A large neighborhood walkabout

An OLPC Neighborhood
Originally uploaded by mahlness

I was eating lunch today at my desk, as I often do when I'm way far behind in my classroom. Regular laptop at the right, XO on the left. When I clicked on the XO neighborhood, I did not see anything like this picture, when the xochat.org jabber server was going full steam last December.

Today I saw our 4 XO's, as usual - but there was this chat icon showing as well. Unusual, lately. So I clicked on it, and soon I was in a chat conversation with a guy fron Zagreb, Croatia. Nice guy, has a couple of kids, etc.

It's amazing to me that this can happen at all. And it happens so easily. This fellow had connected to the jabber server near Seattle. All four of our classroom XO's connect there.

I'm especially grateful to have these XO's right now in a district where any kind of chat, Skype, IM and so on is forbidden. This is definitely under the radar. So it's nice to get out once in a while. (grin)

This is one of those times at the end of the school year when I wish I had more time with my kids. There is so much more to teach and share, and I can't possibly get it all in. Here is a smattering of things I want to get to in the next three weeks (ha):
- connecting my class with kids/adults elsewhere via these XO's in chat, video, or Classroom Presenter.
- getting a collection of books for kids ready to roll on our XO's, so silent reading choices will include using our 4 XO's as e-book readers (I'm close on this!)
- doing at least ONE VoiceThread with my class!

(while writing this in the evening at home, the xo on my left showed a chat invitation, and I joined of course - this time a couple of people, one from Seattle)

lost my train of thought here, but never mind...

I find this sort of connection extremely exciting. We all know the world is so huge, and we are all just grains of sand on one of many beaches. I think this every time I fly across the US and look down at the vast expanse ("there a million stories in the Naked City") out the window - which goes on for hour after hour...

So when you get a chance to reach out and make contact with one of those grains of sand, it is extraordinary. If you're from different beaches, well how cool! We are meeting with a few variables in common of course, but still... the randomness is stunning, the opportunity is unprecedented, and the potential for GOOD is so enormous.

To Davor and Julien: it was nice to meet you today. Let's connect again soon.

End of an era

I just posted the following on the blog of The Earth Day Groceries Project. This was not an easy decision:

---

Wow! An amazing 197 schools sent in pictures of their efforts on the Earth Day Groceries Project in 2008. And 35 0f them were from Romania - go figure... If anybody knows what happened in Romania to cause this big spike, please let me know.

Anyway, all pictures sent in have been placed on new web pages. We'll probably top 200 school submissions by the end of May, a record by a long shot.

Unfortunately, The Earth Day Groceries Project will not be able to host pictures for schools from now on. We will certainly add links to other web pages and collections with pictures, but...

The issue is time. It takes an average of 10 minutes to convert and archive an email with picture attachments into a web page for a school. For 200 web pages, that's a lot of minutes - and way too many hours to add to my teaching life, even if I got paid for it :) Many thanks to all the teachers and group leaders who have sent in their pictures over the years - they are incredible! They will always remain on the website as testimony to the comittment of millions of schoolchildren to saving our Earth.

I'll close this chapter in the project by sharng the very first picture from another school ever sent in to the web site. From 1996, Royston Elementary in Royston, BC, Canada - thanks, Kelsey!

tags: earthday earthdaybags

Another list is gone, almost

Change is hard, and some (of us, myself included) find it hard to deal with. This one is more of a loss, but it struck me as a big deal.

I just got an email from Ernie Anderson, the moderator of Ednet, one of the longest running educational technology lists out there. He's been in the hospital, apologized for the list silence lately - and asked if anybody wanted to take over the list - now at "slightly less than 200 subscribers".

