Dr. Lisa Snyder

So does this mean we give tablets to kids and education is magically transformed? Hardly. Fortunately we have one of the thought leaders in this space in our backyard. Her name is Dr. Lisa Snyder, she is the new Lakeville MN School Superintendent, and we were pleased to have her on the show to talk about their new iLearn initiative, whether or not it’s magic, how tablets and tech fit in to it, and her perspectives on the challenges adopting new ways of teaching and learning.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: Dave Hole & the song “Keep Your Motor Running” from the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Tablet and E-book reader Ownership Nearly Double Over the Holiday Gift-Giving Period
• It’s the iPad announcement anniversary: January 27, 2010
• 350,000 Textbooks Downloaded From Apple’s iBooks in Three Days
• How Apple is sabotaging an open standard for digital books (Borsch doesn’t think so: “Too Many Don’t ‘Get’ iBooks Author”)
• Lakeville Schools Using State Funding to Help Technology Push
• Finding Good Apps for Children With Autism
• A Perspective on iPad’s Impact on Your Mind
• Are Tablets Ready for K12?
• Little Falls Gets Real About iPad technology
• Silicon Valley Wows Educators, and Woos Them
• One Laptop Per Child Launches XO 3.0 Tablet 
• Pinterest draws interest online
• JAMF Software 
• The Problem With The iOS Home Screen

Upcoming Events:

• February 10-11: Startup Weekend Twin Cities III, U of M Carlson
• February 23rd: WordPressMSP at The Nerdery
• February 23rd: How to Leverage Digital Media to Raise Capital (a DealPen event at CoCo. Promo code for free ticket: dealpenfriend)
• February 24-25: MinneWIC (Women in Computing)
• March 16-17: Mobile March (Mobile 3D) (Call for speakers)
• April 7th: MinneBar, Best Buy headquarters

Minnov8 Gang 154 – iPad, iLearn is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

A guy from the Inver Grove Heights Community Schools Office of Communications, Johnny Germscheid, reached out to us here at Minnov8 to tell us about the event. Its focus is about technology, education and breaking down the communication barrier between children and adults. I’m guessing there will be a lot of learning occurring on both sides (student-as-teacher and adult-as-student).

Students in grades K-12 will be teaching adults how to use iPads, iPods, and other devices and software programs. Conference highlights include:

• Produce and publish an eBook using rich multimedia content.
• Create a digital scrapbook to capture family memories.
• Design a webpage or blog to share your story on the web.
• Find out how to set up and manage your own social networking profile.
• Collaborate electronically to edit documents in a more efficient manner.
• Compose original songs to add flavor to your movies.
• Learn how to get the most out of that new iPad.

This is the second year Inver Grove Heights Community Schools has offered this Student Led Technology Conference. Turns out the Inver Grove Heights school district (ISD 199) was nationally recognized in Washington DC by the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) this winter for this innovative concept.

The conference is free and open to anyone in the metro, or our entire State for that matter. To check out details about the conference, which takes place on Saturday, February 25th from 8:30am until Noon, visit the event mini-site here.

Student Led Technology Conference is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

I cannot express enough my thanks for all who helped out:

Lerner Publishing: Kathleen Clarke responded to a blind email request of mine and she put together a big box of brand new, amazingly high quality books, perfect for the English program at Strisuksa school

Meg Knodl

Meg Knodl: As senior librarian in Communications and Community Engagement with Hennepin County (Minn.) Library, Meg had great suggestions on buying surplus books from the library system (a sale was just ending and she connected me with the right folks).

Paul Schroeder

To show the power of social media, I’d placed a plea and link to that Minnov8 post mentioned above on my Facebook wall. Two people responded immediately with a third who joined in:

Paul Schroeder:  A fraternity brother of mine who read about my plea on Facebook responded by collecting several dozen books and even cajoled a friend of his in participating with some novels. These novels, while not perfectly targeted to the students, surprisingly were very welcomed by the teachers!

Sherry Collins: She had several ideas I took advantage of and then recommended a site I’d never heard of, FreeCycle, a kind of “Craigslist for free stuff” and I placed a post in the Minneapolis Group

The very generous donation by Beth Sullivan, volunteer for The Women's Prison Book Project

Beth Sullivan: She responded with 75 classic (and new!) books that were extras from a non-profit she volunteers for, The Women’s Prison Book Project.

As these great volunteers were putting forth such kind efforts to gather books, I’d been interacting with my contact at the school, Lynn Brown. Mentioning the phenomenal work of Project Gutenberg, I asked her to go through the books there and make recommendations and we’d download the books for her (since their internet connections are pretty minimal at the school).

What happened next surprised even me and set me on a course I hadn’t expected. 

Ms. Brown and her colleague in the English department chose 108 Project Gutenberg books. Discovering that the Project Gutenberg books are available in a variety of formats — and offers over 36,000 free ebooks in ePub, Kindle, HTML and simple text formats – I decided to download all of them in these formats as well as two potentially useful for a country in Asia (i.e., Plucker and QiOO Mobile).

After downloading and organizing them in folders I thought, “Hmm…this is going to be tough for the students to find, and download, the books of their choice in their chosen format” so I did what any geek would do: I built an HTML website “front end” for the files.

