Women of Web 2 plans tonight: 8:45 at edtechtalk or in the SL lounge at NECC

Tonight if you'd like to be there in real life we will be in the Second Life Loungue on the 2nd level and when you come into the Georgia World Congress Center you must clearly specify that you are there for the Women of Web 2 podcast in Second Life. We will arrive around 8:30 pm and go live at 8:45 until 10 and will leave promptly at 10:05 -- no post show - just 15 minutes of pre show. If you are there, we may ask you to say "hi."

If you cannot attend, you DO NOT WANT to miss this show -- come on over to edtechtalk.com early and meet all of these great people that we have met!

tag: necc2007, WOW2, edtechtalk

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Live Blogging - Grant Writing -- Characteristics of a Grant Writer

Session with Sheryl Abishire

Foundations aren't going to fund what you should already be doing (textbooks, computers). How can you frame your proposal to doing something different. Look at innovation in place and take it up a level.

Keys to great Grant Writing

• Integrated program elements
• Aligned components
• High quality and continous improvement, professional development, evaluation
• Tied to high standards
• Innovation
• Coordination

• Program ties to local needs
• Buy in

You're going to evaluate it when it is done. If there is technology in your grant that is hooked in the network -- what is the skin in the game you're providing - e-mail, filtering, space, tech support. staff, internet service, copying -- what things you are doing to show what you've got in the grant -- even though you're not paying that -- the school will contribute that. Bring out resources to show that you have that skin in the game.

Tie your program to local needs. Talk about what the need is to the local community and how you will contribute to that.

While funders don't see you -- all they will know you by is the words that you write. To me, it continues to astound me that I can get a million dollars and never meet someone but through my written voice but through the case that she makes, she can be awarded that funding based on how well she takes care of funding their RFP.

How do reviewers look at grants.
1) Team Support within the school - It is tough to get a lot of money if it is one person doing one thing. But if you want to have upwards to 100,000 - you're going to need a team, impact more than one classroom -- who can help you do this. Need a team to bounce ideas off of.

If you're going to use technology, you need to talk not about the technology -- it is not about the tools and the "stuff" anymore -- the conversation has turned, we're talking about improving student learning - frame your conversation about how these tools are going to help you improve student learning.

"Don't even get started if you're not willing to draw the line between what you want to do and improving student learning, you can't even start. You have to make that connection to a funder."

You can't get any money if you talk about "by the end of second grade students will be prepared for third grade" won't work.

2) Your intervention -- not in terms of needs -- your innovation, your sizzle, what is going to be different than with funding other projects.

3) Talk specifically about the outcomes and the objectives. Measurable, tied back to the strategies, talk specifically about what is going to change -- the curriculum development.

4) Funders want to believe that there is the opportunity for this to be replicated and done in other classrooms around the country/world. Be prepared to to talk about how you can reach out to a larger community. Partnering with other agencies in town that helped with job skills (they had that in place in her example.) Other places to sustain it. (they have funding for summer student and adult camps.)

5) Type exactly as they ask -- exact font, exact inch margins -- follow the specifications. There is a weeding out process which is about all of these crazy picky things. If you have a great grant in the world with too many pages -- they won't even read it. They won't even put it in the pile unless you can follow their directions exactly.

6) Be very clear about who is going to benefit. At the end of the day, it is always about the students.

7) Do not be a stranger to the Internet, learn all about them. Read about the members of their board.If they have certain funding priorities and they can see it reflected in your grant.

8) Use passionate comments from your teachers (and even students) -- quote them to appeal for your cause.

Special Effects

Think about the things that you want to do for your school and district. Your challenge it to separate yourself from all of the other grants that flow through the doors and classrooms and make it so your grant lands in the hands of the funder. Make sure I catch your "bubble" -- your idea, your innovative concept -- that is the one I'll pull in and say that they are going to fund.

Characteristics of a Grant Writer

Be a gambler

As a grant writer, you have to be a gambler, to throw your dice and try. If you don't try, you'll never know if you could. She has almost written more than haven't been funded than have -- because you have to be gambler and take it and love the pain. You have to write a grant, submit it, not get funded, forget it and start again.

She had some grants she's written three times -- she called and asked for comments -- she got funded the third time.