This made me real sad, for a couple of reasons:

• Ednet has been there since 1992. There is a lot of important history and good work that has come out of that list, a couple of particular interest to me - I posted the first invitation to join in The Earth Day Groceries Project on Ednet. It has carried Louis Schmier's Random Thoughts since he began writing them in 1993. And many fine moments and conversations over the years. I will never forget Prescott Smith, moderator in the mid-nineties, sending a note to the list where he mentioned me and Bonnie Bracey in the same sentence, in a complimentary way. I printed that one out, and you better believe I still have it.
• It triggered in me the thought of how far we have to go in schools to get out of the world of lists. Yes, I'm sad to see Ednet on its last legs, but even sadder when it reminds me of just how far the education community has to go to move beyond this web 1.0 list technology. It's just not where we should be, right now. I cringe when I think about a comment (I think) I left for Will Richardson, taking him to task for not being more involved in the educational list community. Yeesh. He responded very nicely and apologetically. Will, I'm, sorry. The list is dead - or will be, soon.
• It reminded me of my own struggles moderating a list for educators in Seattle for many years, tictech. It was very successful for many years, but this past January I closed it down, fed up with getting slammed off list by folks for things I said on the list - and also feeling it was time to MOVE ON, for goodness sake. I started a Tictech 2.0 Ning site, a group on Diigo... we'll see where it goes. It was an extremely hard decision to terminate that list. Although I owned/moderated it for 7 or 8 years, it was not founded by me. In my opinion it leaves a void in Seattle that has not been filled.

There are, of course, thousands of Internet lists that are doing amazing and useful things. A couple I'm on that I love:

• Our PTSA list at my school. It's extremely useful and provides an additional dimension to our school community.
• Tweeters, an (unmoderated) list for birders in the Pac NW. At over 2,000 subscribers, I think, this list amazes me. There are online tiffs, of course, but to have such civility on a wide open list with so many members - well, I think it's a tribute to all its members, and to a strong list owner.

Then there are education lists that I just go ho-hum over, these days - because I get my information about technology in education other ways. I don't have time to read through every post like I used to, but I stay subscribed .... Edtech - a biggie, dealing with many technical questions, and Andy Carvin's wwwedu, - the one that is closest to home for my leanings and politics - but I rarely post there any more. I've done a few guest moderator stints for Andy over the years. In its heyday, it was one jumpin' list.

But people are moving on. I think.

• How many people in their 20's and 30's check out a social networking site with their morning coffee before they check their email? How many educators (of any age) do that?
• How many educators check a news aggregator like Bloglines or Netvibes, etc - before they check their email? Does the percentage who do reflect that of the general public?

As I said, I'm sad to hear about Ednet. It may live on with a new moderator, but its number of subscribers has dwindled. I am incredibly grateful for the things I learned on Ednet, for the encouragement I got, and for the people who stretched my thinking. A list message from Bonnie Bracey came in while I was writing this...

Year of the XO, part 2: Memorial Day

Memorial Day relaxing 2
Originally uploaded by mahlness

Made it to this benchmark in the school year, one more time - yippee skippee! While other teachers have hung it up for the year, I'm looking at 3+ weeks to go. I'm not complaining, though. The end of a school year is always very sweet and intense - kind of like the dessert so incredible you can only handle it once a year...

I am writing this from my backyard, on XO laptop #2 (Earthday). I just took the picture of me sitting here with it- and uploaded it to Flickr. There simply is no better laptop for the outdoors than this little guy... no worries about spilling on it, dropping it, overheating, etc - and it's so easy to tote around. Plus, it's great in sunlight (not always an issue in Seattle - but today is awfully nice).

When I first heard about the xo laptop, nearly two years ago, I was very skeptical. But I bought one in November anyway, because I thought it might be a good thing in my classroom. So here I sit, running an experimental "build" (703, it's on all 4 of them), because I needed to upgrade to run a program we were going to demo in my classsroom for some university students. Nothing could have been further from my mind back in November... and now I'm planning/plotting sharing that activity with others, via jabber server - I know it will work :)

I'll write more here about the XO experience in my classroom, but for now I'll just enjoy the rest of the afternoon with Earthday - hanging out, batching it, while my wife is with her family, dodging tornadoes in Kansas.

Instincts

I have not had an hour like this - ever.

Yesterday in my third grade classroom I was at a teacher computer. I invited the whole class, in seven student computer groups, to join me in an activity, a series of questions about our recent field trip to Seattle's Pike Place Market.

The medium was a series of "slides", as you might see in PowerPoint. The questions were written on the slides, which were a series of pictures we took at the Market. The kids were to draw directly on their computer screens or enter text to answer the questions. Then they were to "submit" them to me.

