While this course has ostensibly been about “authoring” digital learning materials, in the end, I decided to concentrate on alternative c. from the final assignment.

c. communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats.

After experimenting with a number of new (to me) and relatively unfamiliar digital authoring tools during the course, ultimately, this project needed to be  both practical and applicable to current objectives for the Main Library program.

At this time, we are concentrating on awareness of existing materials and services  with both students and teachers. In order to reach the widest possible audience of both, then, broader use of digital information presentation tools is called for. To this end, we are ramping up use of live media links of several types in our Main Library HS and MS Blogs which are set as the browser entry point for all students launching a browser in Main Library.

Using a blog as the library front-end has a number of advantages over using a homepage. To begin with, blogging platforms include the built-in theme and widget features which allow those with limited digital skills or time to assemble a reasonablly attractive page. Secondly, the blogging platform is easy to edit and to maintain a series of quick, relevant informational postings. Finally, the blogging platform has become relatively standardized, so that even users unfamiliar with this particular page can navigate relatively intuitively through it.

While exploration of digital authoring tools has been a worthwhile and engaging sidebar to the last six weeks, in the end, the important thing has been to select the most appropriate tools for the task at hand. Book trailers sponsored by media companies and made by professionals are effective at both promoting interest in new or underused titles in our collection and at presenting a model of effective promotion for students interested in trying it out themselves. the other tools used in our blogs have similar dual uses, and we will continue to try new options as we expand our exploration of this new digital landscape.

It may seem a no-brainer that the library environment lends itself naturally to using “how-to” videos. With the range of materials, databases, information systems and production services available through the library, simple “How-to” videos featuring  narrated screen capture of everything from the library catalog to setting up an RSS feed from a research database might seem to be logical uses of the technology.

The question is, “If we build it, will they come?”

The answer, I fear, is simply, without prevarication, “No. It’s just not that easy…”

The May 2009 OCLC report on library catalog usage suggested that students today want, to paraphrase, things to be Quick, to be Easy, and to be Relevant to their needs of the moment.

What single tool best meets this requirement today? Google, of course. Want a quick answer to who directed the 1968 Hollywood Romeo and Juliet? Google it. Need to know how to insert a complex formula into an Excel spreadsheet? Google it – and perhaps add “YouTube” if you want to see an instructional video on the exact topic.

The same question serves for every Helpfile, User tutorial and TechHelp access feature already built into each of the technology offerings in our library. As librarians, we seldom (never seems almost closer to the reality) see users (student OR teacher) navigating of their own volition to  Help features. How much easier it is, in our service-oriented system, for a student to simply ask the first person at hand, “How do I make a color copy?” or a teacher to just email the query “Do you have the Brannagh Hamlet?” (or perhaps a slightly more challenging, “Can you find critlit sources for the poetry of Michael Ondaatje?”)

Sounds pretty grim for the future of independent researching – but it’s not all bad. Screencasts seem to be a natural for promoting those  things users are already engaged with. Our student “front-end”, the page that automatically opens when a student launches a browser, is a blog, which should lend itself naturally to a screencast implementation.

We’ll start where the kids aleady are, or where they might conceivably go without the extrnal stimulus of classroom assignments or teacher-directed library use. Some possibilities include:

• Book Reviews by Students
• Book Reviews by teachers or professional reviewers
• Book Trailers from the industry (Scholastic,
• Movie Reviews of books

If you can’t beat ‘em…

In a nutshell, the explosion of web-based video is literally ejecting the teaching and learning landscape into a whole new trajectory: and it’s like an unstoppable, solid-rocket boost rather than a jet’s vigorous thrust, a turboprob’s gentle urging, or a prop-engine’s noisycajoling its payload forward.

The new  teaching and learning environment, in which lessons, examples, experiments and speculative meanderings are all freely available, in equal measure, to both teacher and learner, puts education on a laissez-faire footing not seen since Socrates schooled his charges.

It may be that technology is finally able to help bridge the divide between the teacher and the learner. For the one billion lucky enough to have access to the tools that brought us web-based video who are truly interested in being learners, there is no limit to what they might achieve.