Be a diplomat.

Make sure everyone's voice is heard and that you rethink and rework to the point of nausea! You have to sometimes play the diplomat -- we've looked at the rubric they are going to score it by and we need more.

Be a squirrel.

The first time you start writing grants, the treasure chest is empty. Every professional journal that she reads, if there is a grant idea -- rip it out. (Like clipping coupons -- clip grant opportunities.) She has funding ideas all over her computer. Constantly be on the alert for things, because you never know when you're going to need it. Save those things in folders or a folder in her favorites. She goes back to those resources.

Be an inventor.

New ways to keep doing what you've been doing. Research to support what you want to do.

Be tough.

To do this and get a lot of money, you'll get a lot of rejections. It is about people -- one day they score it this way -- the next they score it another.

Be a magician

Don't leave anything out. Color code things -- use highlighers -- part of the RFP color codes pink then pink everything in the presentation that meets that criteria -- another section blue -- do the same thing -- when done, make sure that you have enough of all of the colors to meet the criteria of the RFP

Make it concise.

Now it is 500 words for 500,000 -- be very concise and choose words carefully for maximum impact.

Do a lot with the money they give you, do it well, stretch it.

Don't put that we'll have "10 computers for 2000 each" -- get a quote, do it precisely. Show that you've done your homework.

Invest your time

For most people it doesn't happen during the day. You CANNOT MISS A DEADLINE. Put the grants on your calendar due two weeks before and forget about the final deadline. You won't be done on time, and then you have a bit of time. Tell everyone else it is due 2 weeks early Aug 15 when due Aug 30 -- give yourself a two week pad.

You cannot miss a deadline.

During anthrax scare -- there was a major grant due that day and all DC post offices were shut down -- the gov't didn't care that it was in transit -- if you have to mail it in mail it early. You cannot miss a deadline.

Celebrate when you get the grant

Persistence will pay off. If you write a grant and don't get it and then don't stop -- "Shame on You!" Keep submitting it, change the dates, rewrite it, change it. Do not stop when someone tells you "no."

http://www.cpsb.org/Scripts/abshire/grants.asp - She maintains a grant website.

http://www.schoolgrants.org -- A bring home the bacon listserv -- subscribe to it for $30 a year -- she highly recommends it. A community of collegial people who share things willingly -- some great people who share -- you can lurk and find out more than you ever dreamed of! You can post questions and ideas and within a few hours have many responses to the list serv. She has another regular e-mail address -- puts in another one and then she looks in that one every few days. This is what is going on in the country in grants. There is also an index to sample proposals -- people have sent in full blown huge grants that they have written here as well. You don't download and change the name -- you cannot get money that way -- but look at these for courage. It makes more sense when you look at these.

Use the electronic resources that are out there.

www.quinlan.com - $140 a year - Many school librarians subscribe to.

http://www.eschoolnews.org/erc/funding




tag: necc, n07s827

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Live Blogging the International Leadership Summit: The Recommendations from my Table

Wow, what a great conversation that we had with our table -- Camilla Gagliolo - SIG Representative for ISTE, Julie Lindsay, Joyce Valenza, Larry Telbert, Dr. Stephanie Baird, Laura Machusa de Silveryra, Teresa Aldrete. We had a wonderful discussion with these items that my table took away from the session:

The three issues from the roundtable discussion at the International Leadership :

1) Redefinition of the team

a. Researchers need to have active teachers on their team

b. Teachers need to be able to find something and say “hey” come over here.

c. Researchers can publish to a wiki (only the approved researchers can edit) – but teachers and others are allowed to submit on discussion tabs.

2) It is not about creation it is about finding

a. We need to move away from islands of effort into continents of cooperation

b. We need tagging standards

i. NETS needs tags for every standard and teachers taught how to use them.

ii. For everything we do.

iii. We need standards for: content, age level, language AND format (movie, audio,widget, lesson plan, research paper, 3d {tag in SL})

iv. It needs to be part of being an educator to tag and contribute.

v. We need an ISTE Delicious network with tagging standards to share information

3) WE need to improve the coefficient of participation with what we do.