I saw their submissions immediately. I could share any group's answers instantly on all the computers, with a couple of clicks. I moved them all to a different slide when it was time, and they worked on a new task - then they sent in answers, changed their answers even, resubmitted, etc, etc. Amazing and mind boggling, truly.

I circulated, laptop cradled in my arm, chatting with groups at their computers, clicking on this or that to focus the learning, asking for more, congratulating, and so on. Finally, I turned them loose, unlocking their computers, so they could navigate from slide to slide, to finish the rest of the slides - and to go back and change their submissions on previous ones.

We were all on XO laptops. Eight of them.

Sometimes when you follow your instincts, you get lucky.

What these four University of Washington students developed is amazing. They worked on it for four months, I think. They had vision, saw a need, and came up with a possible solution. I think what they developed is remarkable. The program was stable and robust, working almost perfectly in a classroom of third graders who certainly did give it a good run...

In the midst of the excitement and chaos I took a few pictures - and I kicked myself for not taking any video.

Instincts - it's important to trust and follow them. I bought an XO laptop because it felt right, and I thought it would be great with the kids I teach. I ended up with FOUR in my classroom. I replied to a group of university students in a forum setting because they were working on a program for the XO, were looking for a classroom, and were in our neighborhood. It felt right - and look where we ended up.

To think that this program could run in a remote village anywhere in the world, even one without electricity - well, that really excites me. I think a few of my kids got that as well.

tags: xo olpc roomtwelve

Year of the XO, part 1

I imagine I will write more along these lines as the school year ends, hence the post title. I simply must, because of the impact these little green and white laptops have had in my classroom, and my life. When the school year started last September, nothing was further from my mind.

I'll start from the (almost) end. After school today I met for the third time with University of Washington students who have developed an innovative piece of software for the XO. This was the dry run - it went pretty well, I think. In a few days we'll try it out with my third graders. They'll be working like crazy in the meantime to iron out bugs.

Several things strike me right now.

• It's great to have the chance to work with university students in my classroom. Oh, I've had student teachers before, but this is different. These guys are in the computer science program, and they're about to graduate.
• It surprises me how little I hear about direct collaboration between public elementary schools and universities - in any field. But in computer science especially - good grief, if those departments started looking at preparing their graduates for successful careers that included a little more recognition of societal need...

• This comes at a time when OLPC is fraught with political posturing and battles over development and future vision. Heck, I'm so excited about the potential of these things in my classroom, I can hardly stand it... I want to scream at the doubters, critics, and power grabbers, "Hey, hold on. LOOK at this!"
• But last, I am encouraged - by the vision, innovation, and determination of the young men I've just met. I'm hoping there are a lot more out there like these guys. They are our future of course...

tags: xo olpc roomtwelve

Project Athena

In the mid-nineties I wrote and collaborated with some very talented people who thought the Internet might be a good thing to use in education...

Today I got an email from a teacher who mentioned a colleague had been using some of my instructional materials for years - but they thought the site they came from was down, and did I know where those materials were now? They are/were called "Task Cards". What a flashback.

Those task cards are on Project Athena, funded by a NASA grant. Man, those were heady times. The fact that the site endures, and is used, over a dozen years later, astounds me. It speaks to the quality and vision of the project creators - and to the capability that we have to keep ANYthing of value - forever.

The image here is one I developed in response to what I (and a couple of others) thought was a less than adequate design for the home page. Aaack, politics are here forever. The page lives on in my school's website here.

I haven't used the site (or the materials I developed for it) in my third grade classroom for 6 or 7 years.

Serious personal and educational whiplash.

Silent Running

I loved the 1972 sci-fi movie on space exploration with Bruce Dern. This is where many classroom teachers are right now - under the radar, behind the sonar... running silently in classrooms, working hard to wrap up another school year - and still keep exploring.

This blog has been very silent lately. Here's what's running in one classroom:

• My third graders blog regularly, and they do so very easily - to post a blog article is just a couple more (easy) steps they take independently when they finish writing.
• Counting our 4 XO laptops, we have 21 computers in my classroom of 25 third graders. None of them is a donated junker.
• We just finished coordinating the largest educational activity coordinated on the Internet, for the 15th year.
• In a few days, we will have 8 XO laptops in our classroom, to demo a project developed by some U. of Washington students - an exciting new XO program.

