Dr. Trina Davis, President of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) welcomed more than 18,000 educators from more than 50 countries to the opening of the 2008 National Educational Computer Conference (NECC) in San Antonio last night. The keynote session was Texas-sized, filling the ballroom and broadcast throughout the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.

Special thanks to the Southwest High School Mariachi Band. If they were at all nervous about performing in front of that large an audience, it didn’t show. Music, singing, and a little dancing got things off to a lively start.

In keeping with the conference theme of convene-connect-transform, Davis encouraged teachers to be “powerful advocates for change.” She encouraged us to share our passion, to showcase student work, and to dream big.

Keynote speaker James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, outlined conditions needed to make the kind of smart groups described in his book. He acknowledged the potential of technology in providing a way to aggregate the individual opinions of a group (95% of which will be wrong) into a collective judgment (which can be amazingly accurate).

He discussed the value of encouraging diversity with in a group, calling it “the most important component.” He stressed that, while socioeconomic diversity can be valuable, cognitive diversity will best provide the variety of perspectives needed to form a “smart group.” Homogeneous groups are easier to work in, but, Surowiecki stated, “The more they talk, the dumber they become.”

The third quality Surowiecki mentioned was independence. For a smart group to develop, people need to be able to think for themselves. They need a small amount of support to move beyond imitating others, and they need to be open to the kind of healthy disagreement that leads to seeing things from a different point of view.

The next couple of days are going to be fun. I’ll keep you posted!

When I came across the Do You Speak American? quiz, I accepted the challenge with a smile. I’ve been fortunate to live and travel in different parts of the United States, and I thought I would do well with it.

There’s an “o” sound, for example, that I start hearing in northern Indiana, and it becomes more noticeable as I continue through Wisconsin into Minnesota. I thought I would recognize a New England “a.” And Southern drawls are easily recognizable, right?

I was thoroughly humbled by this quiz. Can you beat 3? (Yes, I’ll bet you can!)

Bill Poser approaches the Second Amendment in his blog, Language and the Law from a linguistic perspective. He focuses on whether the phrase “to bear arms” was intended to mean military use of weapons solely, or whether the Founders intended the phrase to include personal ownership of firearms.

Poser writes:

Among the numerous amicus briefs submitted is the so-called “Linguists’ Brief”, written by Dennis E. Baron, Richard W. Bailey, and Jeffrey P. Kaplan. This brief argues that the Second Amendment protects only a public right on two grounds: the afore-mentioned interpretation of the leading clause, and the argument that the expression “bear arms” refers only to the organized military use of arms, not to individual use. They claim that the term “bear arms” is “an idiomatic expression that means ‘to serve as a soldier, do military service’”.

To assess the merits of the “Linguists’ Brief,” Poser turns to the texts of the time to see what the phrase meant at the time the Bill of Rights was written. He concludes:

… while the Linguists’ Brief may well reflect the view of the meaning of “bear arms” in 1791 formed on the basis of its authors experience reading material from that period, there appear to be clear and convincing examples of the use of this term in an individual, non-military, sense. The characterization of such examples in the Brief as anomalous is not supported by any sort of scientific linguistic analysis.

Among my high school students in this part of the country, the Second Amendment is cherished. Writing research papers … not so much. I’m planning to bookmark this blog as an example of why we research and why we write. Maybe this blog post will demonstrate the value of the process in a way the textbook examples (with due respect to the writers of textbooks) just don’t.

Breaking news: Supreme Court rules against DC gun ban (@ CNN) (@ Fox)

News flash: multitasking in the workplace began in the 19th century. (Parents, of course, have always multitasked.) Researcher Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted, says, “We can’t just blame the Blackberry” for the fact that the average office worker is interrupted about every 3 minutes and then needs about 30 minutes to get back on task. The resulting cost to business has been estimated at $650 billion per year.

“You can’t produce deeply in a distractable environment — we have to stop kidding ourselves about that,” she says. “We’re existing on snippets and glimpses of each other.”

Researchers are sure people can learn to focus better. Even just talking with children about how to pay attention, Jackson says, has led to some gains.