An (AJAX) dropdown for each book reveals its formats (click for larger view)

Website "front end" for ebooks (click for larger view)

Realizing that the directories with the ebooks in them totaled over 8GBs — and now knowing exactly what technologies they had at their disposal in Thailand — I wasn’t certain if they could read DVD-Rs, would appreciate a bunch of CDs (which, of course, would possibly break the links in the mini website front-end) so I bought a couple of 16GB thumb drives so they would have two copies.

Ms. Brown and her colleagues were quite enthused about receiving this and she then exclaimed, “Oh my gosh…we can put this on the “school” server (vs. just the English department server) and make it available to all students!”

Wish we could have done more for them. Also wished there was a way to get tablets in to the hands of students (or even cheap Kindles) if there was a reliable way for them to download ebooks. Got to think more about this and possible solutions.

So again, thank you to those who helped out and I’ll follow up when I hear how the kids are doing with what you donated!

“Thank You” for the Books for Thai School is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

It turns out, of the 10 startups that were selected to present at the event, none even comes close to the level of adoption these guys have achieved to date, which they announced at the in their presentation at #EduTechMN: 1,000,000 students using the platform, in more than 80,000 classrooms. And all that from a startup that began as just a sideline for Matt to use in his own classroom!

Here’s my interview:

The founders describe their creation this way:  Kidblog is a platform that provides students with an authentic, engaging, and interactive learning experience. It’s designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with his or her own, unique blog. It has simple but powerful tools that allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over their students’ blogs. And a teacher can set up a class with no student email addresses. 

Matt likes to say it’s “built by a teacher, for teachers, so students can get the most out of the blogging process.” He also points out that teachers who’ve tried other blogging platforms (perhaps with limited success), such as Blogger, Edublogs, or WordPress.com, “will notice the Kidblog difference immediately.”

Best of luck to this emerging, homegrown Minnesota edutech company!

[This post first appeared yesterday on Tech~Surf~Blog.]

Minnesota EduTech Startup KidBlog Now Reaching One Million Users is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

[This post was originally published earlier today on Tech~Surf~Blog.]

I felt it. I didn’t know it then, but it may have been at the precise moment Steve was passing. I was sitting in a room of about 100 people, mid-afternoon, listening to a panel of educators at the EduTech MN conference at the University of Minnesota. I was actually finishing a blog post on my MacBook Air, and hadn’t even intended to stay for the panel (the startup pitches were over).

But I was surprisingly drawn in by the discussion. I was blown away by what these people, senior educators, were saying — showing so much passion, speaking from the heart, talking about how kids are learning today. They just lit up as they described how the new tablet and mobile technologies are opening up worlds for these kids like nothing they’d ever seen before. The iPad, the iPod Touch, and all the great software these Apple devices have engendered.

I found myself beaming from ear to ear as I listened to them describe their real-life experiences, with such excitement in their voices.  These aren’t boring educators, I thought!  These are really dedicated, committed people who work on the front lines, whose worlds revolve around how our children learn, and how they can make that process better for them, every single day. And, thanks to technology and a certain company named Apple, they have more and more amazing tools to help them do that. It was a special experience for me, as someone not involved much in the world of education. I’m so glad I stayed.

I sat there and thought to myself — right at that very moment — “Wow, would Steve Jobs be proud to be hearing this right now.”

I like to think he was.

Steve, you didn’t just change technology, media, music, and retailing forever.  You changed education, too — in a big, big way. We thank you. We will greatly miss you.

But we know we’ll see the mark you made on this world for a long, long time to come, in the eyes of children everywhere.

[Left to right on the panel: Jesse Thorstad, technology specialist, Fergus Falls school district; Dave Eisenmann, director of instructional tech, Minnetonka school district; Jennifer Sly, MN Historical Society; and Jay Haugen, Superintendent, Farmington school district. The panel was moderated by State Senator Terri Bonoff.]

Something Amazing Happened at #EduTechMN Yesterday – Steve Jobs Was in the Room is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

I’ve known of the Center for quite some time and been interested in what they describes as their mission to, “…enhance health and well-being by educating health professionals, empowering consumers, and fundamentally transforming the delivery of health care through the creation of interdisciplinary academic, research, clinical care, and outreach programs that advance integrative health and healing.”

Mary Jo Kreitzer, PhD RN

No question that new models of integrative healthcare are accelerating and what the Center is exploring is proving to be the right path. But an iOS app?

In order to understand a little more about the Center and to understand more about why they delivered an app, I talked with Dr. Mary Jo Kreitzer, the founder and director of the Center and someone who brings more than 20 years of leadership and expertise to the field of integrative health and medicine.

I started off asking Dr. Kreitzer to give me some background on the Center and we took it from there…

U of MN Center for Spirituality & Healing’s Mobile App is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Can you help with books?

I’ve never been to Thailand, but because my wife has put on workshops for Thailand’s Department of Export Promotion three different times, I’ve met many of her contacts from Thailand (and their kids) and they are incredibly delightful people. My bride has also told me so many stories about the country, its people, and how she loves them so much she’d move there, I was very receptive to Lynn’s request to help gather books for her students.