a. Research Papers – posted to wiki, allow teacher discussion (or student feedback)

i. Example, Students providing feedback for the Horizon 2007 report that will affect the future of that research – http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com

ii. Link up researcher’s citation database software in some way to aggregate links and share information – i.e. End Note

b. Software

i. Help should be two way

1. Support Wikis

2. Help one another

3. Share lesson plans/ reviews

ii. Feature request wikis so users can edit and share

iii. Give teachers money and let them select what software/ technology they want to integrate – start with a vendor presentation but then from then on have teachers present what they did – get teacher’s more involved in the purchase – let them pool money if they choose.

iv. Teachers need to be made the customer – they are not – principals and IT administrators are.

c. Teacher Lesson Plans

i. Student feedback to teachers – what they liked what they didn’t (i.e. this plan made me want to be an engineer!)

ii. Researcher feedback to teachers

4) Need to work on support for teachers

a. It doesn’t need to be tied to the term “computer” but rather any kind of technology that gives access (handheld science collectors, pdas, cell phones with Internet access.)

b. Equal access should be device agnostic (to quote Mark) it should be access-centric

c. Teachers cannot do it alone – support is the single greatest

d. No teacher left behind!

This was a phenomenal session. Edubloggercon was great but very homogeneous - this was great because it was industry, teachers, educational researchers, education organizational leaders, and administrators and was focusing on what to do to get practical research disseminated down to the classroom level. We need to intentionally bring together diverse stakeholders in education to work towards solution.

This session was incredibly run -- it was beyond unbelievable. Dr. Robert McLaughlin needs to be continually involved in this sort of things in many organizations, he is incredible! I cannot say enough about this man, A+++ researcher/ pragmatist/ advocate for change.

tag: necc, n07s123, NECC2007, international, research, collaboration, education, teaching, future, planning

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Google Apps Gets Mail Migration, Dozens of New Features

Announcement
June 25, 2007

This week we’re adding mail migration to Google Apps, Google’s web-based platform for communication and collaboration. This is one of more than 30 features and updates to the service we’ve rolled out since February 2007 and is just another example of the power of hosted services to deliver updates and innovations to users quickly, without making them wait years for the next big scheduled upgrade.

We’re excited about the new mail migration feature because it will make it easier for organizations to get started on Google Apps Premier and Education Editions and give their old email new life – in many cases, that email is sitting in storage, covered with metaphorical dust and difficult to search. Administrators use a self-service wizard to easily and securely transfer existing email data from an IMAP server over to users’ Gmail accounts on Google Apps. Gmail will put messages into conversation threads, display the original sender, recipient, and date of messages, and convert existing mail folders into labels. Old messages are instantly searchable with Gmail’s fast Google-powered search. This tool currently supports email servers with an IMAP interface.

We’ve also been busy with some other updates that are either already available on Google Apps or will be available very soon:

• Shared address book – Users who want to add colleagues to a new email or document no longer have to go to a separate list or company directory. Users can search through all the users on a domain by clicking the "Choose from contacts" link.
• Google Docs & Spreadsheets charts – Number-crunchers will be happy to see that we’ve included the ability to create charts in a spreadsheet.
• Increased Gmail attachment size – We made it easier to share more of those large presentations and files as attachments by doubling the allowable attachment size to 20 MB to make Gmail space even more useful.
• Multi-user chats – Now users can invite multiple contacts into the same chat on the Google Talk gadget from their Start Page. This will be useful for small groups working on a document or other project together.
• Google Docs & Spreadsheets refresh – Soon we’ll complete a visual overhaul of Docs & Spreadsheets that will make it much easier for users with dozens or even hundreds of documents to search, locate, and organize their documents.

Google Apps launched as a free service in August 2006 and includes Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail email services, Google Calendar shared calendaring, Google Talk instant messaging and voice-over-IP, and the Start Page feature for creating a customizable home page on a specific domain. Please visit www.google.com/a for details on the product, local availability, partners and customers.

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Live Blogging First International Leadership Summit: Dr. Robert McLaughlin's Keynote

I am live blogging the first international leadership summit -- Mark Van 't Hooft has just talked about the priorities of making educational research relevant and understandable to teachers as well as creating effective opportunities for research on the newest technology.

Dr. Robert MClaughlin
Whose in the room -- state, industry, R&D, foundations, international committee of ISTE, telelearning teachers -- leaders of national and international organizations and leaders in R&D and dissemination.

