizenship to help them raise kids that are safe, smart, and ethical media consumers and creators. At this webinar you’ll learn about:

• A new vernacular for talking with parents about digital media and technology
• Common Sense resources that can help you engage and educate parents
• Best practices from schools that have successfully engaged their parent communities

Please pre-register online. For questions about the webinar, please contact Barbara Greenstone at bgreenstone@mainelearns.org.