The embedded video below has information that should give the world of education some things to consider. Are we using available technology to teach 21st century skills? Are we using available technology to engage students? Are we using available technology to make global connections?

One of the things that I have had a difficult time with is layout of a post that contains a picture. I would like to wrap text around a picture to eliminate large areas of white space that normally shows up when adding a picture to a post. When adding a picture you do have the option of some minor formatting. These options do allow you to set a picture to the right or left, and with this setting, the text will wrap around the picture. This makes for a much better visual display of a post that contains an image. I do like this very much.

There is a very good YouTube video that describes, in detail, how to do this. It also contains instructions for some advanced formatting by using html code input. It is not extremely difficult, but it does require code entry.

There has been a great deal of buzz created by the “Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch. In one section of this very powerful lecture he shares information about starting a new class about building virtual worlds.

Randy Pausch Virtual Worlds

I have had the opportunity to visit a number of our member schools and share an overview of many of the training sessions that have been my focus during the past two school years. Much of what I want to share with teachers are the possible benefits of a variety of web 2.0 tools that are being made available by ESU #13. In a previous post I spoke about the concepts of communication, collaboration, produce, publish and audience. These five concepts form a circular learning environment that could be seen as learning 2.0. Students would have the opportunity to use a variety of web 2.0 tools to communicate and collaborate with others that have common interests or are participating in similar learning activities. Once the communication and collaboration progresses, the opportunity to actually produce some type of output could arise. The use of web 2.0 tools makes the next steps really exciting. The product that has been created can be published, and the audience for the work is world wide. If an active community can be developed, the published work should lead directly back to starting new communication and collaboration.

Teachers in the ESU 13 region have used Manila in the past to easily create web pages to support classroom instruction, and share information with parents. We have been searching for a Manila replacement for about a year, and selected the multi-user version of WordPress. During the last month numerous teachers have received training and begun creating content for their WordPress sites.

Here are the sites created by Gering and Kimball teachers;
Scott Plummer
Clint Schleicher
Julie Van Dyke
Mary Robinson
Randy Johnson
Kristy Keller
Russ Hamer

Mark Burson
Nancy Olsen
Ed Montgomery
Carolyn Montgomery
Laurie Janicek
Leta Liesch
Mark Wilson
Emily Brooks
Troy Unzicker
Kimball Library

Many of these sites are in the early stages of creation, and may not have much content at this time.

Given the rural setting of the region served by ESU 13, the use of web 2.0 tools to create professional learning communities has real potential. Many of the schools we serve are very small, and a grade level or subject area teacher may be the only person in that district with that specific assignment. The region is also very large, and demands a real sacrifice in time and travel to attend scheduled meeting. If teachers in the region are willing to make the commitment to participate, a variety of professional learning communities could be developed. I have been encouraging this type of professional communication for about a year, with very little movement. As I continue to post entries and read numerous other edubloggers’ posts, it is amazing to see the opportunities this technology could provide. Once teachers become comfortable sharing with others from the region, they may expand their vision to include educators from around the world. I did a little research on bloggers in my blogroll, and even in this limited list, found this group of bloggers really does flatten the world. We all have the opportunity to participate in professional learning communities with anyone, anywhere, anytime.

I have been experimenting with a variety of open source applications during the last few years. The ESU is currently running Moodle (Learning Management), Elgg (Community Building & Blogging), WordPress MU (Blogging), phpESP (Survey), and Gallery (Photo Storage). The whole open source community is very intriguing to me. The creators of this software are willing to share what they have developed. There are open source options for nearly any application you may currently be running on your MAC or Windows machine.

The open source environment has now moved into the course development arena. One of the first items I became aware of is the Free-reading.net site. Free-Reading is an “open source” instructional program that helps teachers teach early reading.

The long term success of the open source environment requires the contribution of a large community of people. The technology is in place to allow anyone that has an interest to become an active contributor.