Pre-Workshop+Assignment

=Pre-Workshop Assignment=

Hi everyone. To get us started I wanted to provide you with an article to read ahead of time to get us all thinking about some of the issues we're going to talk about during the session. If at all possible, I would like you to do the following before our session on Monday, August 3rd:

1. Please read Chapter 1 of [|How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School]. There has been a ton of research on how people learn done in the last twenty to thirty years, and this excellent book from 1999 is a report from the National Research Council commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Department of Education. It basically summarizes what we know about how humans learn, and then talks about the implications of that for schools. Chapter 1 is titled //Learning: From Speculation to Science//, which lays out what we know and sets the foundation for the rest of the book.

I'd like you to read this chapter carefully (click on the link above to download the PDF, it's about 8 pages, shouldn't take too long to read) with the following focus questions in mind:
 * //How well does your classroom match up with what the research says is true about how humans learn?//
 * //What changes might you consider making based on this review of the research?//

You can either read that PDF on whatever screen you'd like, or you can print it out and read it if you'd prefer.

Please do this reading before moving on to numbers 2 and 3 below.
2. Now I'm going to ask you to create an account with Diigo (if you already have a Diigo account, you can skip this step). It's safe, and you can always delete your account later if you don't want it.
 * Go to [|Diigo].
 * Follow the instructions for creating an account.
 * As part of creating that account it will probably asking you about [|inviting friends]. While you don't have to do this, it's going to eventually be helpful to have at least two Diigo friends. You can invite others from your district that you know will be attending this workshop, you can invite me (karlfisch {at} gmail {dot} com), you can access your email address book to look for folks you know who are already on Diigo, or you can invite other folks you know by entering their email address. If you get a friend invitation from someone else in your district, go ahead and accept it. If you don't want to do this or can't find anyone to invite, don't worry about it.
 * After you've finished creating your account and inviting friends, please [|install the Diigo toolbar in your browser of choice]. It's safe, and you can easily uninstall it later if you wish.
 * Once you have your Diigo account created and the toolbar installed, make sure you're signed in to the Diigo Toolbar. You'll probably automatically be signed in but, if you're not, the toolbar will say Diigo - Sign In. Click on it and enter your info, then please continue on to number 3.

3. Now, bear with me, but I'm going to ask you to read the same article you read in #1 above a second time, but this time online. Go to the online version of //How People Learn//, [|starting on page three which is the start of Chapter 1]. If you have Diigo installed correctly, you should notice that there is some highlighted text in the second paragraph on that page and, if you rest your cursor over the highlighted text, a "sticky note" will pop up with some annotations from me and others. (see images below)


 * = [[image:image1.jpg]] ||= [[image:image2.jpg]] ||

As you read (though the end of chapter one which is [|page 16]), I would like you to do three things. First, every time you come to some highlighted text please make sure you rest your cursor over the text and read the annotation(s). Second, I would like you to add your own annotations to the text (this is the part that probably requires you to have at least two Diigo friends to leave public annotations - don't worry about it if you can't). You can either add to my existing sticky notes if you'd like to comment on the same text or respond to what I wrote, or you can highlight and add sticky notes to additional text that I did not highlight and annotate (please make your sticky notes public so that everyone can view them). Third, as you complete this activity, think about the following focus questions:
 * //How is reading and annotating this chapter online in conjunction with others the same as reading the PDF version (and think about printed material in general), and how is it different?//
 * //What are the implications of this for teaching and learning?//

I'm hopeful you'll find this "assignment" interesting both in terms of the content of the article, and in terms of the process.

Optional Additional Reading
I'm only asking you to do #1-3 above but, if you're interested, here are some additional readings that I think you'd find interesting.

> > **Essential Questions** > //What literacies must educators master before we can help students make the most of these powerful potentials? What’s one thing you are going to do in the next six weeks to help you begin to master these literacies? How does "authentic" assessment change when the student's audience is the world? > . // > > **Essential Questions** > //We know that good teachers existed before the current wave of technology, but can a teacher today be the best teacher they can be and truly meet the needs of their students without using technology? What implications does this have for your own professional development and classroom practice?// > //. // > NCTE [|Definition of 21st Century Literacies] > [|Partnership for 21st Century Schools Framework for 21st Century Learning] > International Society for Technology in Education - [|National Educational Technology Standards for Students] > National Council for the Social Studies [|Position Statement on Media Literacy] > AASL [|Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning] > [|The Future is Now: The New Humanities at Rutgers University] > > **Essential Questions** > //What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century? Are we as educators currently literate? If not, what implications does that have for our students, and what proposals can we put in place to get all educators to a basic level of 21st century literacy in a reasonable amount of time?// > //. // > > **Essential Questions** > //What kind of collaborative partnerships - physical or virtual - can you develop with folks outside of your school(s)? (universities, corporations, other schools, etc.) What steps can you take to engage with these collaborative technologies yourself, both to learn and to model for our students?// > //. // > > **Essential Questions** > //Is it important to bring meaning and significance into the classroom? Do you think the way students portrayed themselves in these videos is fairly accurate for today’s student? How can we leverage the “networked” student, and the technological tools we have at our disposal, to empower our students to pursue real, relevant, and rigorous questions?//
 * 1) Read [|Footprints in the Digital Age] by Will Richardson, from the November 2008 issue of //Educational Leadership//.
 * 1) Read the [|Is it Okay to be a Technologically Illiterate Teacher?] blog post (including comment thread) - the original post starts where it says, Warning: Grumpy blogger alert, and [|National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers](NETS-T).
 * 1) Read through the following: 
 * 1)  Read Will Richardson's article [|World Without Walls - Learning Well with Others] from Edutopia
 * 1) Read Kansas State Professor [|Michael Wesch's blog post] and watch some of his videos ([|A Vision of Students Today], [|The Machine is Using Us], and [|Information Revolution]). Also watch Wendy Drexler's [|Networked Student]