Map of Thailand showing Roi Et (click image for larger view)

The Thailand school Strisuksa (Stree-suk-sah) is located in a province called Roi Et. It is relatively far from Bangkok—which means they are internet-challenged as you’ll read about below—but they have a student group who will be visiting MN in October (arriving late in the week of October 3rd) and will be at Cambridge-Isanti High School in Cambridge, MN . Each student will be allowed 2 pieces of checked luggage. They hope to make the most of that luggage allowance by returning with books for their library.

If you have any ideas (or books!) that might help them gather up English books suitable for 7-9th graders and then upper secondary (10th-12th grade)—and let me know where we can pick them up—that would be terrific! Contact me, Steve Borsch, by email or by phone at 952.232.5040. I will compile a list of those who have helped and publish it here on Minnov8.

Below I go through more information about the school, student learning in English there, and what Minnov8 is doing to help.

Lynn Brown

What Minnov8 is Doing
Besides contacting multiple organizations about them possibly donating English books suitable for 7th through 12th graders learning English, the school also doesn’t enjoy fast internet access which is similar to much of Thailand outside of major urban centers. During our discussions, I pointed Lynn to Project Gutenberg, an online compilation of classic books (many with accompanying audio books for many of them). Lynn was intrigued and she, and another English teacher in the school, compiled their wish-list for me, but Lynn then was lamenting the fact that they’d never be able to download them at the school since the connections are far too slow.

As a consequence, Tim Elliott and I will be taking their desired list of 100 titles from Project Gutenberg, and burning them to CD for them to take back to Thailand and make available throughout the school. We’ll be meeting with Lynn Brown late in the week of October 3rd to give her the CDs and arrange for the books to be delivered to her students with empty suitcases.

More Info from Lynn Brown
The town population is roughly 36,000, with a total of 1.2 million or more in the province. The town of Roi Et has 4 major secondary schools, of which we are the second largest with an enrollment of 4,300. Although originally opened in 1917 as a girl’s school, it is now co-educational, however girls continue to outnumber boys. The largest school in town is the boys school, also co-educational. Both schools maintain such high enrollment figures because students come from all over the province and board in town. Many people feel the quality of education is much better at these two larger schools.

I started teaching at Strisuksa in the first year of the program. At that time, the library consisted of one book case in the teacher’s office / lounge and held about 100 books. The second year we were able to obtain a bit more space and added a second book case, purchased some books and called it a library corner. Next came a small classroom furnished with more bookcases and the real effort to obtain books. We purchased many, and then became aware of the Books for Asia Foundation. A large number of our non-fiction books have come from that source. A second resource was Thailand Book Drive. This foundation was begun in the USA by a young man who knew of the need for English books in rural Thailand. We’ve obtained over 2,000 books from this foundation, and have shared 100′s of surplus books (mainly duplicates) with other schools in the province. ((We feel that others can benefit from the books too, and if we have too many or ones that our students aren’t reading, maybe someone at another school will. We’ve helped at least 4 other secondary schools in this manner.))

Students in Thailand study in lower (7-9th grades) and upper (10 – 12th) secondary levels for 3 years each. At the conclusion of the lower secondary, they have the option of continuing at their current school or transferring to another. The English Program is offered to students at both the lower and upper levels. The Ministry of Education Thailand has set a limit of 70 students per level in lower secondary for the English Program. We split this to two classrooms of 35 each. The upper secondary is limited to one class of 35 students. We have consistently been receiving applications for many more students than we can accept in the upper level. In the upper level students can choose from a major in Math, Science, or language. In addition to English, they may also choose to study Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, French, or Korean.

The English Program must follow the same core curriculum as all Thai classes. Students receive instruction in Thai and English each day from separate teachers. There are now 12 native English speaking teachers on staff to meet the needs of the classes. The only subjects not being taught in English are Art and Music. We have two English teachers who really encourage the students to read – giving both class and outside reading assignments.

Again, if you can help contact me, Steve Borsch, by email or by phone at 952.232.5040. As mentioned above I will compile a list of those who have helped and publish it here on Minnov8. Thanks!

English Books for Thai School – Can You Help? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Founded in 1900, Rasmussen College is a premier provider of educational experiences, dedicated to the growth and development of its students, employees, and the communities it serves. Accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, Rasmussen College offers Bachelor’s and Associate’s degrees in fields with the greatest occupation opportunities to more than 15,000 students both online and through its network of 21 campuses. By partnering with leading universities, Rasmussen offers opportunities to students beyond the Bachelor’s level. The Rasmussen Partner Network gives students the opportunity to earn Master’s and Doctoral degrees completely online, at their own convenience, from prominent universities around the country.

Rasmussen frequently publishes valuable posts on their business blog such as 50 Useful Open Lectures for Business People, Tips for Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs, 25 Necessities Entrepreneurs Can Get for Free, 10 Common Mistakes Made by Internet Marketers and the Best Entrepreneur Blogs to name a few.

Check ‘em out. Pretty good stuff here.

Good Resources from Rasmussen College is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Minnov8 Gang 120 – Is the Cloud our Idol? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

What is the DTC? They say it is, “…a hub of innovation and excellence at the University of Minnesota in the digital technologies serving the industrial, educational, and public needs of the state of Minnesota and the nation. The DTC integrates research, education, and outreach in digital design, computer graphics and visualization, telecommunications, intelligent data storage and retrieval systems, multimedia, datamining, scientific computation, and other digital technologies.“

If you’d like to get on their emailing list you can do so here.