Frankly, though, at the real interface of teaching and learning, where 20th-century schooled and trained teachers still guide “digital-native” students, the story is a bit more mundane.

Examples?

United Streaming

Three years ago, we licensed United Streaming, just as is it was becoming Discovery Streaming.

The promise of Discovery Streaming was seductive. In 2007, The International Society for Technology in Education completed review of the Discovery Education unitedstreaming and determined that the program clearly supports the implementation of the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Students.

Combined with the size of the video database (40,000 videos and clips), focussed content (short clips to full-length videos), and the ubiquity of access through the web, it seemed that streaming video would render DVD obsolete before it could ever becom a media standard.

Then, when some of its limitations, such as download issues regarding firewalls and bandwidth, began to become apparent just as YouTube was taking off, offering FREE content on almost any topic imaginable, the luster of a paid service like DS quickly waned.

When we declined to renew the license after two years to only a handful of almost wistful emails of concern, the handwriting was on the wall. Expensive subscription databases, whether for periodicals, fulltext reference services, or media, are an endangered species.

Enter YouTube

YouTube is the first, I suspect, of a whole new paradigm for personal expression. Where generations of scribblers once wrote for a tiny chosen readership, now everyone from aspiring academics and eclectic entrepreneurs to downy-eyed dreamers and silicone snake-oil salesmen can vomit out their beliefs, biases, and unpolished pitches to the cold Crystal Eye of the webcam. Every subject imaginable has been covered, with many points of view cleverly explored. There is truly something for everyone on the web, and now it’s available in full motion glory. For the truly committed, web-based video is the new Information El Dorado.

Model on display in the Gold Museum, Bogotá, Colombia

So what’s wrong with this Picture?

Sure, it’s distorted but more important is the signal-to-noise ratio. In an environment where so much is unpolished, unfinished, inaccurate, or deliberately misleading, how can a data-miner be sure he or she is following a true high-grade vein of information?

There is so much on YouTube truly not worth the time to access that it makes the paucity of  authoritative print material on the open web seem like the Mother Lode by comparison.

In a world where we are constantly bombarded with more conflicting information, more contradicting scientific conclusions, and much, much more raw data all the time, who has time to troll through the endless files of dross that make up the bulk of YouTube?

By the time you locate a promising file, download it so you can play it uninterrupted (for those  still in the “third-world” of information access speed) and then play to evaluate it for authority, bias, content and currency, you can often have just created something yourself of equal value.

Undeniable, however, has been streaming video’s  impact on the market for other media formats.  Three years after purchasing our first DVDs and now having “officialy” retired our VHS collection, we are already faced with the next generation media storage. We are still buying DVD’s, but at one time we owned 5,000 VHS titles, while after three years we still have only around 1,000 DVDs. Because of the need to migrate to both new media (BlueRay?) and compatible players, it is likely that HD-DVD will remain almost unused in the near future.

The reason? FREE streaming video. Aside from the the ubiquitous YouTube, free video content is available from everything from CNN and ESPN feeds to Indie developers to professional blogs. On the Environment, for example

YouTube (What’s the Worst that Can Happen? Greg Craven, Indepent teacher & author)

Democracy Now (Fracking and the Environment. Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica)

TED Talks (What’s Wrong with What we Eat? Mark Bittman, NYTimes Food Writer)

Of course, it’s important to not  limit oneself to one’s own personal favorites, be it the Age or Ted Talks. That way lies the same one-trick ponyism that many tech afficianados fall prey to (“Read these blogs and  you’ll never go wrong”).

The answer may be in a next-generation Google that can truly and “intelligently” sift through the mountain of visual verbiage (if a picture’s worth a thousand words, what’s a minute of 30fps video worth?). But until the new Google truly rises phoenixlike from the ashes of the best of the text-dependent search algorithm web-crawlers, web-based video will still be a poor-man’s information side-show, the domain of the “truly committed” or the “obsessed”. 