Some of this may be news to readers here, but it is definitely news to my school and district colleagues.

I encourage school district leaders, tech administrators, tech integration spcialists - anyone who cares about technology in our schools - to visit as many classrooms as possible as the school year winds down. Check out what's happening first hand. What's under the surface may well surprise you.

For me right now, it's good to run silent, run deep. It is quiet, the water is very cold - but it is oh so exciting.

Coming up for air

It's not that I've given up on this blog - far from it. I am pitifully backlogged with ideas and partially written drafts. But Earth Day was a couple of weeks ago...


The Earth Day Groceries Project now has a record 174 pages on Pictures for 2008 - and there are 5 more that came in today. Last weekend I caught up. At an average of 10 minutes to transform each of them from an email with picture attachments to a school web page - well, it was a big task.

This is certainly the last year I will continue picture inclusion the way I have for the last 14 years. From now on, it'll have to be "links only" - where pictures will have to be on a school server or Flickr or something.... This is not an easy decision, as I know it means so much for so many schools to have their pictures "on" the site.... I just cannot do it anymore - because of the time it takes.


In the meantime, what or who lit a fire under Romania this year?!! Nearly 30 reports from schools who participated - and nearly that many picture submissions from those schools. Man, I wish I spoke the language...


Anyway, it feels very good to pull even and come up for air - temporarily. I look forward to getting back into the web 2.0 mix again, real soon.

Swamped, but Saved

I am swamped, overwhelmed in the midst of dealing with a massive deluge of email (pictures) and database entries (reports) for The Earth Day Groceries Project. Now, this kind of thing happens every year, this huge spike in activity, but this year seems different. Here's what's happening:

• there are way more people sending in pictures to be put on the web site
• people are sending in multiple, huge image files - like emails with three - 2MB images. I had several of those today - a total of 75 MB (so far) of images via email, yikes
• there are currently 81 reports waiting to be individually edited and approved for addition to the website database
• this all happened in one day. Way more than this has come in already. MUCH more will come in in the next few days...
• I'm looking at 15 hours of work that landed in my lap today - hard, intense, coding...
• Tomorrow that total will be added to... more the next, etc. It is that time of year.

Swamped, I am.

On the other hand, today there was a first in my third grade classroom. I gave a writing assignment this morning (Earth Day), and by the end of the day, every single student had posted an article to his/her blog, and they were all approved. To the non-teacher, this may not seem like any big whoops, but for the teacher who understands the differences in ability and individual motivation in each and every child in today's classrooms, well....

I'm saved.

Maybe part of their sucess in writing had to do with the fact that they saw themselves on a video on the Internet for the first time. If so, I'm getting a new video camera and filming every day!

Anyway, they ALL wrote, and many wrote very well. They had like 15 minutes, and they wrote off the tops of their heads. Check their posts on 4/22 on the left side of roomtwelve.com. One more time I say thank goodness for the kids.

Live event - Earthcast 2008 - join in!

On Earthday, April 22nd, there will be a 24 hour webcast about the health of our planet, planned and implemented by educators. I'm very honored to be participating as an invited guest, talking about The Earth Day Groceries Project. I hope other project participants will join in the conversation!

The event is called Earthcast 2008, and it will be broadcast/shared in a variety of ways for 24 hours. Be sure to tune in and participate, if you want, on Earthday. It begins at 12:00 AM GMT on Earthday. (that's 9 PM April 21 on the East Coast of the US, 6 PM on the West Coast, etc)

I'll be there on April 21st, from 6 to 7 PM, West Coast time.

"If you can't say something nice..."

"If you can't say something nice... don't say nothing at all."
- Thumper, quoting advice from his dad, when admonished for being critical, in Bambi.

So I have been very quiet here lately. I've been trying to put together a single positive sentence about my experiences with technology and education right now - and I just can't.

I will be able soon, I hope - but for now, I had to go to a different place to leave something nice. Here's a sweet love song from Alison Krauss that brightened my day:

XO Users - Connect!