UofMN Digital Tech Center Events is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

One of the key players there is Jonathan Zittrain, a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and a guy who served as its first executive director from 1997-2000. He’s also the author of “The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It“.

I came across a 1.5 hour talk called “Minds for Sale” on the commercial side of cloud computing that was posted a few days ago and I’ve been listening to it in starts-n-stops whenever I had some time. It’s worth your time to listen to it closely if you are at all involved in commercial cloud computing, a startup in the web hosted space, or are a strategist or business leader in any thought leading capacity for your organization. In it you’ll hear “…why cloud computing is not just for computing anymore and how a new range of projects is making the application of human brainpower as purchasable and fungible as additional server rackspace.”

Listen by hovering over the speaker icon or download the mp3: Minds for Sale

Jonathan Zittrain on Minds for Sale is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Normally I wouldn’t do a story on an interesting initiative with a marginally innovative technology perspective, but I’ve been writing for nearly six months for Scholastic, Inc. and their Administrator area online with a blog called “Accelerating Change.” As a consequence, I’ve been deeply involved in K-12 education technology study which has given me a unique perspective and I remain focused on uncovering true innovation or even incremental steps along the way toward true reinvention of education.

The PR gang over at Padilla Spears Beardsley, a group of folks whose quality public relations I’m continually impressed by, sent over some information on a Classroom of the Future initiative and their client, Tierney Bros, whose involvement in this worthwhile endeavor is worthy of note:

“People entering the workforce today are expected to have stronger technology experience and capabilities than ever before. Teachers today face the challenge of keeping pace with the latest technological advances – such as interactive presentation and conferencing technologies – with often limited resources.

For the fourth year in a row, Tierney Brothers is helping prepare the next generation of workers by offering a Tierney Brothers “Classroom of the Future” Technology Grant in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. This unique opportunity gives every school in Minnesota and Wisconsin the chance to receive $15,000 worth of technology, integration and training for their school. Students taught in these classrooms will learn using AV technology similar to systems Tierney Brothers, a leading provider of digital projectors, flat panel displays, systems integration, large format printers, graphic and engineering supplies, and audio and visual communication solutions has integrated into John Deere, Land O’Lakes, Wells Fargo and other businesses.”

Certainly a laudable initiative (especially with our State budget shortfalls) and an obviously smart thing for Tierney Bros to do since they’re in the business of selling this sort of gear in to K-12 education, but I’m doubtful these technologies are truly making classrooms future-ready and instead are putting a shiny new cover on a musty old book.

In my research, study and conversations with K-12 leaders and teachers for my Scholastic blog, what I’ve seen over and over again is that the typical “classroom of the future” initiatives are like the photo you see above: same industrial classroom model of teacher at the board in front of the class (a model which would be instantly recognizable to a teacher from 1885!) but made slightly more efficient with projectors hooked to computers or interactive “smart” boards that are, in effect, giant touch screen interfaces for computers. The benefits of these devices, especially the smart board, are truly effective in engaging students with online resources.

But if I go to one more parent curriculum night at the start of a school year and the teachers gush about “all our new technology” and point to a projector or smart white board, I’m going to lose it.

I’ve also learned through various K-12 education studies that kids are usually bored with front-focused, teacher-centric classroom learning situations. Unfortunately teachers are locked in a systemic, assembly line model of moving kids through a curriculum, testing them to measure the learning, and progressing them through the school year to an outcome worthy of moving them on to the next grade level. Most teachers are so heads-down, and are themselves measured on, student performance to educational standards that there isn’t much time left to stand back and take a big picture view of the world our kids will inherit: a world that is moving faster and faster and one in which learning is quickly shifting online.

Anything that can help make the linear, serial educational process more efficient is noteworthy, which is why I laud efforts to help cash-strapped school systems introduce technology of any sort into that industrial age educational model. Though I really like what Tierney Bros is doing with this initative, in my opinion it’s not enough.

What’s needed? That’s outside the scope of this blog and my expertise, but when you see amazing stories like this one last night on 60 Minutes about The Harlem’s Children’s Zone, you realize that it’s not just technology that matters and that reinventing education is a highly complex issue. As I watched the story last night and thought about writing this post this morning, I realized that the leader of the program (Jeffrey Canada) had figured out how to optimize all the variables for his students to succeed within the current system and educational paradigm, but hadn’t revolutionized education with respect to the world his kids will live and work within when they graduate from college.

Amazed at the story, it still doesn’t point the way for preparing our kids for a world they’ll inherit that is accelerating so quickly that issues surrounding medical ethics, genetic modifications, the possibility of sentient machines and how to treat them, and doing ones work when most aspects of it have an internet-centric core and being savvy with dozens or hundreds of technologies will be “table stakes” to be in the game of life, are just a handful of areas our kids aren’t learning about today in that old model.

Classroom of the Future? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Libraries used to be places to go solely to find information and knowledge in containers called “books” that were comprised of “atoms” and organized by Melvil Dewey’s cool Decimal System, but increasingly library systems are morphing in to places to get connected online where patrons can find their information and knowledge in “bits” while interacting with the library in an increasingly virtual and — most intriguingly in today’s participation culture — in an online and interactively social way.

