EduBlog Insights

I attended Sheryl Abshire’s session at TRLD entitled “Approaching Grantgivers: What Sells!” Sheryl gave a very concise and informative session on getting a grant. She has a great site that lists resources and sources. Be prepared – it will take you some time to go through but it is all there in one place.

Sheryl Abshire listed important keys to great grants like following the rules of the grant to the letter. You may get in the last list to be considered and then thrown out when it comes down to you and someone else. Remember strict adherence to the RFP, integrated program elements, aligned components, tied to high standards, innovation, professional development and evaluation, and high quality and continuous improvement.

Give the grantgivers a good picture of your school and your needs. Present a compelling argument by providing research that supports your proposal.

Abshire listed the top ten questions reviewers ask when reviewing proposals:

1. Does the proposal tie into school’s overall plans?
2. How will the technology be used?
3. Will the proposal impact student learning?
4. How will desired outcomes be developed?
5. Does this initiative have the potential to be replicated or outreached to a larger community?
6. Does the proposal tap creativity in tapping other resources already available in the community?
7. Is the budget clearly defined?
8. Who will benefit from this initiative?
9. How well does this proposal replicate what the grant funder is looking for?
10. How committed are you?

She highlighted these resources:

• Schoolgrants.org (This is her favorite.)
• Grants for K-12 Hotline There’s a $213 fee but it might be something your media center could order. It provides twenty-four biweekly issues, with weekly email updates. Sheryl said the fee was $149 so there may be a discount I missed or they have increased the fee.
• eSchool News K-12 School Technology Funding Directory eSchool news is a comprehensive resource (free).
• Bring Home the Bacon Listserv This fee is $25. She uses another email account and checks once or twice a week. You can pose a question and get answers back’

Sheryl suggested sending your proposal in a week early. Ste your deadline for that as sometimes you can’t get online at the last minute.

This tip could really be helpful. Use the Index to Sample Proposals. I haven’t had a chance yet to find those links but they are on on her list at:

http://www.cpsb.org/Scripts/abshire/grants.asp

It is great to have all these resource centered in one place. Thank you Sheryl Abshire! Now go get those grants!!!

One of the intriguing pulls for me for attending this conference was the fact that Ellin Oliver Keene was giving the keynote. I have her book, Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader’s Workshop, which she co-authored with Susan Zimmermann. I have had that book for quite some time and it is one of my favorites. It’s the kind of book that you pick up and ponder the contents. It makes you think. Each time I page back through it I come away with more understandings and learning and yes more questions. I knew it would be a treat to hear her speak and I would learn more about comprehension and how we understand. The title of the keynote was “To Understand.”

She opened the keynote with a story about one of the students she was working with whose name was Jamika. She told a story of a young girl who apparently erupted in class after being asked one too many times, “Did that story you just read make sense?” Jamica probably rolled her eyes and said that teachers, her parents and everyone else kept asking her this question time after time. Jamica’s hurled back a question of her own. Apparently Jamika was quite exasperated with adult after adult asking this same question and she had had enough. I can just hear her in my head as she exclaimed, “All of you keep asking this question but none of you say “what does sense mean Why don’t you tell me what “make sense” means?” I could get quite a good picture in my head of the encounter. You know kids always come up with the best questions and send us on a quest like none others. So Ellin began a journey to figure out “what does Jamika understand?’ She looked through the teacher’s guide and discovered that a total of 69 questions were asked when the teacher follows the guide. Basically the student answers questions and retells the story. The process was one of answering questions and retelling the story. Ellin Keene stated that we could just look at the pictures. Answering questions, retelling and learning new vocabulary are the main components. Then Ellin Keene posed this question for the audience:

“Do students need comprehension strategy instruction if all they’re expected to do is retell and answer questions?” Ellin Keene questions if this definition is worthy of our student’s intellectual capacity?