How can we dramatically improve what fostering responsive learning technology development, Research, and Dissemination.

Challenges to responsive development, research, and dissemination:

Largely supply driven -- solutions being thrust into schools without sustained and valuable input from educators themselves withouth adequate professional development. The tools given aren't in response to their priorities.

We believe that this conversation this morning is going to have very serious impacts for children and educators. Pragmatic recommendations that will be created and shared -- take the recommendations that we generate today about how can we begin to implement them in the 21 largest school systems -- the big 21 network. Staff development leaders of the 21 largest school systems. How can we put into practice things that are solutions to problems teachers have instead of telling teachers what to use?

Just gave out a handout about the priorities of staff development of various organizations.

"What we are doing for the most part in educational technology is wasting educators time. About 90% of investment in educational technology has been wasted. The supply driven approach is not working."

Challenging companies and technology providers to demonstrate the research.

Those who are good at technology aren't invited to discuss things. And those who aren't good at technology are afraid to speak up because they don't understand bits and bytes and RAM -- attempts to install "stuff" -- and teachers need to see themselves in those decisions. A small minority of people who are into this stuff. Most educators are just trying to cope.

Most educators don't know of tech applications relevant to their priorities for improving teaching and student learning.

Many tech coordinators aren't given a good knowledge base to draw upon to have technoogy applications -- tagged and cataloged by grade level and subject area -- that is professional malpractice -- that is not acceptable.

Those who are knowledgeable in learning technology R&D to work more closely with professional organizations.

Joke -- "A foolish question -- 'Can you hear me?'"

Learning Technology R&D

Largely driven by the desires to:

• generate revenue
• to carve out a nice for one's dissertation or tenure and promotion
• to create novel tools and methods for student learning and engagement

But... where do educators priorities for imrpoving student learning results figure in. We are "off."

How do we get those who are doing doctoral research excited about topics that relate to teacher priorities. We are doing a terrible job of connecting. We're not... but we need to... but we can.

Noisy Dissemnation
Most disseminationthat happens in our profession. The characteristics:

• Too much info from too many sources.
• Information from sources not known or trusted by recipient
• Topics I don't care about.
• Uses terminology I don't understand so I don't know I care about it (abstruse vocabulary - research-ese) - We're too smart, we can do better.
• It looks interesting but i don't see how I can use it. We're being driven by tenure and promotion and counting the frisbees that we fling out into the field and not caring if the frisbees are caught.
• Before the standards based performance movement was invaded by "body snatchers" -- assessment industry owns conversations that educators started -- like the math standards -- we don't own our conversation anymore. We've been complicit. We should be having educators talking with educators about what excellence looks like and how it needs to be fostered. We need to be cataloging best practices in learning technology. Our terms as professional educators to catalog our content. It is not hard, it just isn't happening.

Supply Driven

• Topics determined by what dissemination knows
• Not by what educators tell us they most need to know.

Worked for a foundation -- threw out frisbees -- "Look how many I've thrown out there" but it wasn't driven by educator's agendas. With web surveys, we have all kinds of technologies to do great surveys to drive what we are doing like we've never had before. We can be driven much more by the needs and demands of educators and we're not having that conversation... but we can.

Responsive Learning Technology R&D

• Driven by educators' most pressing needs and demands to improve their practice and their students' learning.
  
• Educators aren't asking for everything they need because they don't know things and it is OK to have some supply driven however to ignore teacher needs is wrong.
• We've done it for our kids let's do it for ourselves -- let's start with what we want to learn about. Then the people who think technology is irrelevant might sit up and take notice.
  
• R&D, foundation levels -- corporate sector -- go back to those who are spending most of the dollars and say -- we need to look at "these priorities"
• Focuses on creating, field testing and validating learning technologies keyed to these priorities -- teachers say "I don't have time for this" -- "I don't see the relevance of it." We will see better adoption if we focus on the relevance of it.