The Gang had a chance to invite Meg Canada on the podcast to talk about the 21st century library, what our biggest Minnesota library system is doing (and what she’s driving within it) to embrace new realities that are internet-centric and deliver a surprising array of services you may not know even exist. Meg has long impressed us with how much she “gets it” with respect to new media and social technologies, but have been quite delighted to see how much of her energy is invested in the social and internet community in Minnesota and the role she plays in nurturing it along with good humor and an eagerness to serve others.

Meg is a senior librarian for Web Services and Training at Hennepin County Library and currently coordinates public training and social media efforts for the library. She volunteers helping with the Unsummit, recently presented at MinneWebCon, and is a regular contributor to Social Media Breakfast. Had we known beforehand that she also sings regularly with the Twin Cities chapter of TechKaraoke, we would’ve had her croak out an Etta James tune or something. We’ll get her on another podcast soon and have her sing.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Opening & closing music is “38 Special” by Charlie Musselwhite (iTunes link) from Music Alley, purveyor of podsafe tunes.

Discussed during the show:

+ Wired article, “YouTube’s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net”

+ Libraries & Broadband by Ann Treacy on the Blandin on Broadband blog

+ Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) on Twitter

+ Hennepin County Library (HCL) and their services; Bookspace, a social site for HCL book lovers; eBooks and downloadable audio books and videos; and a remarkably easy to use, searchable database of all events and classes in the HCL system; HCL on Twitter.

Minnov8 Gang Podcast 55: The Connected & Social Library is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

One of those “stars” is Gary Koelling, Best Buy’s Social Media guru and founder of Blueshirt Nation, Giftag and IdeaX. I asked Gary to talk with my broadcast brethren about increasing radio’s ‘signal strength’, a phrase Gary coined during a conversation we had some time back that refers to reaching customers through social media.

I met with Gary about an hour before his presentation because he wanted to show me what he came up with. I trust Gary implicitly to put together a great presentation on this topic…and he did. No surprise! I had expected to politely preview his slides, say “Cool!” and move on.

What I experienced, and what the attendees saw was a deeply personal story reflecting Gary’s passion for this medium and what it has meant to him over the years. He told me that every time he sat down to build his presentation he found himself “yelling” at radio for what it has become. He told me, “That’s not helpful to anyone.” So what he did was take everyone through the emotional relationship he has, and I bet all of have had, with radio.

“Other stations can steal your listeners, they can’t steal your friends.”  

What Gary did at the Conclave Learning Conference was remind broadcasters about the personal connection that they must maintain with their listener’s to survive. A connection, or as Gary noted, a “friendship” that has become less important in a world where making their quarterly numbers.

Gary, thank you for taking an hour of your day to empower broadcasters by sharing your knowledge in such a personal and emotional way. They’re still talking about it…the next steps is to act.

Here is Gary’s opening “story”. See the slide deck (though I think the picture you see in your mind will be better) on Gary’s blog.

I remember as a kid growing up in the 70’s in the middle of a corn field in Iowa feeling radio was the one thing that reliably connected me to the broader world. Locally as in the world ‘in town’ but also the world beyond. Listening during the long summer breaks to KWAY and the daily “Swap and Shop” and lives coming together, lives falling apart. Revealed to me in the items that people needed or needed to get rid of. The stories of lives beginning and lives ending and unexpected twists and detours in otherwise normal, boring lives were told in elaborate and veiled detail from eleven to one every day.

Later, as a car-less young teenager, I got around on tractors and bicycles and dirt bikes up and down gravel roads and through the fields of corn and corn and soybeans listening to radios, discovering popular music, music that was not my parents’ and feeling connected to that agitated, rebellious, horny angst of 38 Special, and Tom Petty and the Heart Breakers and Steve Miller. Then feeling so desperate to be part of it and for it to be part of what I was trying to be. I called the KFMW request line – long distance. A human answered the phone. Older. Male. Deep and busy sounding. I stepped up and said could you play ‘Refugee’ for Christie. What song you want played? Uh, Refugee by Tom Petty and the – . Refugee. Alright I’ll get it right on kid. Click. And my chest felt full of hot blood and breath and my face was hot red and I got on my ten speed and pedaled hard up the road with a radio hanging over the ram horn handle bar of my bike. I prayed I could get to Christie before the DJ played the song.

I wanted to see her face. Take credit. Get laid. But Christie wasn’t home. I hung out under the tree across from her driveway, heart beating frantically, hoping that the song wouldn’t come on. Then her mom’s car crawled up the road and slowed as it passed me and pulled into the driveway. I played it cool as her mom squinted over the wheel at me, the radio playing as it hung from my handle bars. I practiced in my mind how I would tell her that I requested the song for her. Her favorite. That I thought I was falling in love with her. And we’d kiss. That afternoon we talked for hours and hours feeling half drunk from the smell of sun and pool water and sweat and faint cigarette smoke that only a fifteen year old girl can twirl together into the sweetest perfume a fifteen year old boy would ever smell.

Then as the fireflies came out and the sun got low she had to go in for dinner. I rode home slow. And the song came on. And that heavy, hot blood and breath came back into my chest. And then I was a teenager. A teenager as free and angry and in deep and desperate as any had ever been and protected only by a transistor FM radio.