How would you answer that question? We all need to give that question much thought. Ellin Keene went on to point out that the first three points assess comprehension. They do not teach comprehension strategies. She said, “We are not teaching them to improve thought processes.” Ellin Keene began to focus on the classroom practice. She wanted to observe students in the act of comprehension and give language to the process. Take moments of understanding and hone in on what the kid was doing at that moment. If we can define and describe we can learn more. Here are some nuggets that Ellin tossed out to the audience.

• When you are deeply engaged the world around you disappears.
• We dwell in ideas. We need time to be silent, to listen to our own thinking to reflect purposefully on an idea.
• How much time do we give students? We have to give them time.
• Understanding does not happen unless we give them time to think deeply. We have to give them time.
• Students need a way to hold on to their thinking.
• We understand when we struggle because we so want to know.
• Talk is hugely important to the learning process.
• To understand is to remember because it is important for us to remember - need those emotional connections.
• Rigorous discourse with others.
• We are renaissance learners - we allow ourselves to meander through a wide range of topics and understand texts and generalize.
• We work to understand how ideas are related.

Her handout gave examples for making the dimensions of understanding come alive. Her first bullet under
When we understand:

• We concentrate intensively - we are fervent, we lose ourselves in the experience of thought, we work intensively, the world disappears and we work hard to learn more, we choose to challenge ourselves.

She went on in the handout to give examples for making the dimensions of understanding come alive. Here’s one for the above bullet :

“We concentrate intensively, we are ferment-

• Model — This translates into you sharing with your students about times you were intensely involved with learning and what triggered you to push those understandings further. Share the details. Did you happen to be studying something at the time that was an area in which you were passionately interested? What made you want to dig deeper? Did it lead you to more understandings?
• Talk about how to develop areas of passionate interest. Such passions don’t come automatically to all kids. Talk to your kids in individual and group meetings to help kids find areas that most interest them. Talk with them about how to pursue topics of passionate interest. How do you do it in your own life- how might they do it?

I’m going to try this out in my classroom. Why don’t you? Come back and comment and let’s share the learning!

One of the highlights at this conference was getting to meet Julie Coiro. She is at the University of Connecticut and is part of the New Literacies Research Team. See the link here

This is an excerpt on this site about what they do:

We engage in systematic inquiry to define what students need to learn and how best to assess and teach these new skills. What also defines us is our extraordinary collaborative approach. We work as colleagues, recognizing the valuable insights that each person brings to the inquiry process. Professors, graduate researchers, teachers, school leaders, and others work shoulder to shoulder, equally contributing to the inquiry process and respecting one another as colleagues.

Her handout link from the session is here. Julie talked for a bit, then we participated in an activity. She talked about some things related to evaluatiing on the internet and we took a look at some scary things about kids on the internet in terms of what they don’t know. Most of her work has been with 5th to 7th graders.

She began her session with three stories that will really get your thinking. Take a listen to NewLiteraciesPerspective.mp3 .

Julie’s site has some dynamite activities with lessons to help our students evaluate relevancy, accuracy, reliability and point of view. She has tables showing student responses to some good questions. Ask your students some of the questions. You may be surprised at their answers. Students know you can’t believe everything on the Internet… but they do! She talks about how the authors shape the information and then hones in on the conversations we need to have with our students and questions we should be asking.

There is so much to share from her session and I am just beginning but another session calls for now.

I have so much to blog about from this wonderful conference. It’s going to take me a bit. Plus it is so encouraging to talk to the participants who are out there working for many of the same goals we’ve been talking about the past few years. You should consider attending this conference next year. It will be in January back in San Francisco!

And I had a fabulous night last night connecting with Chris and John McIntosh. It was such a special evening and I’ll be blogging about that.

I’m soaring!

I couldn’t have picked a better way to kick off a conference than attending David Warlick’s pre-conference session on “Web 2.0: Harnessing the New Shape of Information.” Dave started the session with a creative and engaging twist by having his workshop participants introduce themselves. The twist was that no complete sentences were permitted! Lots of laughter and sharing followed. I was the only blogger in the crowd but I suspect we’ll have more come onboard after he took them on a whirlwind trip through the world of web 2.0. Here is the link to his online handouts.