The Onion (Taco Bell’s New Green Menu takes no Ingredients from Nature) 

Hmmm…

Project Parameters: 20 minute team planning period (before lunch) and a 2 hour production period, followed by group presentations of results. With our disparate team makeup  and collaborative project topic,  our goal was also to complete the project (aside from individual reflections) in the f2f session.

Blog Assignment: Upload the completed project. Reflect on the process of creating the digital story. How could digital storytelling be used in your classroom/subject area.

During the 20-minute planning period we learned that the ESL department had handwritten notes in hand for a planned discussion of “Effective Discussion Behavior” and since each of us engage in some form of “storytelling” in our disciplines, we decided we could build a shared presentation/project using available digital tools.

We then used a FlipVideo camera to grab clips of discussions in progress. We downloaded the ensuing 21 clips and individually assessed them (MP4 files played directly in  Windows Media Player) to see which might illustrate elements of effective discussion identified in the ESL notes. 

Comparing notes, we agreed that eight of the 21 clips effectively illustrated one of the core elements of effective discussion behavior. These elements were;

1. Plan for Discussion (read: Topic of Discussion or problem to be resolved)
2. Putting plans into (immediate) action
3. Practicing Active Listening
4. Actively Participating
5. Attending Fully
6. Paraphrasing
7. Enunciating Clearly (my paraphrasing) with Appropriate Body Language
8. Offering a Solution

With the ESL plan in hand and the demonstration clips selected, the project needed only be assembled in a stand-alone presentation format. We decided to use Smart Recorder to capture screencasts of the relevant demonstration clips, interspersed with title frames of the core discussion elements done in Powerpoint, possibly backed up by an Audicity soundtrack. All three team members were quite comfortable with Powerpoint, somewhat familiar with Audacity, largely unfamiliar with Smart Recorder, and totally new to the FlipVideo Camera.

Result:
With the written plans in hand, the 8 relevant clips isolated and titling a simple task using Powerpoint, assembling the items seemed doable in the allotted time. We quickly found, however, that the tools we had chosen were limiting in several ways, at least for our novice production team:

• FlipVideo camera default appears to be 15 fps, resulting in herky-jerky pans rendering several clips unuseable. We did not have time to investigate 30 fps options and reshoot.
• Sound capture with the FlipVideo cameras included a high level of background noise on most clips. We had only our “one-take” footage to work with.
• Running Full-screen titling slides from Powerpoint hid the Smart Recorder controls, which meant that we had to capture Powerpoint titling in Slide Sorter mode, resulting in extraneous visual elements. (Windows Toolbars, Smart Recorder Controls, etc)
• Smart Recorder Controls are simple but slow. Our “quick & dirty” recording method was to play the WMP clip, then hit Record on Smart Recorder.
• Smart Recording from a playing WMP file appears to have been not very “smart”. The resulting Smart Recording of our project included the following features making it unuseable for instruction or presentation;
  o Transitions between title and subtitle frames and video are unacceptably choppy
  o Image quality of the captured WMP playout is unacceptable due to
          * Dropped video frames resulting in “Keystone-Kops”-like movement
          * Video frames have a “solarized” appearance suggesting incomplete capture
  o Audio frames are either dropped or chopped, resulting in illegible or no sound
  o Transitions between silent Powerpoint Headers and random-sound WMP playout is jarring

What did we learn (or relearn) from this exercise? We learned that;

• Digital production tools must be selected with the same care for desired outcomes that any teaching/learning tools must be chosen.
• Digital production tools, even of the “plug ‘n play” variety, demand expertise in their use in order to be used effectively.
• The time necessary to develop expertise in the use of any of the digital tools presented in this course is beyond the scope of the course.
• It is clearly not “best practice” to simply use digital tools because they are available, if a better tool is already available. In the case of this project, promoting effective discussion would probably be better done using realtime discussion on topics of interest to the target audience.

How could digital storytelling be used in my classroom/subject area?

