Sal Khan

at Gel 2010

given description:

What started as algebra lessons for his cousins has turned into a world-changing project. Hundreds of thousands of users worldwide have benefited from Sal Khan's friendly, accessible Youtube videos explaining math, science, and other subjects.

Sal has a vision of teaching the entire world, for free. His not-for-profit Khan Academy has the mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere." In this outstanding Gel video, Sal describes the elements of the good experience he's trying to create.

whoa whoa whoa... here's your differentiation teachers... or life long learners...
anybody can learn anything...then when we get together in a room... we can just be doing...

in Sal's words... why it works to learn this way:

1. self-paced 5:40

his cousins first said - you are better on youtube. - mostly because you can rewind or fast forward...
he says... face-to-face is stressful... everyone thinks you should get it right away. this is self-paced.
2. focus on the learning
he says mit is great, but if given a lecturer to look at, you naturally focus on them. here, you don't see the teacher, so you focus on the learning
3. it's like a conversation  7:00 

not scripted... started out of laziness.. for his cousins -
not a finished product.. but a conversation... which people say -makes them feel comfortable about say math. people get to see the thought process of making mistakes.
4. focus is on intuition  8:20

he tries to deliver things the way he wished it was delivered to him
not memorization... it's not a nice to have, not a - let's make A students... but let's learn. there is a deep hunger for this type of thing....
letter - "first time i smiled doing a derivative."
"i actually got a natural high, like,... i'm doing kung fu here."
as teachers we think we're the only one's who get off on this... actually learning something is the highest high in human being can have.
"spent entire summer on your youtube page... had basic deficiencies in math.. on placement test... didn't miss a single math problem."

i need to watch this video again... i know i missed a lot... of stuff that really matters.

Sal Khan at Gel 2010 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

great write up in  The Chronicle of Higher Ed

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cormier & siemens & couros upei

live ustream  upei may 19, 2010

first Siemens talking (well - i missed his talk... joined at the q&a)..

talking about it support - how does it support innovation and still maintain it's mandate..

and accredi

funny - just commented on less talking... and in this livestream says:

innovation vs parts of the system that have a clear model of how you test and deploy apps, when we wanted live applications...they answer to a different higher up.

a lot of dialogue... and dialogue is tough when you're learning to dislike each other.. :)

when you are passionate about trying something new... you're not always that organized...

waiting often kills the innovation.

research/innovation center - there needs to be a space where innovation can be.

realize the mandates... but there needs to be a place where a few innovators can play around and even break things....

how do you move strategies from innovators to 2nd wave...

- have people experience it

many things are dramatically different in theory than in practice.

the system needs to say.. how do we encourage people who don't

how critical is 1to1 in k-12 to higher ed...

sometimes we want 4to1, and most often kids bring in their own 1to1.

there is an inherent social drive with tech..

appropriate experimentation is very useful...

forceful pushing 1to1 in kind may not be necessary..

what kind of a institution do we need today...

typically - it's been additive

in that regard - the roll of the uni..

3 potential neg's.....

as we reduce social means.. we end up dehumanizing - as we focus on the increased structure of technique and tool

is tech depersonalizing - no - but

kills your pocketbook - there's an urgency around buying tech

we  hold tech to a higher standard...but also - the options are constrained - because of our limited views

putting dollars into the research?

what research is being conducted on the significance of tech in ed

difficult for educators to accept the research that someone else has done...

a lot of things we know about ed that we're just not doing...

one difficulties with tech.... since 2000ish - now that we know we should use it.... how should we use it.

we need research labs that focuses on the ed tech problem

surprisingly - people are content to just use what's there and publish a paper.

pools of innovation happening all over but no cohesive integrated structure that amplifies the affect of the research.

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while i'm waiting in the break... @tonnet tweets this pdf on ed futurelab

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Couros talking...

open and networked learning

depending on tools we use... what sorts of affordances do we have...

take learning docs that can become portfolios

ning - quite effective learning environment.. because it's fbesque

center of innovation... like to try this... and then it's ready that afternoon.

immersive, mobile, collaborative and social

personalization....

how do we take what is a very closed set of structure/procedures... and move it forward...

helping students understand private vs public

faculty members need to be more media literate - to see where our kids are at... this will lead us to places where we can use these tools in prof networks

key enablers - 

1. free tools:

plethora of free tools - he showed several he uses everyday.. and also said most of them are not available in school.

danah boyd - collapsed contexts - where we're speaking to all different areas at the same time

eric whittacre - brings a ton of people together singing

ning - single tweet from alec - he used a live doc to collect ideas... almost as beautiful as eric's music....the act of creation is a beautiful thing