There is a new jabber server set up on Bainbridge Island (near Seattle), and it's working great. It is one of only FOUR in North America currently functioning.

Briefly, a jabber server is a place XO laptop users can connect to that will allow them to share anything (pretty much) on their XO laptop with anybody else connected to the same server. This includes chat, video, write, and more... incredible technology!

Here's a link to the forum discussion with the location of the server: http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=2094.new#new

tags: xo olpc

I talked with my brother today

This is a break from educational technology - to personal technology. So...

I talked with my brother today. He called me, and we talked. I called him back and we talked some more.

My brother Dave lives in Connecticut, and I'm in Seattle. He's deaf/blind(legally), and I'm lucky enough to still have those senses.

Today we spoke on the phone - well, I was on the phone at least. Dave was watching an interpreter on a TV (up really close) who signed to him what I said. His TV is hooked up to a camera, so the interpreter can see what he is signing, and relay that back on to me. Yes, in the middle of all this technology there is a person (maybe hundreds, I don't know) who makes it meaningful for the people on either end.

Just amazing technology. Carried over the Internet. Getting him a big new TV was only part of it - he needed high speed Internet access, too.

But he needed somebody to set up the hardware and software to make the magic happen. Someday I hope to meet James, from the HKNC, in person. We've spoken, via the same video relay system before, and we've exchanged lots of email. James, if you're reading here, a big shoutout thank you!

So I spoke with my brother today, but for the first time, I could not reach out and touch him. I'm ever so grateful for the people with the vision to make this happen.

Tomorrow, tomorrow...

I never would have predicted this as the school year started. But that is just how fast technology changes.

I now have four XO laptops in my third grade classroom. We also have 12 screaming multimedia machines, 2 laser printers, and 5 wireless laptops.

Playing with Mark's XO
Originally uploaded by timlauer

Guess which computers are in the highest demand? The XO laptops, of course. Slow-mo, no matter. Small screens and limited processing speed, so what? If you are a kid, these machines are irresistable. Heck , if you're a grown-up, they're pretty cool, too.

Today we turned a page and leapt into another dimension. We started a chat with somebody in east Texas - Longview, to be exact. On the Internet, via a Jabber server.

My kids were really stunned. They had been having a great time the past week chatting with each other in class. But when somebody is writing to you, realtime, from 1,000 miles away, well, it makes you put down your crayons.

When the school day was over I connected with "Hans" again, via chat. I set up one more of our XO's and joined it to the chat. I got another teacher to be in charge of that one. We soon switched to "Record". Take a picture on your XO, and everybody sees it. Record a video on your XO, and everybody sees it.

Real time. All three of us contributing - at once. We took pictures, we made videos. Everything each of us captured was available to all of us - immediately. This is such amazing technology, and the potential is so exciting.

My kids will have a fun day tomorrow. That IS what it's all about.

Technorati tags: olpc xo roomtwelve

Third Time's the Charm

On February 28, 2008 I presented a one hour concurrent session, Third Time's the Charm - at NCCE in Seattle, WA. Here's how it went.

The idea of the whole thing was to talk about blogging with my third graders at roomtwelve.com. This is my third year doing so, hence the real catchy title... Part of my reason for presenting was that it was a requirement (to do a regional presentation) of the grant I was awarded last April, a 2007 Qwest Foundation Learning Technology Grant

I was extremely anxious about this presentation. Besides worrying about getting nervous speaking, there was the concern of nobody showing up - or just a handful. Anyway, I went on with my prep, did a PowerPoint preso (very little text), prepared a one page handout, made it into a pdf, and put all this stuff on a wiki: roomtwelve.wikispaces.com

There were 50 to 60 people there, easily 80% teachers, and most of them elementary. It was a good audience. The tech stuff set up easily, I was able to use my own laptop, and I was off....

So I just talked. I had been over this enough in my mind and with notes, so it was really a breeze. Then came the risky part. I checked my email in the middle of the preso to see if my kids had sent in any blog articles to be published.