A few highlights:

• started with parts of Will’s video
• education is about conversation in 21^st century
• landmark-project.com
• handouts.davidwarlick.com
• ‘Coming of Age’ free for download, also a print version, edited by Terry Freeman, proceeds go the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
• education is about conversation in 21^st century
• gave history of wiki and how it was created, quick web became wiki wiki web (Hawai word)
• Dave demonstrated creating a wiki all for the audience,
  
• putting an idea out and learning from ensuing discussion
• showed how he posts a blog post, showed dashboard in word press, type in title, text and publish
• iamazing how people are using blogs, in a sense this is a magazine that I publish, no publisher, no editor, publish to a global audience
• it is not about paper and books but about information
• literacy – most of his work is there, literacy has changed,
• teachers get excited about students blogging, it stops being writing but it becomes communicating
• Technorati.com – best place to go and find blogs
• Technorati is to blogging is like what google is to the web
• Wikipedia – knowledge is coming from community, info you could not get elsewhere
• Poster child of web 2.0, content is coming out of conversations
• Answered web 2.0 question here, 1.0 went to get info, 2.o added conversation
• Web 2.0 content is from contributions from conversation
• 1.0 library 2.0 conversation
• skip to good part, you will be on edge of seats, Using an aggregator that makes it easy for him to demonstrate what he is talking about, rss changed everything, Dave Weiner invented it
  
• now we are starting to train the information to find us
• finding best answer to our questions is now much richer, much more exciting
• think del.icio.us - can set up own online bookmark service
• how to get an aggregator, recommends bloglines.com or google.com/reader
• Second life will give you real estate, running a whole virtual second life, it is gaming but people are taking to it, offering free space for educators- per participants
• a podcast is a blog that has a link to an audio file, have a blog, a way of recording, need software like audacity, place to upload audio file so if you have a laptop with a microphone you can podcast for free
• Nneed to redefine literacy, participants did podcasts
• showed how he transferred it and saved it, then opened in audacity
• to get it on internet, he recomments a web podcasting service called podomatic.com, you can log in and go to my podcast, post an episode, type in title, tags, text (show notes) , can add picture, upload audio and you can do the audio right then, can import file, click browse to find audio files and open and post and it uploads it to server
• He uses slapcast.com and it costs 5 dollars a month

Wow! And this is just a few of the highlights. I like his style. It is warm, honest, and he initiates  conversations with his audience. He gave practical items, demonstated a lot, provided humor and got back to all the questions that were asked.It was a great workshop.
He closed with

• We’re not afraid.com

His closing statement ……

“When in history have people like you and I been able to whisper to the world that we are not afraid.”
.

The night is late but I wanted to make a quick post. Today has been fantastic. This is one of the best conferences I have attended! I got in David Warlick’s session and Julie Coiro’s session. Both were excellent presentations and my head is spinning with so many ideas. I’ll post about both later but here’s an excerpt from Davie’s sessions that will whet your appetite.
WarlickExcerpt.mp3

I’ll post an excerpt from Julie’s session as soon as I can edit it. Then Ellin Keene’s keynote “To Understand” was outstanding also. There’s much to share from her session. Unfortunately my Edirol was zonked after running for 6 hours!

Then the day ended up with a comment from Ewan telling me that his mom Chris was going to be in San Franciso tomorrow so it looks like we are going to get to meet! How cool is that! This is going to be a conference to remember!

I can barely hold my eyes open so I’m off to get some rest so I will be ready for tomorrow…..a day of learning and then connecting and meeting face-to-face with one of my favorite bloggers from Scotland. Awesome! A special thanks to Ewan for making it happen!