Although this particular project would, by most standards, be judged a practical failure, as a HS librarian, I see digital storytelling as having major potential for;

• Appealing to students to get involved with the library, its programs and the selection of materials, resources and services it offers
• Creating awareness of ranges of services and materials available in the library
• Developing  awareness of alternative genres (students tend to stay within a reading “zone of comfort”) for independent reading
• Introducing new materials, systems or services in the library
• Promoting interest in and circulation of new titles (and old standards)
• Reviewing Research Skills in a novel and interesting way

Now – if we can just get our hands on a “Round Tuitt”…

I was lucky enough to have Kim Cofino mention “Presentation Zen” to me a year ago when I was working on a proposal for our regional teachers’ conference.   I wasn’t quite ready then to abandon all my work in the name of getting my message out in that dramatic, but Spartan, by my “old” standards, style.  Luckily, my presentation wasn’t selected for the conference, so no one was ever subjected to that last-gasp 20th-century blow-out.

But I’m learning. The message of that presentation was important to me, so I went back in the spring and took another look at it to see what could be salvaged. I found some heartening things through applying some of the principles of “Presentation Zen” as I now understand them.

1) I was able to improve it 100% by simply stripping out the background Theme. What a simple concept! As soon as I saw my images highlighted on that featureless black background, I was hooked. No more “wind over Paris spring” themes for me…

2) I had tried to open with a snapshot of a looming environmental train-wreck, to tie this to a personal life-story paralleling the evolution of the environmental one, and then to use the converging storylines to pitch my own speculative fiction novel, Mai Shangri-La. the result included WAY too many competing messages. Each deserved its own vehicle.

3) In spite of my legacy bulleted style, I found that each slide had a core element that I could keep. By “unpacking” the multilayered images, I could expand one slide into several much simpler ones, all of which could impart their own unique message.

4) Without some of the excess wording, individual slides took on a new vibrancy that thrilled me. So a slide which had packed in a dozen cascading images and a series of expanding bullets became a series of individual slides with one or two words each.

I tried unsuccessfully to export a sample to PDF to display here, but uploads keep failing, so I’m bailing on this and moving on. Trust me, that the new, leaner Powerpoint was a dramatic improvement over the old. Now if I could just become so facile with a blogging platform… :0(

…but leaving it at that was really not very satisfying, so I finally ate crow and went to Dennis, my Divisional TRC (Technology Resource Coordinator), and learned a valuable lesson to buttress my learning about Presentation Zen – and basic Powerpoint use ;0) And the lesson is…USE the resources available to you, including the services of people who’s job it is to support you. It will save a LOT of time and frustration.  Thanks, Dennis.

Here’s a JPEG of just ONE of the original slides from the “Pre-Zen” Presentation (47 slides, all Packed out with words, cascading images, transitions (although I had already learned to pare these down to a single image and slide transition) and sound (thankfully, no typewriter clacks or machine-gun yammer, but still an overpowering background music dominating many of the slides)

And here’s the “kicker” slide from the new presentation (the new Presentation took that SINGLE original slide and “unpacked” it to present just one of the many messages in the original.)

"Fill" for a Future Housing Development on the outskirts of Bangkok. Normal?...

]]> http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/2009/09/28/suny3-presentation-zen/feed/ 0 http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/2009/09/25/suny-reflection-2-the-future/ http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/2009/09/25/suny-reflection-2-the-future/#comments Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:43:24 +0000 rubisr http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/?p=109 Assignment: “…. find an appropriate image to use in at least one of the classes you teach.  How can visual imagery support your curricular content?”

I’m not teaching as many direct classes these days as technology and available time conspire to draw students into their own worlds and teacher into their own classrooms,  but I interact constantly with students, teachers, parents and vendors, and so these are truly “the classes I teach”.  Regardless of the topic, I often lately find myself coming around to the elephant in the room; the environment , or more succinctly, our blatant and growing disregard for the environment in our pursuit of Consumerism’s Holy Grail.  Recently, it seems like the elephant is becoming a herd, as we crowd in increasing environmental degradation (blogged about last post with a positive-spin response by Doug Johnson in the Blue Skunk Blog),  potential global warming tipping points,  growing disease vectors,  and possible environmental collapse.