(Re-posted from RemainComm)

Gary Koelling Gets Personal With Radio is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

The SMM houses a Computer Education program that never fails to impress me. I first discovered them about two years ago when I made the decision to merge my traditional media experience with the “new” media world. They offer an incredible array of classes that cover everything from an introduction to computers (Absolutely Terrified of Computers) to network management, HTML, PHP, and a whole host of software training. I’ve found these classes to be concise and very hands on. All taught by incredibly well prepared…and patient…educators at a very reasonable rate.

Throughout the year they host seminars that take on various topics related to web development and design. The topic for this gathering: Refresh Your Pages. Presentations included Maintaining Your Website, PDF Accessibility For All, Benefits of Business Blogging, and Flash at its Finest. These free presentations were made by both SMM staff and guests and, as noted in the photo, attracted a full room of participants. I was particularly interested in the accessibility information as I often find myself short-cutting the process.

I’m always excited to see who shows up at these events. I always know a few faces from the world of tech, marketing, and project management but I also meet plenty of full and part-time designers there to pick up a tip or two. The best part; there are always new faces, people I don’t see at the many tech related gatherings I attend, who are just entering the online world. The guest presenters are also people I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting at other conferences. Getting to know all of them is always very heartening, because more people teaching and more people learning means more people participating online. And that means more opportunities for Minnesota innovation to proliferate.

Science Museum Could Be Minnesota’s Tech Secret is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

As more of us get connected via the internet and through web applications, seek ways to make our collaboration more powerful, shift our old serial and linear processes to ones that are parallel and associative, OSS is a key building block of internet and web technologies and applications. OSS is also gaining momentum globally and affecting all industries and institutions, even educational ones. 

That said, educational institutions often lag the private sector in adopting new technologies until proven, especially the Kindergarten through senior high school (K-12) levels. K-12 is often seen as risk-averse and needing clarity about the efficacy and pedagogy of using any particular technology. It must be proven and the benefits to learning and student achievement crystal clear before any technology is implemented, especially OSS. 

On the flip side, higher education is a hotbed of OSS use and many projects have origins in colleges and universities. One could argue that our public institutions taking risks, researching new possibilities, and pushing against the membrane of the future is at least as important as their educational mission and has contributed code and thought leadership in OSS. 

Though I’ve been aware of the OSS learning management system called “Moodle” (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) for some time, I was both delighted at what I discovered at the U of MN and surprised (stunned might be the better word) by its adoption within Eden Prairie schools where my son attends high school.

There are lessons in this story for all of us about how two very different educational organizations recognized that collaboration, human connection, and the move to parallel and associative learning is at the core of education going forward, and took calculated risk with the OSS Moodle to meet new needs.

MOODLE AT THE U OF MN
While performing some research for one of my clients on learning management systems (LMS), I stumbled across a Powerpoint deck entitled, “Moodle Implementation at the University of Minnesota” (PPT) by Elena Ivanova, I.T. Professional focused on Moodle and Scott Barnard, Emerging Technology Lead in the Digital Media Center.

In the slide deck they discussed why they adopted Moodle. One that came as surprise — and confirms what Minnov8 readers understand about the new collaboration paradigm exploding as the web matures — is that University faculty embraced the Moodle social constructivist philosophy which has, at its core, collaborative learning.

To me, this is a fundamental recognition of the shift occurring with the internet and web. Books like Wikinomics to Wisdom of the Crowds or Here Comes Everybody discuss mass collaboration, an emerging parallel and associative way of learning and collaborating instead of what we’ve always done (i.e., linear, serial learning and collaborating). With more and more opportunities to connect with one another online — and a participation culture of always-on and always-connected continues to accelerate — driving learning models forward that map to what’s happening online is key to the University’s future.  

I reached out to Ms. Ivanova and Dave Sandum, Eden Prairie School’s Director of Operational Technology, to discuss the reasons behind the adoption of Moodle (Sandum could not be reached after repeated attempts and his comments are from this Eden Prairie News article).

On this point about collaboration and the fundamental shift occurring, Ivanova said this, “That would be a question for someone with a PhD in education, but I personally think that (Moodle) does not impose any major obstacles. It still supports and encourages linear structure of a regular academic course.”

You have a site which is broken into the weeks/topics, and every week you add materials to read (pdf, words, lecture notes), and activities to participate in (like assignment, quiz or forums). Once you feel comfortable you may use more collaborative features, like allowing students to rate one another in the forum, add and comment on glossary entries, and more.”

Ivanova also emphasized that Moodle is also easy to use and intuitive, has a rich set of tools, lots of 3rd party add-ons, good design and the University team behind Moodle could point to a highly successful implementation of it at U of MN-Crookston. 

Ms. Ivanova made it clear that this major adoption at the U of MN didn’t come easily and they still have an active license with WebCT and it’s used throughout the University. In fact, she’d worked with WebCT and Desire2Learn (another LMS) for several years, and thus could see that Moodle was missing some features (like releasing courses with certain conditions attached or timed release).

How successful is Moodle adoption at the U of MN?  Total user base has 44,000 users and over 2,000 sites in production (667 are in-use and active), which places UofM in the top 2% of moodle installations by user count. (As a point of comparison, there are approximately 2,600 active sites on WebCT yet at the U of MN). (More statistics here).

