Vision-ary Committee

Microsoft Cozi.com has a new “social networking” tool aimed at parents and families.

Cozi.com has a calendaring feature, online shopping list, contacting family feature and photo screen savers.

(similar to the tools in Google, but much more easily accessible).

You can even message your family members via their phones, pda’s or email.

Google tools are excellent, but I do think Microsoft the Cozi group has beat them to the punch on the use of this tool for families, because Google’s pieces aren’t really all collected into one tool yet.

Update:  Thanks to Samantha from Cozi for getting my details correct! 

In his article, Teaching Tech Literacy to the MySpace Generation, Christopher Huen comments:

“In an era in which kids download music, publish their own blogs, and gossip via instant messages—all while juggling a treasure chest of electronic gadgets—the idea that schools should be teaching them to be technology literate seems almost silly.

David DeBarr, instructional technology coordinator for the Scottsdale Unified School District in Scottsdale, Arizona, hears that from parents all the time. “I cringe when I hear that the kids already know it all. The kids don’t know it all,” he says. “The kids know how to text message on their phones, but ask them to type a research paper and format it, they don’t know how to do that. Not many of those kids will be going into business and turning in a business proposal on a phone.”

DeBarr believes that teaching students how to use the Internet or specific software applications is simply a means to an end. “Technology literacy has to be technology as a tool,” he says. “Our approach is not to teach technology. Our approach is to teach it as a goal. It becomes infused in every classroom and becomes part of life. It happens naturally.”

I think this is part of the challenge for our committee–to identify future trends and then find ways the school and district can support the natural infusion of those trends into the classroom.  I think we also have to remember that even if students can use gadgets easily, that we need to continue to teach them how to ask the important questions, how to gather information, and how to evaluate the tools they are using.

I just returned from the Internet Librarian conference and there was a lot of talk about gaming technology and how “searching” may change in the next few years.   A company called Sirsi/Dynix is working on software which allows you to locate things in the library virtually–sort of a video game format, and you, the customer, are a character moving through the space.  

Other mind blowing topics–a lcd projector the size of a sugar cube, a credit card sized palm pilot device, virtual DVD instead of a physical dvd, etc.

One thing the speaker, Stephen Abrams talked about is how we need to teach kids to wade through information–and that is a vital need right now.  They are already inundated and will be even more so as information continues to grow exponentially.

He presented the characteristics of a Millenial student which is defined by Richard Sweeney in this chart

(see the powerpoint slide link here — http://www.sirsi.com/Pdfs/Company/Abram/StephenAbram_KidsAreAlright4.ppt#19 .

Another good slide showing characteristics of our “future” graduates–

http://www.sirsi.com/Pdfs/Company/Abram/StephenAbram_KidsAreAlright4.ppt#43

Lots of food for thought here–Carolyn

I heard a very interesting session today by Stephen Abrams (who Ian Jukes recommended).   His blog is Stephen’s Lighthouse, by the way, if any of you are interested.

He talked a lot about current brain research, video games and how we can utilize them for student learning, and the importance of students having real life experiences on the internet.

He pointed out that we don’t train them to cross the street with a fake street in a classroom–we teach them on the real street and that we should be doing the same with the internet.

He talked about the importance of students’ publishing on the web and all the ways the new 2.0 web allows for that.  He also strongly felt that the trend is toward “virtual” search environments–that is, a library catalog that is like a virtual experience or game that the student would move through, or a course designed that way. 

What he said had interesting implications for our committee and I am eager to read his blog.  http://stephenslighthouse.sirsi.com/

I am also definitely feeling techno overwhelm, which is definitely a good reminder to me of how teachers and students can feel sometimes.  

I do think, though, that all these tools will become a part of our experiences and then the learning curve will not be the way it is right now.  Stephen Abrams pointed out that our knowledge base has been in a resting period while the web was “sorted out” but now we are entering a stage where things are growing exponentially and so it will be a time of revolutionary change for our students.     I guess our job will be to help them balance all of this.

Time to go walk outside and listen to the ocean and clear my mind a little bit….

Carolyn

My mind is still racing with thoughts from our discussion last night, so I wanted to create a couple of new posts to help us sort our thoughts.  This first one is the “Future Graduate” so we can start discussing that and finding articles and links to share, and the second post is going to be “How do we get there?”

(Actually—a warning—I spent 45 minutes typing my post and when I went to publish it,edublogs had lost it.  (then when I went back later, it reappeared! So a word to the wise, if you think it’s going to take you a while, work in Word and post it later!) 

One thread we talked a lot about last night was the future graduate from the college perspective.  Hearing Dr. Chang’s perspective really drives home the value of the vertical teaming aspect that we were talking about—and I think if we have both the college perspective and bring in the perspective from the elementary school level in our own district that would really give us a lot of insights.

We talked a lot about the future science/math/computer science trends, which were fascinating.  I was surprised to hear that the projections are that U.S. colleges will turn out only ¼ of the graduates needed in computer science by the year 2014.   We also talked a lot about other math/science graduation trends.

Having more idea of future trends really would inform our discussion better, so I thought I would start out by listing a few links to some “trend” statistics.

The Occupational Outlook handbook has many helpful links, but for a quick glance, here is their projection of the fastest growing occupations from 2004-2014.

http://www.bls.gov/emp/mlrtab2.pdf

(and if you really want to peruse more of their projections, here is a link to more.http://www.bls.gov/emp/home.htm#outlook

America’s Career InfoNet  is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor.  This link allows you to manipulate occupational data for Texas.  It shows the growth rate in actual jobs, and then in percentage growth–very interesting trends there in health sciences and computer sciences, for example.

http://www.acinet.org/acinet/state1.asp?next=state1&id=11&nodeid=12&soccode=&stfips=48&x=47&y=13

The Texas Workforce Commission allows you to manipulate projections of data for different regions of Texas.  So if you pick Central Texas in the category “Industry Projections,” it creates a chart showing the growth rates of particular fields.

I was really astonished to see that the field with the highest growth rate in central Texas was Education, actually, which topped out at 54% projected growth rate.  The second fastest growing field in central Texas is Health and Social Sciences, according to this projection.

Here is the link so we can explore these charts:

http://www.tracer2.com/?PAGEID=67&SUBID=114

Anyway, that is some information to start us off…