Responsive Learning Technology Dissemination

• Keyed to educators prority concerns for improving practice and student learning.
• Uses jargon-free vocabulary and terms familiar to educators
• Is research-based, yet practical.
• So much great research is hidden in journals in arcane language. I want to share it with educators but there is a lot of translating that we need to do.
• We need to be non-territorial about dissemination -- go through professional organizations that have professional relationships with their organizations. Trust it and will listen to it.
• Comes through sources (eg. association publications) that are known and trusted. It will be likely to be used.
• Is organized using familiar frameworks and categories. Use the 12 standards for staff development -- like "learning communities" - they want tools that create effective learning communities.
  

Note: This man is incredible. He needs to continue to be escalated in educational leadership to reach more researchers, PhD programs.

We're getting ready to discuss - "What obstacles do developers of learning technologies face to contributing more effectively to a global knowledge base on technologies that improve students' learning opportnities, learning climate and/or learning results?"

We are not friends with data -- we need to become friends with data. We don't like it because people use it to "beat us up." We're talking about data that we can use for our own practice. Everything is being driven by high stakes standardized testing.

We ought to be looking at learning climate for ourselves and our kids. It has a profound impact.

National Center for Student Aspirations did some research -- look at strong correlations between student aspirations and student achievements. Critical aspects of our learning climate and kids having high aspirations. Sense of belonging -- means they have a better learning climate. Do they feel the courage to take risks. Not only improve student results but improve student learning climate.

Get kids involved in tech support for the school -- gives more pride to kids, they are a part, it improves the learning climate.

Learning opportunities. Classic common mistake of high schools -- it is considered a benefit of the most senior teachers to not teach the "gatekeeper courses" Geometry and Algebra I when those are the most important courses that are most highly correlated with student success. We're putting rookie teachers there and need to be targeting our resources in ways that make sense. WE need to put the best in the places that we know are important.

Talking abut how great the US navy has done for cataloging, standards, and performance assessments, automatically pointing every sailor to their area that they need to handle. Personalized instruction for every learner that is keyed to performance assessments -- Dr. McLaughlin is blown away by what they are doing.

tag: necc, n07s123, NECC2007, international, research, collaboration, education, teaching, future, planning

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Today was great "y'all"

Do I take the red pill and start blogging my four pages of notes from Anthony Zotti's presentation today and my dinner with some amazing educators including Julie Lindsay, David Warlick, Jeff Whipple, and Chris Craft and the humbling experience of receiving the SIGTel Online learning award at the opening session?

or do I take the blue pill and go to bed and see how far down the rabbit hole my dreams will go?

Sorry, guys, this is a once in a year-time opportunity and I've got to focus on F2F for a bit -- blue pill wins.

tag: NECC2007

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Edbloggercon 2007 - My take aways

My blogger is acting up as are many of my add ins. I'll do my best to hand code this post, but oh what a pain!

Today was like trying to cram a watermelon down the throat of a squirrel -- lots of sweet goodness and not enough room to hold it all! I will be writing about the things I have pondered from today for months and even years to come. Here are my major "take aways."

• I believe that every NECC and every state technology conference should have an Edubloggercon of sorts
  
  -- perhaps bloggercon is a misnomer because we had podcasters and others there. However, the need for informal discussions and tackling of projects with those who have a certain knowledge base is something that should be harnessed and directed.



• I believe that educational organizations and lobbies should advocate mandatory digital citizenship courses for all early middle school students.
  
  We had discussions at the early morning session facilitated by Will Richardson and Chris Lehman about this. Please read the notes!!
  
  My dad was very active in another very misunderstood profession -- I believe more misunderstood and less respected than teachers -- farming. And he always said that when the farm bill came out that it was better for farmers to "pick their poison" than to have it picked for them.
  
  Internet safety requirements for schools is an inevitable fact -- the reason DOPA emerged is because educators have not proactively advocated an alternative. We discussed it, though and digital citizenship is much more than safety although safety is a component. It is something that all students need.
  
  And one way to get nothing from politicians is to go with a "laundry list" -- too many things -- pick one thing, get behind it, advocate it, and support it. It is time for some cooperation.



• "If you're not willing to lose your job, you're not going to be able to do your job. -- Chris Lehman
  
  What a sad state we are in -- Chris says that in his circles this is the quote in the "gotcha" one slip up and you're gone environment. I seem to recall that dictators like Stalin and Hitler were some of the few who got away with shooting a person for one slip up. Even in baseball you get three strikes. In football you get four downs. ONe strike and you're out? That type of mentality is a recipe for disaster because the whole process of teaching is about trial and error in the first place. This mentality needs to be pointed out and talked about because it is harming education and the ability of educators to innovate and make progress. If Thomas Edison can try 2000 ways to make the light bulb, I think we can let administrators and teachers make mistakes and learn from them.
  