My high school students like to say they work better when they are watching TV and doing homework at the same time. This practice does not lead to their best writing. Sadly, it probably *does* help prepare them for the work world.

Read Jackson’s article at Business Week: May We Have Your Attention, Please?

Teachers learn Bloom’s Taxonomy almost on Day One of their training. Developed by Dr. Benjamin Bloom in the 1950s and revised by Dr. Lorin Anderson, one of his students, in the 1990s, the taxonomy organizes learning tasks into a hierarchy, with “remembering” on the lowest level and “creating” on the highest.

Andrew Churches, a teacher/researcher in New Zealand, makes a good point when he writes, “Bloom’s revised taxonomy accounts for many of the traditional classroom practices, behaviours and actions but does not account for the new processes and actions associated with web 2.0 technologies and increasing ubiquitous computing.” He proposes adding digital skills to the existing levels of the taxonomy, to include skills such as bullet-pointing, advanced searching, mashing, moderating, beta testing, and blogging. He also proposes adding skills related to collaboration.

The graphic below summarizes his findings. It is used with his kind permission:

What implications does this have for our classrooms?

IT SEEMED like the perfect present for their son’s 11th birthday – a Narnia-based website address to feed his enthusiasm for the books of CS Lewis.

But Comrie Saville-Smith’s parents were surprised when they received an angry call from one of the world’s biggest law firms, demanding they hand over the domain name.

When they refused, they were sent a letter offering to refund them for the cost of the site, before another was dispatched asking them to name their price for handing over the rights to comrie@narnia.mobi.

The Saville-Smiths – refusing to bow to pressure from Baker & McKenzie, the lawyers representing Lewis’s estate – have now been sent a weighty 128-page legal document, ordering them to make their case to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Switzerland by [June 23].

Richard Saville-Smith, Comrie’s father, claims the dispute echoes the “good against evil” themes of Lewis’s novels.

Read the entire article, written by Shân Ross and published June 16, 2008.

The alternative learning strategies used at Kim’s school were sometimes controversial.

Special thanks to Cybersalt!

Yesterday’s post discussed how people read online. Research demonstrates that we read Web pages in a kind of F-shape, seeking specific information as quickly as possible.

“The biggest determinant for content usability is how users read online,” Jakob Nielsen writes, “and because people read differently, you have to write differently.”

Nielsen offers some specific suggestions for effective Web writing style which I have summarized below:

• Put the most important part first. People will read only 20-30 percent of the text on a screen unless they are especially interested in the topic.
• Use keywords that a search engine will target. The Web is not the place for symbolism or subtlety.
• Keep it short and sweet. Your reader isn’t sitting in a cozy armchair with feet up; your reader is looking for answers to questions.

Nielsen doubts that the Web is the best choice for education:

I continue to believe in the linear, author-driven narrative for educational purposes. I just don’t believe the Web is optimal for delivering this experience. Instead, let’s praise old narrative forms like books and sitting around a flickering campfire — or its modern day counterpart, the PowerPoint projector — which have been around for 500 and 32,000 years, respectively.

He acknowledges his bias; he writes books and presents seminars for a living. Teachers can relate to that.

Students need to be aware of their own reading strategies since, obviously, advertisers and politicians are. They need to understand why a powerful Web page is written differently from, say, an essay. Most important, they need to be aware of where the forms overlap and how the audience and purpose drive the differences.

We’ve been teaching those concepts all along, and perhaps now students will be more receptive to them.

Jakob Nielsen’s post on banner blindness includes an interesting study on how people read Web pages. Researchers tracked people’s eye movements as they visited sites online and determined that we look at Websites in an “F” pattern. Writing for business owners and Web designers, Nielsen concludes,

• Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F’s top bar.
• Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F’s lower bar.
• Finally, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F’s stem.

Web users have taught themselves to read this way with remarkable consistency. If teachers want students to read long blocks of text online (for example, an online short story or an essay), we may have to remind them to adjust their reading strategies as they begin.

These studies have implications for the teaching of writing, which I’ll discuss tomorrow.