MOODLE AT EDEN PRAIRIE SCHOOLS
While attending curriculum night at Eden Prairie High school (where parents get an introduction to teachers, curriculum and the overall high school experience) for our ninth grade son, his American Studies teacher pulled up an orientation slide and talked about access “to our Moodle site.” 

Since my son is in an enriched program with a remarkably challenging textbook (it’s even a dense, difficult read for his Mom and I!), having what our son needs online with Moodle means he can access all of his support materials from home whenever he needs it (and like most kids, he forgets stuff at school but can get it online now).

Eden Prairie News reporter Leah Schaffer wrote this article about Eden Prairie’s adoption of Moodle and comments by Dave Sandum where he emphasizes the collaborative and social aspects of the Moodle LMS and where they’re headed directionally:

“A classroom automation system,” is how David Sandum would describe it. Sandum, the techonology director for Eden Prairie schools, said Moodle gives teachers the ability to organize and conduct entire lessons in classrooms electronically.

“[It] takes things to the next level where you’re able to basically work in a collaborative form.” It breaks down the traditional four walls of the classroom, to create “anytime, anywhere learning [and it] really puts the social networking elements into learning,” said Sandum.

Sandum said they looked at Moodle as a pilot to see if its adoption went well, as far as student learning. It turns out that they may go beyond Moodle. Sandum said their goal is to basically create and support, internally, an Eden Prairie MySpace for education.

In my discussions with various Eden Prairie teachers over the years — including one who was a favorite of both my kids and a credentialed educational technologist, the now retired Sally Knaeble — I was always taken aback with the almost laughable (and sad) lack of technology in the schools. 

Outdated computers, lack of teacher self-publishing tools (K-6 and middle school websites look like they were done in 1997 and blogs? What’s a blog?), inadequate portals and parental tools (like something as simple as shared calendars amongst teachers that we could subscribe to, and/or RSS feeds from pages), a $4.6 million annual bond referendum passed in 2004 with $2M each year for technology improvements is now bearing fruit. Ironically the free Moodle software — with servers, support, training and other costs attached — is a smart use of this funding.

What impresses me more about both the U of MN’s direction and Eden Prairie schools embrace of Moodle is this: a deep and profound recognition of the new paradigm of human and machine connection driven by the internet; the demand for online access to information, materials and each other around learning; and the willingness to adopt OSS and discover how even learning can become more parallel and associative and begin to wean students off of the old ways of serial, linear learning.

Moodle Makes Its Mark is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

In 2005, the University of Minnesota (UofMN) surveyed Minnesota CEO’s and asked for input from members of the Itasca Project (a group comprised of big company CEO’s and key governmental leaders) with the basic question, “What do you want from the University of Minnesota?”

The wish list was extensive and reinforced their challenges in accessing the UofMN’s opportunities and resources: ready-for-hire graduates; continuing education for employees; consulting services from University faculty; research sponsorships; access to research facilities, and more.

After more research with focus groups and outstate Minnesota analysis, in July of 2006 the UofMN created the Academic and Corporate Relations Center (ACRC) and brought on board a guy wired as an entrepreneur, experienced in startup businesses, and full of energy to deliver what has become known as “the front door” to the institution: Director, Dick Sommerstad.

As a Minnesota startup, involved with an emerging company or an intrapreneur within a corporation, you may be thinking, “What in the world could Sommerstad’s ACRC offer me?” As you’ll soon discover, there is a wealth of resources at your fingertips just waiting for you to access them.

My long-standing impression (and admitted bias) toward organizations like ACRC was that most are out of touch with the needs of the entrepreneur and those of us driving forward on making ideas a reality. After opening my mind to the possibilities and opportunities the University is offering, what I came away with both reinforced that bias and slightly shifted my thinking toward the benefits of engaging with ACRC going forward and, possibly, what position the UofMN could play as a leader.

I sat down recently with Dick Sommerstad to lay out the vision and mission of Minnov8, with the goal being to discover what the UofMN might offer to our readers: the creators and innovators in Minnesota building the next generation of Internet and Web technologies.

We began by looking at the resources within the UofMN that existed before the ACRC was formed and the steps, systems and access-streamlining this new group put into place in order to enable businesses to have a much easier time of connecting directly with the University:

• ACRC Business Portal
• Centers & institutes database
• Faculty resumes database
• Licensable technologies
• Facilities and equipment
• Libraries
• Concierge

The Concierge service is particularly intriguing. If you’ve ever tried getting your needs met engaging with a major institution or company you know the difficulties in getting questions answered or pointed in the right direction to get your needs met.

This service has phone and email access (staffed 8-5pm Central, Monday through Friday) and relationship managers for larger organizations.

They’ve reduced dozens of access points to about a dozen with even more streamlining of access coming. A realtime chat feature, database of all UofMN websites, a public engagement database as well as six regional portals throughout the State are in the planning stages.

During our conversation, I was forthright with my perspective on most of these resources being “big company” or “large startup” (vs. early stage) sorts of offerings. Sommerstad agreed, and as we talked about the needs of the Minnesota startup community and that Minnov8 was geared toward helping foster an environment of connection and encouragement for the startup community here — something woefully lacking and in stark contrast to the risk taking, entrepreneurial environment in Silicon Valley — we went off on a tangent about what’s truly needed in Minnesota.