2. free and open content:

 mit was one of first

the content is not what's important - it's the relationships...

abundance of content search.creativecommons.org

Saul Kahn academy - started creating videos for his cousin

students, "learned more in last few weeks than last 2 years"
Will Richardson tweeted - what would happen if we merged Kahn with Dan Meyer

wanted to teach scratchmit to his undergrads - it's 8th graders teaching us

disruptive creativity - mother of all funk chords

3. open access:

just launched an open access journal... over 10,000 hits...

make published research accessible to anyone

directory of open access journals - 4-5000 now

also open access courses or pd's

college 2.0 - not institutionally mandated... just a bunch of prof's learning from each other

edchat

there are so many different ways to learn online now..

fast internet access...

worst part of youtube is the comments... worst side of humanity shows up there

what's more important is what the pipe does to us - rather than the knowledge

personalization... we don't want the $60 video of the whole dance team... we want the 2 min segment of our kid..

is personalization - a degree of choice - what is needed most?

if we aren't personalizing an experience for kids... what are we doing?

teens are not connecting in the ways that we fear - there are actually more adults doing that than kids  via danah boyd
scalability
persistence

wesch and youtube communities... free hugs... connections without constraint... one world hand man

what christian long is doing with tedx... yay.

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dave cormier - community is the curriculum

parts that resonated with me - straight from his vol. 2:

This idea of learning as something that can be bought, acquired, and then completed is deeply ingrained in popular culture.

It is a simple model. Unfortunately, it is false. If it ever worked, it will not work anymore. 

The implicit lessons of our educational system are still twentieth-century lessons: being on time, attentiveness, focus on single tasks, completion of tasks outside of context, and, perhaps most importantly, completion of tasks without any sense for why they are being done.  These are the preparations for effective labor in the Dearborn factories of Henry Ford in the 1910s and 1920s.

There is still, implicit in most widely held conceptions of learning that the instructor, designer, or at least the institution knows what a learner should get out of a given course.

The problem, then, only comes into play when we are not sure what “people should be learning.” What is the curriculum for innovation? How do we impart creativity? Where do students turn to be guaranteed that they are learning what is new and current?

As knowledge becomes a moving target and the canon starts becoming less reliable, we need a new—or in fact an old—model of education drawn out on a new canvas: community.
The answer is to stop trying so hard, to stop looking for a systemic solution, and to return to a human-based knowledge plan. We need to return to community as a valid repository for knowledge, and away from a packaged view of knowledge and expertise.

“ The community is not the path to understanding or accessing the curriculum; rather, the community is the curriculum” (Cormier, 2008)

Publishing is done in order to crystallize and make knowledge about the community public—as in “public”-ation. Its value is in its ability to reach out from the community to others, not in its inherent knowledge.

“The term [rhizomatic learning] encapsulates a sort of fluid, transitory concept; the dense, multi-dimensional development and integration of several different sets of tools and approaches, appearing in diverse forms under separate settings, using all the multidimensional networking information technology tools, the social web, etc.” (Szucs, 2009, p. 4).

The rhizomatic model, in contrast to the academic one, keeps the knowledge in the people and in the community rather than distilling it into a paper based product – be it the final publication of a journal, book or other ‘changeless medium..

What the leaders of these guild style communities need to teach people, then, has little to do with content and more to do with actually using communities to learn.

Competency for the course was simple, the students needed to teach something to the rest of the class in the second week that they had never heard of in the first.

If we connect the whole world through social networks, then the people with very specific, very passionate interests will be able to collaborate.

Simply “using” the technology offers no particular benefit. Being able to participate in live knowledge building on a daily basis with a group of peers, on the other hand, is a privilege of the so-called digital age.

We are committing ourselves to people, not to specific bits of knowledge or information and hoping that our commitment to those people will keep what we know relevant, and keep us above water.

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a first for us.. elluminate live

May 16, 2010

Will host the show in Elluminate tonight 6:30 mtn standard time: http://tinyurl.com/wow3-edtechtalk


GUEST: monika hardy, Lucas, Lauren, Austin, Morgan, Madi, Molly, Aimee, Jim, Chase, Emily, Gus ?