Yesterday, Stuart H. Scott, in an address to HS students at International School Bangkok, added another “mother of all elephants in the room” – the spectre of actual human extinction if we continue the “BAU” course. For the first time since Al Gore raised the red flag for many of us,  I watched an adult literally choke up talking to kids about Catastrophic Failure Modes and the real possibility of a future United States unable to feed its citizens.  It’s looking increasing likely, from where I stand, that the elephants are truly about to run amok…

I wrote a book about my emerging convictions around this topic, and when I stalled out at getting a publisher, I decided to go it alone.  I was able to meet the design requirements for the Interior file of a POD book (great for the environment), but when I came to the cover image, I was stuck. I wanted an image that would convey a sense of the impending catastrophe  the book explores while hinting at the wonder that still exists in nature and the the tentative promise of redemption through a higher power, be that divine, or human-inspired.

In the end, I chose an image of my own, grabbed quickly around the helpful assistance from my 18 month-old son. For me, this image will always represent the sense of chaotic purpose driven by a growing sense of impending doom I was feeling as I tried to breath life into my initial literary “creation”. Although the meaning may be a large part of only my own internal “soul-map”, the image neatly encapsulates one of the core messages I had spent 190,000 words trying to articulate. Does it work for anyone else? I guess that’s a question that only someone who has read the book might answer…

]]> http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/2009/09/25/suny-reflection-2-the-future/feed/ 0 http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/2009/09/16/stepping-back-on-the-merrygoround/ http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/2009/09/16/stepping-back-on-the-merrygoround/#comments Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:08:15 +0000 rubisr http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/?p=124 SUNY EDC 604: Visual Literacy: Effective Communicators and Creators

“Write a reflective blog post on how the courses to date in this program have changed your teaching for the new year.

This blog has languished since the end of the last SUNY course at ISB in May, and now I have to conclude that frankly, the two SUNY courses we completed last year have NOT changed my teaching for this year.

I’ve been asking myself why – even before this question became a course assignment. It’s not that I’m not interested in helping kids “achieve their academic potential”.  It’s not that I’ve lost sight of ISB’s mission to foster “passionate, reflective learners”. It’s not that I’ve given up on our collective goal to help develop kids into “caring, global citizens”. And it’s not that the courses, in of themselves, weren’t  engaging, informative, and fruitful in terms of raising my awareness of new tools and technologies available to me and my students.

So what is it? In a nutshell, it’s a growing sense of impending doom; a feeling that we’re being overwhelmed; and not on the technological front, although certainly it’s become increasingly difficult to keep up with the weekly round of enhancements to online database interfaces, electronic book readers, all-in-one USB devices and “i-everything”.  Instead, this fall, I am overwhelmed by the following;

• I am concerned about the resignation to the inevitable I’m seeing in  my immediate “sphere of concern”.  At the beach that I could once keep reasonably clean by picking up two bags of trash each visit, I now find four to be the norm.  In my small off-campus housing development, rats have become new and unwelcome residents and I feel alone in fighting their encroachment.  I’ve given up trying to maintain on my own a small public park space at the entrance, and it has now become a rampant, weed-choked jungle.
• I am dismayed by the escalation of disregard I am seeing for the larger local environment. I live 20 minutes from this tiny western school enclave, and in my daily commute (by SUV!), I see streets becoming ever more congested and garbage-strewn, roadsides becoming defacto waste-dumps, and once pristine rice-paddies being paved over with first a meter of household garbage (pix to prove it), then a meter of fertile topsoil that should be growing a crop, and finally, two stories of glass and concrete that I fear will become Thailand’s Love Canal.
• I am staggered by the sheer global scale of irreparable damage to the environment I see perpetrated in support  of “business as usual” . We need to maintain “BAU” to support our insatiable demand for superfluous consumer products, unnecessary technology-laden “infomedia” capabilities  and an inappropriat global jet-setting lifestyle. A recent report by the BC Forest Service in Canada projects by within 10 years, the Pine-Beetle infestation will have destroyed 71% of all extant BC Pine Forests. That will bring about shocking changes in the appearance, climate and economic viability of Canada’s richest province.
• I am appalled at the scope of change sweeping the planet as a result of the above, from the speed of arctic sea-ice melt (a trend that’s, thankfully reversed slightly in 2009)  to the routine collapse of Antarctic ice-shelves, to the inexorable upward creep of atmospheric CO2.