“It’s all about the CEO,” Sommerstad stated emphatically. He was adamant that attracting world-class CEO’s to Minnesota for startup companies was the #1 challenge and said that “ideas are a dime-a-dozen” when I protested that without great ideas, an entrepreneurial and risk-taking climate, angel investing and help to incubate new innovations, those CEO’s wouldn’t even be needed!

We didn’t resolve this chicken-or-the-egg impasse.

As we talked further about exactly which resources would be of interest to early stage companies, we began to zero-in on these:

• Gold Pass: Need employees, $12/hour programmers or $50/hour PhD’s in the summer? This is a free jobs site and recruiting spot with significant promise
• Centers of Expertise: Use this tool to search over 300 interdisciplinary research centers, institutes and programs and discover a wide-range of experts
• Other areas include the Office of Licensable Technology which, by the way, I’d love to go to and just poke through all the possible technologies just lying there waiting for someone to connect the dots and deliver the next great innovation
• The last few areas of interest may be a news site on UofMN innovation brought forth by the Office of the Vice President for Research here, signing up for the “Announce” list (a selectable email update sent out each Friday), or just poke around the website of your choice here
• You’re Invited! ACRC is sponsoring a free (but RSVP required) Annual ACRC-University Enterprise Labs Summer Barbeque on July 30th.

Web-savvy users might be struck by the lack of RSS feeds or a single point of searching all databases, but Sommerstad assured me that both of these are in the works.

Upon reflection there is no question Dick Sommerstad and the ACRC team have done an amazing job of consolidating the UofMN resource base (and all the silo’s of information) into a significantly more accessible “front door” and have been successful in coordinating and orchestrating that access.

That said, it seems that there is a missed opportunity to position the University as the hub of research, education, outreach and the high level coordination and orchestration point for our entire State where it pertains to the Internet and Web.

If you accept the premise that the Internet and Web is the greatest shift in human and machine connection in human history — impacting everything from knowledge and information access; process streamlining;  commerce; social interaction; and its impact on culture — then wouldn’t it seem mission-critical for the UofMN to lead? Wouldn’t part of that leadership be fostering an environment for the best ideas in this space to be incubated and brought forth, within the context of socioeconomic, technological, communications and global trends?

One could argue The Collaborative, Minnesota High Technology Association, GetGoMN, MentorNet and others are doing what’s needed: providing near-term opportunities for startups to connect with those who can assist the startup or emerging MN company in making ideas a reality and forming or accelerating their businesses.

I would argue that we don’t do enough incubating in Minnesota (and is one reason why MinneBar and Minnedemo are so well attended and successful) and these efforts are important, but if a startup, emerging company or even a corporate intrapreneurial effort is roughly a year or so from launching, wouldn’t it be useful and a competitive advantage to understand the trends and influencing factors that will affect that launch a year away? This is where the UofMN could be positioned as the leader in coordinating and orchestrating knowledge, taking a 40,000 foot view of major trends and influencers, and providing guidance and insight to all of us that would go far beyond what any of these other efforts could possibly satisfy.

For instance, what if the UofMN Continuing Education or ACRC offered:

• A scenario planning workshop that looked at all the influencing factors affecting Internet and Web development?
• A comprehensive analysis of key open source software and the ecosystems surrounding them in order to gauge their health before embarking on building your startup atop of one of them or betting your business initiative on it?
• How about understanding global, mobile adoption rates, network speeds and the platforms upon which you could deliver your application

Is there anything for you at the ACRC? If you’re a startup, there are few resources (other than Gold Pass) that seem immediately relevant and ones you could take advantage of today. Many more of these are germane if you’re within a corporation that has big needs where a collaboration or partnership with the University could pay big dividends, but the ACRC is worth you investing some time in understanding what’s there and considering how this public institution could help you.

Entire U of MN At-Your-Fingertips is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Today was the Emerging Digerati Showcase at the University of Minnesota, Weisman Art Museum. The focus was a College of Liberal Arts, new media festival featuring digital technology, art and research.

It was inspiring to see the innovation and boundary pushing being done in this market and the passion people are bringing to digital technologies.

• Starting off was artist Lynn Fellman, who merges art and science with her beautiful DNA inspired digital, vector art. Ms. Fellman has been in the interactive space since the early 1990′s.

• Minnov8′s own Garrick Van Buren showcased his creation, Cullect, a collaborative feed reader with amazing capabilities

• Brad Hosack and David Ernst from the Academic & Information Technology, College of Education & Human Development department showed Video ANT, an innovative way of moving video beyond just content delivery through a tool they’ve developed to allow easy annotating of video

• Justin Grammens and Minnov8′s own Phil Wilson showcased Localtone Radio, an innovative site for local bands to showcase their songs and for music lovers to discover (and vote upon favorite) bands and music. Their buzzphrase? Listen, Share, Learn

• Terry Schubring demonstrated an internal UofMN engine called “MediaMill”, which facilitates transcoding of video and its display on to any web page

• Ali Momeni and students showed their Art on Wheels project and a brief video is below:

At this point I was unable to stay and see Producing New Media Texts; FlashBelt (a conference for new media designers); Recent Sound Works; Blind Side of a Secret and others. A very good day and fun showcase of innovation here in Minnesota. The only downside was that more people couldn’t partake of seeing and experiencing what we did today in this event.

Emerging Digerati Showcase at U of MN is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.