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(Guest) Sites:
Blog: http://monkblogs.blogspot.com
Wiki
Twitter: http://twitter.com/monk51295

Websites:
beginnings:
1. http://talk-ed.ning.com/ class ning - a jing about our ning
Croatia - culture via blogging & Freedom Writers... toast to change - Greetings from the World (CO glogster=)
Hamza in Uganda - pen pals, groups on talk.ed, sell beads (money for bike and bandwidth), need to learn how to send money,
first encounter - July 09 - with Cape Town Lauren - @smartcookie1593

Uganda and Croatia (and a stranger to us from Germany) meeting on our ning
groups on talk-ed: SICC (Students in Community Club) Act of Kindness Madi - @madibugu

me videos - **Gus** - to find expert tutors/mentors/peers for personal learning networks
pilot math class - self-automated cyclic grid - kids teaching how to use cells - student created projects (gus&molly)
& student made tutorials Chase @wrathofmobius


branching out:
2. http://school2school.ning.com/ New School ning (within Education Beyond Borders) - will be platform for a student created class next year Austin/Morgan

3. student 2.0 - Student 2.0 ning (via @SteveHargadon begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting @JennyLuca @JackieGerstein )

Gabbi - group: college cacooncollege cacoon

Aimee - group ap human geo on talked first - then student 2.0

Emily -group: ted talks
because of and fashioned after:
tedx project - Christian Long begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting, Texas @ChristianLong begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting
tedxproject - canada - Richard Farmer, Canada @richfarm


the whole story:
4. http://flavors.me/savetheworld#_ redefine school -
((Innovation Lab- Lucas @mintybrownie, ....Your School Design It, Your PD Design It)

books to read: Linchpin / The Element (find/refine your passion/element/zone/flow/sweet spot); DIY U (educate - what will happen in higher ed); Rework (how to spend the 7 hours a day); will also be immersing in ted / bif talks
student created courses for 2010 Gus @GusWaneka

livemocha- Molly @zombiewaffles

how to make it happen:
5. fridge worthy- marketing - educating the community Lucas

how to validate:
6. a way to assess - beta tool
just out by @WendyDrexler - yay
monika & Jim Folkestad - @jimfolk - on uni help/buy in




more videos/etc:
what if school were real life
more - students in action
huge collection via voicethread: school
kool beans Ben
Lucy Buck in Uganda with childsi
Jackson and Ben via Cape Town



why so crazy about sharing...
it's not just an opportunity, it's a responsibilty - via Gus
where we've shared ed.gov - under "innovation lab"
our philosophy

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students are...

... the best tech advocates via @NMHS_principal




...the best creators of their world via @k12lab

Four principles we hold to in design thinking:
1) Human-centered. We believe that we achieve innovative solutions by getting out and talking to experts and users both to immerse ourselves in the problem and to test our ideas.
2) Bias towards action. We act and try rather than sit around and debate.
3) Prototype-driven culture. We fail early to succeed sooner. We value a rough and rapid mentality to refine our solutions.
4) Mindfulness of process. We know where we are in the process and the direction our project needs to go next to get better.

Students are more engaged and achieve greater learning when they have ownership over real world projects in areas that they care about. 



...the best ones to teach each other ethics via @gcouros

oh ..ok.. 
thank you @giftedteacher

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alec couros - voicethread on network

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cheyenne responds to ted talks

i love how ted gets us to talking with passion...  ideas that matter..

thank you Cheyenne...
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wendy drexler pens plns

very brilliant lady.. shares her insight/research on personal learning networks.
thank you - and bravo.

inidividualization.
learning per passion.
space to find your element, your zone, your flow...
your sweet spot.

plns... they're what we need.

think thank thunk

what a find... wow..

thank you tons mr @mpondo

a great calc, physic, grading, ...blog written by Mr. Cornally

and funny.

yay funny.

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gt and at risk

*every one of us is gt.

*every one of us is at risk.

let's spend more time rework-ing till school becomes flow.

*student, teacher, admin, all people

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think global school live

live on future of ed

only 15 students

private, non-profit school

tuition: $88,000/year

with huge amount scholarship

first year range from total pay to total funded

had 270 apps so far...

not looking for straight a students, but diverse quality..

also - looking for kid driven request

15 kids from 13 countries

all entering 9th grade

5 teachers

conversation about security that goes beyond superficial negates security

also one on a ship - semester at sea

how they're going to log

 Authentic service: Teaching younger kids in Beijing English and words in other languages...working in a youth centre with recent arrivals to a country playing sports and games...raising funds through building awareness on global causes

when student grads from tgs - they will know that humanity and humility are huge

taking most saline parts of what ed can be

kids will grad with an ib diploma - so well received..

also creating portolios for use in college apps

every kid goes home at christmas and spring break and summer

sweden 1st, then sydney, then beijing

schools of the future are going to be light and agile... so host schools take them in...

interacting with faculty all over the world - so a lot of pd

look for research and connections in each city

this year - 9th grade... next year... 9th and 10th, add each year

harvard project 0 article

graduate - a sense of the world...a sense of self... fairly evolved global citizen


Saw a great presentation on TED today on how important the development of social networks are for people given by Nicholas Christakis.  Just think the experiences will help students become global citizens.

i'm @aronsolomon on Twitter @TGSTHINKGlobal


Moderator (Laura Malbogat): we are developing a differentiated approach to learning

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student made video on poly's & imag #'s

student made video on polynomial functions..

nice Keaton.. nice Will...