Read James Howard Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency” (this link to the Rolling Stone article, but we have two copies of the book in ML) and consider how prescient he seems now to have been so far. Read his new novel “World Made by Hand” and consider what’s going to be important if his vision of America in 20 years turns out to be even partly true.

Then ask yourself, “How can I best help students achieve to their academic potential, become passionate learners, and prepare them to be caring, global citizens in a world which might not have functioning electricity or adequate freshwater – even at their soci0-economic level?”

Should I continue to obsess about flavor-of-the-week technological wizardry, or should I concentrate on rubber-meets-road learning skills that will transcend “the long emergency”,  when being able to learn, from a technology not dependent on electricity, how to purify unsafe drinking water, will be a skill more prized than knowing how to assemble a cloud-based mashup of irrelevant extrivianza?

I haven’t changed much about how I’m teaching this fall – except the time-frame within which I’m placing it.  I’m trying to keep my finger on the pulse of new technologies for information seeking and learning, but I’m concentrating on personal connections, practical learnings and transferrable skills that I can impart regarding the already rich array of tools available to our students.

This places me squarely in the left-hand column of Greg Craven’s Magic Grid Machine if you were to exchange his “Significant action now” and “Little or No action”  to combat climate change with “Hedge your bets with traditional vs. technological learning tools” and “Put all your eggs in the technology basket”.

Whether global warming is going to lead to uncontrolled and irreversible climate change is still, unfortunately, a matter of debate (albeit mostly from “outlier” opinion-leaders).  But using Craven’s irrefutable logic, I’ll fight to preserve the best of the past while critically examining, and implementing where it proves really useful,  technology’s promise for the future.  We’ve already made huge changes in the way we do business in our Main Library from 5 years ago.  This year we’ll concentrate on fine-tuning those rather than introducing a host of yet newer experiments in learning.

TechUseAgreement

We’d be talking about how to facilitate, among other web2.0 strategies, student exploration of the following emerging trends;

• Gaming – World of Warcraft broke the 10,000,000 user mark – a year ago. Kids ARE gaming!
• Virtual Worlds –Virtual worlds like Second Life may soon become pervasive. An AUP should  acknowledge this.
• S/W Downloads – we need better guidelines for downloading – what, when, how, to where?
• Streaming Media – better guidelines on use (when, where, how – e.g. using headphones, etc)
• Cloud computing and the Symantic Web (related to the above, but broader in scope as everything begins to reside on the “cloud” and as “smart objects” become ubiguitous) – the Horizon Report, 2009

Unfortunately, it’s not a perfect world. In the first place, all of the above require access to bandwidth that we just do not have at this time in Thailand. Even in the US, a Neilsen News report on April 13 that Streaming video had increased by 40% in one year was followed shortly by news of bandwidth caps by big internet providers. “Capping”, is, of course, a relative term. 250 GB of data/month (equivalent of 120 full-length movies or 65,000 songs) seems a lot in an environment where real download speeds are measured in 2-digit KILOBYTES/second rather the the 1-2 megabytes/second Thai home users typically pay for.

Even at our school, where we have something like 40 megabytes/second, it still often takes several seconds for a static page to stream in, and streaming video is often broken up with pauses for buffering.  Allowing students to explore the new technologies with no limits is simply not a practical option at this time.

And then there’s the issue of teen decision-making skills.  We greet around 1200 visitors in a typical day in our main library, and 50-60% of these borrow a wireless laptop for use during their visit. We have 150 chairs in 7 discrete seating areas dispersed over 700 square meters on two floors. Realistically, we simply are not aware of what most students do with the computers most of the time. In this environment, and in consideration of others rights to a “quiet, productive workplace” environment, we feel it incumbent on us to provide guidance in what uses of the area, and the the technology being used in it, are in keeping with this objective. A “Technology Use Agreement” that students sign off on, help us all stay on the same page regarding appropriate use.

