Help Needed!

So I'll be moderating the opening keynote panel for a wonderful professional development day that we have planned at my school this coming Monday, March 9th. We have an excellent group of panelists from Stanford who have a great deal of experience in the area of interdisciplinary learning, differentiated instruction, assessment, and global education.

I'm fairly nervous about moderating this panel and could really use some help in developing some questions that we'll use to guide the keynote panel discussion. If you have any suggestions, I certainly would appreciate you jotting them down in the form of a comment here at this post.

By the way, we will ustream broadcast the keynote and a few other sessions. The link to the ustream channel that we'll use to broadcast the keynote is here...we'll also post the links to the ustream channels over at the mini-conference website. The broadcast of the keynote will begin at 8:30 am pacific (click here to convert to the time in your region of the globe).

Thank you for your help.

365/60 FOSS Disc

365/60 FOSS Disc
Originally uploaded by mjmonty

This was my 365 photo of the day from yesterday and I decided to re-blog it over here...

FOSS CD (actually it is a DVD)-FOSS is an acronym for "Free and Open Source Software." I created this disc to have something to give out to community members when they stop by the office asking about what software they should buy for their computers. Often times I find that they aren't opposed to the notion of open source, but instead they just aren't even aware that it exists. More on the FOSS disc over at: castillejatech.wikispaces.com/Casti+FOSS+Disc

Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas for titles on this disc in the form of comments on my blog post about this idea from early January: middleschoolblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/free-and-open-sourc...

"Math is not the most important subject!"

I agree with Ken Robinson's quote in in the title of this post. I agree that we've all been given the message that there is a clear hierarchy in schools with the math and sciences being at the top, the arts at the bottom, and everything else in the middle. We're also all quite familiar with the disconnected nature of schools where information is packaged into neat little bundles called subjects that are taught at different grade levels. The real world doesn't know "subjects." And we certainly don't know a world where we work with everyone in teams where all members are of the same age (wow, that would be really weird). Everything is inter-related and connected. Perhaps this model worked in a 20th century world where information was scarce and came at a premium, but I'm not so certain it will continue to work going forward. So what are we going to do??

I'm wondering if schools, with their industrial age model of departments, grade levels, bell schedules and gate keepers of knowledge will ever be able to make the systemic transition to a place where students are doing real work. Perhaps this is where Christensen's theory of "Disruptive Innovation" will come into play.

In this video you'll see wonderful examples of some schools that pioneering a model where members of the learning community are doing real work.

Be sure to watch this 8 minute video in its entirety. It is an excellent overview on project based learning and interdisciplinary learning. A special shout out goes to Mrs. Durff for sharing this on her blog.

New Side Bar Widget Item on the DDL

Just wanted to let anyone out there who checks in on this blog that I just added my shared google reader items as a widget in the right hand side bar of the DDL (it is the widget labeled "matt's shared items"). For those of you who subscribe to my blog and check it out in a RSS reader, the only way to see my shared items is to visit my blog or click here (you can also grab the RSS feed for my shared items and drop that in your reader as well).

The shared items feature of google reader also allows me to share my thoughts on the article/post through "notes." Some of the shared items do have notes.

Thanks much!

Google-Moodle Integration

OK, the story keeps getting better. In my previous post I mentioned what we've been learning lately about the integration between moodle 2.0 and the open source ePortfolio platform, Mahara. I was just reading Miguel Guhlin's blog post on Google Apps integration with Moodle. These are incredible developments...5 years ago if you told me that there would be a full virtual learning network that both students and teachers could contribute to AND integration with a email/collaboration suite that was accessible across multiple platforms/devices, I would've called you a liar. I would've called you an even greater liar if you then told me that this would all come at a price tag of ZERO dollars.

Well, that is exactly what exists now with the integration between Moodle, Mahara, and Google Apps. Incredible stuff. Check out the post over at Miguel's blog for the complete 411 on this process.

Moodle 2.0 Alpha and Mahara ePortfolio Integration

Adam Contois and I are really, really excited about the possibilities associated with Moodle 2.0 and its new integration with the fantastic ePortfolio solution, Mahara. Moodle 2 is still in alpha, but Adam recently set this up here on our LAN so we could demo its integration with Mahara and Google Docs. Right now we only have it setup with the capability for students to copy and push files from the Moodle virtual learning space over to their ePortfolio in Mahara and their Google Docs. We're scratching the surface of single sign on integration between Moodle 2 and google apps for education network and we're also looking at some of the other 3rd party integration features (flickr, Amazon S3, box.net, etc).

I've said it before at this blog, but I think we to think differently about assessment (even beyond rubrics) as school 2.0 continues to emerge and develop. Authentic student ePortfolio spaces should be a major component of this paradigm shift.

Major, major props to both the Mahara and Moodle open source communities for their outstanding work on this project.

The screencast below is pretty low budget, but hopefully it gives you a better idea of what this integration looks like.

Dallas, TX Teacher Online Review Session

I had the good fortune to catch up with Kyle Stevens, a high school teacher from Dallas, TX and his econ review session online this past Sunday night. He Twittered out that he was getting prepared to use DimDim for his review and I dropped him a reply letting him know that I was interested in learning more about DimDim as a stable platform for conducting these types of synchronous learning opportunities. He eventually emailed the link to his session and invited me to join in.