I’m in San Franciso now - great flight out. I spent the day walking around the city and enjoying the day. I love this city! I am looking forward to attending some great sessions in the morning! I’ll close with a night time picture. Both of these pictures were taken through the windows in my room or the hotel. Great view!

In the morning I have an early flight to San Francisco. I will be attending the TRLD Conference. I have signed up for a workshop with Dave Warlick and Julie Coiro. I hope I get in both. This has been a last minute thing. We get to go to one conference a year and since NECC is local this year I’ll be at two! Hooray!

I did not know about this conference, just found it on the web.  The keynote speaker is Ellin Oliver Keene. She the author of one of my favorite books, Mosaic of Thought.

I lucked out getting a great flight fare through Hotwire. Those of you who fly a lot share your tips for finding the best fare! It took me a long while and I just sort of stumbled onto this.

I will be blogging for the conference! Second hooray!

What a warm way to end a wonderful Thanksgiving. The K12 Online Conference 2006 organizers sent an e-card and a video to all presenters.Thank you Lani, Darren, Sheryl and Wes! What fun! It was great to see their faces too! I am still enjoying the presentations from the conference. Even more fun!
Wes has shared some of his reflections from the conference. Read his entire post but I second his thoughts on the shift needed at all educational conferences.  Let’s write those conference evaluations and include this! Well said, Wes!

The 2006 K-12 Online conference will hopefully represent a basic shift in the way ideas and information changes hands at educational conferences. If the goal of educational conferences is to truly share ideas and make learning opportunities more accessible for learners located anywhere on the planet, I think it should follow that all the presentations at educational conferences should be made available as downloadable podcasts after each conference. In the spirit of “open content” (www.wtvi.com/teks/06_07_articles/ethic-open-digital-content.html) these materials should be offered as free downloads. When possible, presentations should be pre-recorded and made available to conference attendees in advance. When this presentation model is followed, interactive face-to-face discussions can take place at the actual conference about ideas that presenters have shared in advance via downloadable presentations. Hopefully we will see more educational conferences in the future follow these ideas which were modeled so well in K-12 Online! 

I ended up the day Thursday listening to Will’s presentation, “From Information Literacy to Information Leadership.” It was great to see him again. He talked about how knowledge is shifting. He pointed us to Kevin Kelly’s “Scan This Book! from the New York Times Magazine. Here’s one excerpt:

This is a very big library. But because of digital technology, you’ll be able to reach inside it from almost any device that sports a screen. From the days of Sumerian clay tablets till now, humans have “published” at least 32 million books, 750 million articles and essays, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, TV shows and short films and 100 billion public Web pages. All this material is currently contained in all the libraries and archives of the world. When fully digitized, the whole lot could be compressed (at current technological rates) onto 50 petabyte hard disks. Today you need a building about the size of a small-town library to house 50 petabytes. With tomorrow’s technology, it will all fit onto your iPod. When that happens, the library of all libraries will ride in your purse or wallet — if it doesn’t plug directly into your brain with thin white cords. Some people alive today are surely hoping that they die before such things happen, and others, mostly the young, want to know what’s taking so long. (Could we get it up and running by next week? They have a history project due.

If you haven’t read it be sure to. It talks about the link and the tag as maybe being two of the most important inventions of the last 50 years. It goes into how digital technology has disrupted all business models. It’s a very interesting read.

Then Will went on to say that he gets most of his knowledge from his network and how the network works for him. We have to assess the information and see if it is relevant for us. He talked about tagging and how we learn from each other. He said we needed to look at information in a global sense. Look at multiple viewpoints. He broke his presentation into the categories of finding information, assessing information, managing information and sharing information. I’m in agreement with Will that managing information is the hardest one. See his presentation link.
He gave a great overview of the tools that information leaders need to use and ways to use them effectively. As always when listening to Will, I go away with lots on my mind.

As promised, here’s the slide show. It’s also on the wiki. I can’t wait to hear what you all do with blogging! You were a great group!

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