  This was from the session on the future of schools and David Warlick did a beautiful job facilitating.
  



• There is a lot of interest in multicultural collaboration
  
  It was exciting to see the vision that others have for what needs to happen. The desire is there, the willingness is there and there are some organizations that are doing it. We need to be looking at multicultural components as standard parts of all courses as appropriate. What opportunities we have with this one but it is going to need to be much wider scale than it is now. Julie and I are talking about standards for international projects and the group gave us some great feedback on this.
  
  After watching some of the other unconference masters, I think we'll run our session differently next time if we get an opportunity, but it was still a good one.
  



• Tagging Standards by Strand and Grade Level
  
  This is a must-do, folks. We have got to standardize tagging so that we can find things, catalog things, share things, much more efficaciously than we do. We don't need to build new things, let's use what we have and simplify things for all of us in education. Let's teach teachers in education programs to use the standards in college and then continue them as part of being an educator. We can then aggregate, mashup and do things we can only imagine now! -- the world will become our database.



• Beauty in diversity
  
  It is beautiful that edubloggers, podcasters, photographers, educators can collaborate and work together -- it is also wonderful that such a diverse group of people can be allowed to have different opinions. It is great to converse and rejoice in our non-homogeneity because there was a bit of diversity in the discussions -- although there could always be more.
  
  It was great meeting the amazing people who shape my life and my classroom. To ask them questions and learn. To soak in the goodness of being a part of people who have a passion for the same things... at least for one day. A happy place it was, but the other great thing was the people who were skyping in questions and following via twitter and blogging as we wrote. That was great. It was great that the second life group had others who weren't there who were there in second life. It was great that podcasts were recorded (they will be published somewhere and I'll let you know.)
  
  But most of all it was nice to laugh and be human and realize that we're all here and want to do a good job, enjoy our family, and make a difference while we have a lease on life. We're not so different in that we want these things. And to laugh when David Warlick misread his watch (he got the hands mixed up) or Terry Freedman told us about his nickname in college (I'm not telling) or we told funny stories about typos on student papers or hilarious stories out of the random past or when I skyped Jeff Utecht, Julie Lindsay, and Steve Dembo when they were sitting beside me (just to show myself that I really was connecting with them.)-- we connected with others and realized that, although they may be hours away and even in a whole other date and time (literally) that we can have common passions to push forward this thing we love called education to pursue excellence in teaching and understanding.
  
  
• So many cool people, guys! I felt like I was amongst some really amazing folks -- Chris Sessums is really cool, so is Chris Craft, Brian Crosby, Anne Davis, Darren Draper, Christin Frodella, Brian Grenier, Kristin Hokanson, Dana Huff, David Jakes, Doug Johnson (he is brilliant), Tim Lauer, Scott Merrick,Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Cheryl Oakes, John Pederson (so cool), Sharon Peters, Danita Russell, Kathy Shields, Gwen Solomon, Tim Stahmer, Alfred Thompson, Joyce Valenza, Mark van 't Hooft, Vinnie Vrotny, Mark Wagner, Chris Fitzgerald Walsh, Tom Woodward,
  our uber-organizer Steve Hargadon, the folks I've mentioned elsewhere in this post, and all of the other amazing attendees.
  
  It was enjoyable. But do not think that we solved the worlds problems, we didn't. But when you build relationships you work better together for the future.
  
  OK, goodnight for now (I've got to take some notes now for the curriculum proposal I'm working on for a class in the fall - David Warlick gave me some more great ideas for my classroom -- Yahoo! You'll be hearing about those in the future.)
  
  So, I'll share more tomorrow, for now, I'm pole vaulting into my bunk bed, tucking in under my covers, saying a quick prayer that I won't fall off and that I'll get all my presentations done and heading off to lala land! Goodnight!
  
  tag: edubloggercon07, ebc07cr20, ec07blogs, ebc07fs, ebc07gcfc, NECC2007

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