Coming out of this course, we have a Proposed new HS Acceptable Use Policy. Since it has not yet been adopted for officila use by the school, we feel we still need a document to help us manage technology use in the Main Library.

Our final cut at a “Technology Use Agreement” for ISB’s Main LIbrary may be construed as focussing on prohibition rather than entitlement, but in our defence, we have attempted to open the doors to new and creative explorative options not available in our existing agreement. Rather than specifically prohibiting gaming, etc, for example, we suggest that students seek permission to engage in activities outside of the normal scope of online activity.

In our prohibitive rather than entitling stance, we are not alone. In the litiginous United States, AUPs can be even more rife with legal jargon and limitation. An example from DadeSchools in Florida is a case in point. This document specifically focusses on limitations and prohibitions, and regularly references School Board Policy which in each instance is a case-study in legal jargon. It, like many AUP’s still out there, could be seen as a document with a built-in self-fulfilling prophecy for failure. Few users are going to plow through the intricacies and exhortations to determine what really can and can’t be done with the tools it references.

We should count our blessings that for the moment, at least, we feel we can cover the ground in our Main LIbrary with a relatively benign, single page isb-technology-use-agreement-final-120509

Of course, the fact that we have not fundamentally changed the Use Agreement we have had in place since the adoption of wireless laptops suggests that should the environment change in the near future, we should – make that we must – revisit the question again.

Perhaps in that newly renovated “Learning Commons” we are working toward, we WILL be able to enable and promote the many creative and innovative ways in which kids could use the technology.

Amen to that…

]]> http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/2009/05/12/suny-course-2-final-reflection-in-a-perfect-world/feed/ 0 http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/2009/05/09/drafting-implementing-a-new-aup/ http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/2009/05/09/drafting-implementing-a-new-aup/#comments Sun, 10 May 2009 04:23:29 +0000 rubisr http://edgingahead.edublogs.org/?p=117 Information Technology Acceptable Use Policy or Technology Use Agreement? What’s in a Name?

During the current SUNY Technology class, at least three groups are wrestling with ISB’s Acceptable Use Policy. Two groups are redrafting existing divisional Acceptable Use Policies to bring improved currency and relevance to documents several years old.  This project is to attempt to forge a link between the somewhat subjective wording of the AUP’s as currently in development and the very objective requirements of applying principles of “acceptable use” in a real-world environment; in this case, ISB’s Main Library.

For the purposes of this reflection, I will concentrate on the work of the HS AUP and Main LIbrary
“Technology Use Agreement” teams, since the most significant disparities between policy and behavior appear at this level. By the time they reach high school, students are better equipped to both assess their own personal actions and to rationalize this behavior.

A surprising revelation as I have considered this project is that none of the related documents (from ISB) are currently (at least prominently) available on ISB’s website or 1st-generation linked pages. A Google search for “ISB Bangkok” along with “AUP” or “Acceptable Use Policy” does not turn up a working link to a current AUP at any division level. This fact alone suggests that ISB’s core relationship to an AUP needs to be rethought. The quickest way to ISB’s existing AUP’s is through the SUNY Technology Course currently in action, where the current AUP’s are offered as attachments (scroll to the bottom).

Neither is the laptop-loan-agreement we have used for the four years since we adopted wireless laptops in our Main LIbrary available online. In my search I came across Acceptable Use Policies, Laptop Loan Agreements, and Technology Use Agreements, but none from ISB.