I really enjoyed the experience of sitting in Kyle's economics review session and observing how he and his students used the space to conduct a review session. Kyle took questions from his students via a chat room and he used DimDim's shared whiteboard space to sketch out various econ concepts. I thought it was an outstanding technique to carry out such a review experience.

My buddy, Chuck Taft of Milwaukee, WI does a similar thing with US History exam reviews using ustream.TV. I have a feeling that as creative teachers like Kyle and Chuck continue to pioneer these types of electronic workspaces that we'll see more experiences like this taking place in our learning environments.

Click on the image below to get a sense of what the online learning environment that Kyle and his students used on Sunday. It is a free tool by DimDim, and as you can see it has a chat space along the right, a shared whiteboard in the middle, a participant list along the left, and a web cam video of Kyle in the lower left hand corner of the window (you can see Kyle holding up a Kansas Jayhawks basketball...I had a great time in his review session until he pulled this stunt ;-)

365/54 Ubuntu LTSP Demo Project

365/54 Ubuntu LTSP Demo Project
Originally uploaded by mjmonty

This is a wonderful little demonstration project that Adam Contois, our system software engineer here at Castilleja, recently configured and installed in our iMac lab. This project is running using the Linux Terminal Server Project www.ltsp.org/ and Adam set it up with hardware that is old and software that is free (the towers are 5-6 years old). Anyway, you can see Adam here along with a student who has been using these computers quite a bit over the past couple of days.

Through the use of a little imagination, innovative thinking, and expertise, Adam has managed to extend the life of these old computers that otherwise may end up in a landfill somewhere. Way to go, Adam!

My Facebook Policy

As the explosion of 30, 40, 50, 60, and even 70/80/90 somethings getting involved in the world of Facebook continues, we're all going to be confronted with knotty questions of whether or not is appropriate to become contacts/friends with different people. Perhaps it is a former girlfriend/boyfriend, college buddies, childhood friends, former teachers/professors, current/former students, current/former colleagues, people we don't know face to face, etc. Every phase from our lives now can be merged together in the Facebook experience. For some people, this can be an unanticipated positive outcome and for others it can be a bit disconcerting.

Anyway, in the spirit of openness and inspired by Lorna Costantini's wonderful live webcast last night on the topic of Parents and Facebook, I thought I'd spell out my professional policy regarding establishing contacts with past/current students and past/current parents. As a disclaimer, this policy works well for me but very well may not work for someone else. I believe that we all need to make our decisions with what will work best for our own particular circumstance.

For me the experience of connecting has been nothing but positive. I've reconnected with a great childhood buddy of mine who lives out here in the Bay Area, I've reconnected with cousins I haven't seen or talked to in years, I've been able to keep in touch with all of my good teaching buddies from Milwaukee, I've been able to get to know current students better, I've been better sensitized to the experiences of the busy lives of parents and their families, I've shared resources and learned new things from others, I've reconnected with scores of college and high school buddies, and I've furthered my online relationships with many people I don't even know but who are doing some innovative things in the area of teaching and learning around the world.

Here it goes...Matt Montagne's policy for connecting with past/present students and parents on Facebook (as of February 24th, 2009, that is...this is surely bound to change going forward):

I will accept a friend request from past/present students and parents under the following condition...everyone must use respectful language and keep their profile "clean." This, actually, is my rule for maintaining connections with anyone online and I post this clearly on my Facebook profile picture.

To date, I've had to discontinue the connection with only a handful of adults/students primarily due to repeated foul language in status updates.

That is it...that is my policy. I don't put people on limited profile because you can find out more information about me via a google search than you can by my facebook profile. And outside of doing my best to contribute and share with other edu-nerds around the world, I can't really control what shows up on the first page of a google search for Matt Montagne.

Best of luck developing your own personal Facebook policy for accepting/not accepting friend requests from people in your life, both past and present. These are interesting times and as a result, there is no one method and technique that will work for everyone.

French Vocab Slidecast

French Iv Un Papillon Dans La Cité Chapitre Ii

View more presentations from Matt Montagne. (tags: frenchiv)

This is a little slidecast that I made along with our French teacher this past fall. I had kind of given up on slideshare as a tool for vocabulary mastery and review because the audio would easily become out of sync with the slides when pausing and skipping about in the slidecast. However, after revisiting my slideshare account today, I can see that the good folks over at slideshare must have put a fix in place. The audio is fully in sync with the slides and the user may zip back and forth, pause, and replay the slidecast without losing audio/slide sync.

I think it might be time to revisit using slideshare as a platform for these types of learning opportunities within foreign language classes, especially given that many of our teachers use a Mac-only program called "iFlash" to do these types of things. I really like the notion of using HTML tools like slideshare so that these learning materials can be available across various operating systems (and students aren't required to purchase a pesky client application as well). And, to take it a step further, when publishing to slideshare these resources become available to an even broader learning community.

Finally, placing materials like this online as HTML at a space like slidecast gives learners 24/7 access to these learning opportunities. No longer do they have to wait to go to the language lab to practice their listening and speaking skills...using an audio slidecast like this one, they can work through these materials as often as they'd like and in a time and space that works for them.