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find your sweet spot

where work and play are one....
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leonard waks live

;;;

the revolutionary change process

the revolutionary change process part 2

biggest change is - where we can now do our learning..

next logical state for adoption - blended school models...

blended school offers huge amounts of choice

history.... history of france... etc..

can pool students to get huge amounts of choice....

listen to john taylor gatto

http://www.urgentevoke.com/forum/topics/open-discussion-on-my

 because so many more graduate from hs - hs diploma no longer differentiates

had 20% before... now ?

gatto said same thing is happening with college degree

now diploma means something way different

algebra for all....process...ended up with no one learning algebra.. skipped over math that was needed

idaho blended schools

video schools - when done - 

@Vermonster: constellations of constructivism'

nobody has put this together yet - something that is palatable to reuse, etc

eportfolios

blogasaurus.posterous.com

etherpad from tonight

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more on kozol

p. 179 in savage inequalities...

my paraphrase:

kozol: when kids hear govern can't find $ to provide ed, they don't believe it & know it is a choice, about how much they matter to society


p. 181 reminds me of Bill Stricklands school
my paraphrase:
when Tunisia was asked what she would do if she was given money - plant flowers and buy blue curtains.... we need to rebuild the school... make it pretty... they way it is.. i feel ashamed.

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ben zander - everybody is an a student

i love ben zander... one of my fav books... the art of possibility.

here's a recent - everybody gets an a - via - @tonnet



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take a listen to student thinking

Kyle S, a senior at Karl Fisch's school, Arapahoe High, a well worth the listen ustream....Last Lecture

...dear education, i am your student...

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jamais cascio on tools for a better world

We all want to make the world better -- but how? Jamais Cascio looks at some specific tools and techniques that can make a difference. It's a fascinating talk that might just inspire you to act.

we don't need to wait till graduation either...making school real life.
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student created study groups via ning

Aimee's AP Human Geography group... on our ning for the AP test and their final.. and on Student 2.0, a global site, for the nation-wide AP test.
smart cookies..

Aimee talks about it here:

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21st century standards

content is variable
Standardized tests on content are no longer viable.

process is fixed
The web allows for personalization,
which provides the optimal learning space,
making personal learning networks a viable standard for public education.



We need to remove the old means of assessing a student, a teacher, a school, a district, ......
standardized tests.
[note that tests as we know them are generally trashed after the fact... they are noun. 21st cent assessment needs to be verb... or we're assessing the wrong thing]

We need to implement a new means for validation and assessment in the public school setting of whether or not authentic learning is being optimized.

A suggested model for a standard in each classroom, in each school, in each district,...:

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Is each student experiencing these three things while at school:

1. access

• does the student have appropriate bandwidth and speed
• does the student have a *tool (of choice) for web access

*1-1 is a good solution, but not 1 size fits all, students should be given a choice of a laptop or ipod or ipad, depending on what they already do or don't have, and what their web/tech needs will be

• is the student given *appropriate time in the day to use a and b

*the library should be the hub of the school, with appropriate staff (including student interns) to assist/train best tech use for given need. each class should allow ample time for students to access the library (or another like place) each day

2. process

is every staff member in the building a part of a purposefully selected and daily embraced personal learning network - under construction - a means to access/log that

3. connectivity

because of teacher's pln above, are they facilitating the connections for the vital parts of a personal learning network for students  - under construction - a means to access/log that

• expert individual tutors
• mentors/peers with like passion/interest/goal
• necessary info or tech use

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Because it is the process that is the standard... #1 and #2 above address all contents and all grade levels

#3 addresses all contents and all grade levels, but the connections will be at varying degrees

ie: kindergarten... discussing face to face personal learning networks... why you group with the kids you group with, who is your expert tutor, what info/help do you get from each

The same thing needs to happen in higher ed and in careers.
We need to start asking if the way we have always done things, (you get this job if you have this paper of proof), is still our optimal strategy.

as a google doc
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