Once again, kudos to our very own ISB SUNY instructors Jeff Utecht and Chad Bates, for finding some of the best summarties of current thinking on AUPs, posted as resources for this course from AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) For New Web Tools by Dr. Howie DeBlasi (His keynote address from the AzTEA Conference, January 31, 2009 is worth a view)

Meanwhile, while I believe in a review of the overarching guiding principles of acceptable technology use at ISB, in our Main LIbrary, we still need a tangible, quickly reviewable but relatively comprehensive set of guidelines which we will ask student patrons to sign off on. As we review our school webpages, whatever emerges as a full-blown new AUP will  be placed at the library pages. For now, here is the proposed  “isb-technology-use-agreement-final-090509” which will likely continue to be used as the “rubber-meets-road” working document to hold students accountable for acceptable technology use in Main LIbrary.

It’s Everyone’s Responsibility (everyone with any connection to “21st Century Kids”, that is).

• Everyone
• Everyone teaching
• Everyone teaching kids
• Everyone teaching kids online
• Everyone teaching kids online safety
• Everyone teaching kids online
• Everyone teaching kids
• Everyone teaching
• Everyone…

(image: a “Duck and Cover” poster reproduced in Wikipedia)

Why everyone?

• Because issues of identity, security and safety touches every individual in the interconnected world that web2.0 has introduced – and we don’t come with a built-in protective shell…
• Because it’s never too early to begin teaching kids about the world they are stepping into. My 22-month old son regularly astonishes me with the depth of his understanding. Although he’s just developing the verbal language to engage in logical discourse, he intuitively recognizes good and bad behaviors and safe vs. unsafe practices. Since he’s not at school yet, it’s my job, and the job of all his caregivers, to help him develop this mindset of behaving safely in the tactile world he still inhabits, and so to prepare him to behave safely online.
• Because personal Safety, in any environment, must become a “habit of mind”, and so we should turn to any and all resources available to promote this habit.
• Because we can’t rely on “the powers that be” to do the right thing when faced with a question of the magnitude that this represents.

In a neat cycle of positive reinforcement, the web itself is a wonderful resource for tools, strategies and resources to help kids develop this overarching culture of personal safety. Some interesting and useful personal safety resources include;

• Power of Parents. A Child Safety and Awareness Program – an age-graded and personnel-specific handbook to strategies for keeping kids safe up to the point where they might be developing an online presence. Sponsored by Duracell and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
• Mecklenburg County Public School Internet Safety Curriculum for K-12.  There are likely many of these available. I’ve chosen this one simply because it’s neatly laid out in the traditional “Scope and Sequence” style that I still find easy to follow.
• iSafe K-12 Curriculum Scope 06-07 - a commercial product by i-SAFE Inc. a self-proclaimed “worldwide leader in Internet safety education. Founded in 1998 and endorsed by the U.S. Congress, i-SAFE is a non-profit foundation dedicated to protecting the online experiences of youth everywhere.”

I’m reminded, though,  that I grew up in the 1950’s, when “Duck & Cover” was the official advice from the US government to address the nuclear threat we were reminded of with every 6 pm Wednesday Emergency Alert siren test.  The “Duck and Cover” strategy was not just woefully inadequate. It was ludicrous. Even at 10, I recognized the futility of hiding my head in the sand if the big one went off where I could see it.

I wonder if exhortations to kids to protect themselves online don’t have some of the same theatre-of-the-absurd elements to them. Is there a value in promoting specific strategies to help protect one from dangers past? What about the frightening potentialities of the future? How can we let kids online at all and still protect them against the constantly evolving web of virtual entanglement?

The web, however, is a fact of life for kids in the here and now. Ignoring the already identified risks in online activity is a sure recipe for personal and societal disaster, and there are already enough coming-apocalypse scenarios to go around. And so, it seems, it’s up to Everyone, to follow the Middle Way regarding online safety for the next generation of virtual explorers.

(the 8-fold Path or Middle Way: Show Understanding in Thought, Speech and Action through Right Livelihood, Effort, Mindfulness, and Concentration)…

Reuben James Runquist, the octagenarian protagonist of my own Post-Apocalyptic “Road-book” proposes a mnemonic to keep himself on the Buddhist “Eight-fold Path” in the post-apocalyptic world he inhabits.

“Live Every Moment Carefully”

…advice as relevant in the virtual world as at the dawn of Buddhist thought…