Bingo! 25 emails were there, waiting for me to approve articles to my third graders' blogs. So we went on. We went over a few of them live, looking at the emails, navigating the back end of classblogmeister, the whole works. People asked a fair number of questions along the way, which was great. I had to cut some things short. I never thought I'd run out of time.

In the hurry to wrap it up, I forgot to ask if anybody had the answer to the bird quiz. I also forgot to start my mp3 recorder - I was going to use some of it in a podcast - darn!!

Here are the bird pics I showed. ID them correctly through a comment (without clicking on them of course), and win a prize! (well not really)

tags: ncce2008 roomtwelve

24

No, it's not the TV show. It's the number of blog articles published by my third graders in the two days I was out of the classroom. Some posts were on a topic I had assigned, some were on a topic the sub came up with, and some were whatever the kids had on their minds. Now, I had to approve them for publication while I was at home or at my conference, but still...

There they were, basically working independently - thinking, writing, blogging. They had a great sub - but she knew nothing about how they write - blog. There are another 10 or so submitted articles I need to take a closer look at, offer feedback on, etc. Amazing.

Note to Room Twelve

I posted this on my classroom blog at the start of my second day out of my classroom, to attend NCCE 2008. The kids could not see the picture because Flickr is blocked in our district - and hence, could not see our FOURTH XO laptop. OMG, wait 'til Monday.... (thanks, Glenn and Tami!). This was the first time in several years I'd missed a day of school. My anxiety was obviously higher than my kids'.

---

Hi Room Twelve, this is Mr. Ahlness. I talked with Mrs. Luke last night, and she said things went really well in class on Thursday, and that many of you were very helpful to her and each other. Wow! That sure made me feel good - nice job.

And your writing - oh my goodness! I checked my email at 1:30 in the middle of my presentation (to about 50 teachers), and there were 28 messages!! I approved a couple, some we looked at quickly and decided to wait on, but most we did not even get to - sorry! You wrote so much!! You should be proud of yourselves.

I'm about to hop on the bus to go back downtown, but I thought I'd leave a little picture for you. You won't be able to see it at school on Friday, but maybe you can check from home over the weekend. See you Monday! - Mr. A.

tags: ncce2008 roomtwelve olpc xo

Follow NCCE in Seattle

I just set up a Hitchhikr page for the Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE), February 26-28, 2008 in Seattle. Head there for latest blog posts and flickr images tagged with ncce2008.

Grab the rss feed while you're there, so they'll all come to you.

So if you're going, or if you comment on any activities happening at NCCE, please use this Technorati Tag:

ncce2008

Twitter, finally

I've read lots of posts like this one. I bet many have. I'm not rolling my eyes anymore. Here goes.

I finally broke down yesterday and jumped in to Twitter. I had held off for a variety of reasons, most related to not having enough time to do everything as it was. There was also this fear of getting involved in one more really addictive computer activity. And I really could not see what the value might possibly be.

I had set up an account months ago, and followed one person, David Warlick. I figured he was safe :) There the account sat, until yesterday. It was Mid-winter break. My wife was off doing extra work stuff. I had no excuse.

It was amazing getting started. Choosing people to "Follow", getting emails saying so and so is "Following" you, etc. Finally figuring out something worthy to say. Figuring out how to indicate an individual when you're replying to somebody in the chaos of a free for all conversation with hundreds, thousands of speakers. I'm currently following around 100, and being followed by about 50. Sounds kind of creepy at first.

If there was "Twitter for Dummies" on hand, it probably would have been helpful. Too late, I'm figuring it out on my own, like everybody else.

There are the conference folks talking: Shareski, Richardson, Levine, etc. There is the earth rhythm, as eastern N. America folks turn out the lights (except for Vicki Davis), folk out west keep going, and those in Asia start to wake up... The exchanges are funny, informative, meaningless, helpful, questioning - what a wide range.

So is it any good? Well, yes. It is amazing in a way that is hard to describe. I've seen some incredible work I flat out would have missed. Stuff I will use. Great ideas have been flying in front of my eyes constantly. And I've just been on for one day.

So there you go, my "I'm on Twitter" post. I kinda feel like one of the last edtech people in the world to jump in, and I'm sorry I held off so long. But it's good to be in there.

twitter