If you missed it: part 1, part 2.




In this third part of my interview with Carly Shuler we talk about reimagining digital textbooks as learning platforms.




11 min 25 sec


Download (10 Mb)













I haven't done much digging in this space until recently. If it interests you here are some other things worth looking at:

• A Kindle in Every Backpack


• A Kindle in Every Backpack?...Would we even need backpacks?


• The Future of Digital Textbooks (download the PowerPoint slides)


• 2010 Horizon Report


• Building Research and Writing Skills Through Student Authorship of Wiki Textbooks (download pdf of slides) [The student task of "semantic architect" is brilliant!]

Videos Mentioned
























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If you missed it: part 1.




In this second part of my interview with Carly Shuler we continue the discussion of the state of technology in Canadian classrooms and find ourselves talking about Mobile Learning; a topic close to both of our hearts.




When I talk about the shift of learning times and spaces, this is what I was thinking of:

Time and Space v2 by flickr user dkuropatwa

CORRECTION: Towards the end of this segment I talk about the 2010 Horizon Report. I said the 2009 Horizon report had Mobile Learning on the 1 to 2 year horizon but this years report doesn't mention it all. I was wrong. Mobile Computing is still on the 1 to 2 year Horizon. My apologies to the authours of the report.




9 min 49 sec


Download (9 Mb)















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FBI Classroom by flickr user billerickson

Last week I was interviewed by Carly Shuler. We talked about many things. Mainly she wanted to talk about the future of the textbook in the digital age from the perspective of textbook publishers.




The interview was about 50 minutes long so I've broken it down into 4 or 5 chunks.




This first bit focuses on the current state of technology integration in Canadian classrooms. I told her what I know. You probably know more about it. Please share it here in the comments. Thanks.




13 min 16 sec


Download (12.1 Mb)














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So we talked for 2 hours ... when you take out all the commercials it's a little less than an hour. I didn't think I expressed myself very well this time out. The conversation felt a little fractured, like we kept losing focus. There was one moment when I completely forgot what I was going to say. What I meant to share, in the context of how important a caring adult is in the life of a successful student, was this:

A while ago a colleague of mine called home to speak to the parents of one of her students. This student had started missing some classes and she was concerned about their progress in math:

"Hello, Mrs. J. I'm your son's math teacher. I just wanted to let you know that he's missed a few classes and I'm starting to get concerned about his progress in the class. I ..."

"Tell it to someone who cares!"

Here's the audio: (59 min 38 sec, Download, 29 Mb)

So tomorrow I've been invited back to CJOB radio to participate in a panel discussion on literacy. Sort of unusual for a math teacher but then again, maybe not.

In my latest workshop on numeracy I talked about how literacy is about much more than reading and much more than what we learn in school.

It'll be interesting to compare notes with the other people on the panel: an early years literacy teacher, someone from Red River College (our local community college), and someone who works in adult education. (I don't know anyone's names yet.)

I've still got the chatterous room set up and open for anyone that would like to participate. If you've got the time, please join us:

Check the time for where you live.

Listen here.

Join the live chat.

Chatterous is blocked by the CJOB web filter. (It's not just us education folks that have to put up with this sort of thing.) I'll check in on the room after the show. Hope to see you in the chatterous room!

Friday's interview with Richard Cloutier was fascinating from a few different perspectives:

The View From The Studio

Richard was a wonderful host and I found myself taken with the entire process of putting together a radio show. He started working on this show months ago when we met over coffee. He than came to see me teach a couple of times and we had a chance to talk about how it went after each class. In one class my SMARTboard was broken so he really wasn't seeing any technology in the classroom per se other than mentions of what was happening online in the class blog. The second time we did have the SMARTboard up and running but the class was a very "meat and potatoes" algebra lesson. We did get a chance to look at how I used the SMARTboard to refer to the previous night's scribe post on the blog, how I pulled in a video from YouTube to link the dry content they were learning to some useful mental math, and how I tried to have the kids on the board more than I. (Actually, I've decided to begin analyzing my lessons and sharing that online. I hope to garner suggestions for my instructional design and more effective use of the SMARTboard. That particular lesson will be the first in that series which I'll publish here shortly.)

Richard had every minute of the show planned to the second. Nonetheless he was constantly communicating with his producer to change things midstream in response to the feedback from the audience. He was taking in email live, on the fly, working the phones, planning the upcoming sequence, coordinating those of us live in the studio with Sheryl, Dean, and Wes on the phones as well as the other callers on the phone. We wanted to also monitor the Chatterous space but couldn't get through the network filter; an issue, it seems, that's not exclusive to education. I think there's work for Clarence in the world of mainstream media professional development. ;-)

In the last week and half since the show it seems to have made a small splash online. The audio has been dowloaded over 500 times and blog reflections have come in from around the world:

Wes Fryer (Edmond, Oklahoma): pre-interview post

podcast recording

post-interview refelction

Donna DesRoches (North Battleford, Saskatchewan): A Day of Learning

Stuart Meldrum (Hawick, Scotland): Teachers take over the Canadian airwaves

Neil Winton (Perth, Scotland): New Year, New Connections, New Learning

Chris Harbeck (Winnipeg, Manitoba): A day listening to Darren on the Radio

John Evans (St. Francois Xavier, Manitoba): Darren Kuropatwa Interview on CJOB Friday, January 2, 2009

Wes Fryer - follow up post (Edmond, Oklahoma): Contrasting recent Oklahoma City and Winnipeg morning radio coverage about education

Alice Barr (Yarmouth, Maine): Week 1 of 2009 and already some amazing learning!

One common thread through all these reflections was the engagement everyone felt in the online chat. It was an opportunity to continue meaningful conversation during commercials. Over 1000 comments were shared over the three hours of the show. Here's some of what happened in the chat:

There were between 30 and 50 people in the chat at different times. They came from:

• Maine, USA


• New Hampshire


• Edmond, Oklahoma


• St. Francois Xavier, MB


• Perth, Scotland


• Los Angeles, CA, USA


• Harrisburg, PA, USA


• North Battleford, Saskatchewan


• Winnipeg , MB


• Charters Towers, QLD, Australia


• Farmington, Maine, USA


• Fort Gratiot, MI, USA


• Wales UK


• Charlottetown, PEI, Canada


• Philadelphia, USA


• Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan

Folks shared links & tips (kick youtube, snackr.net, and many more) and quotes from the show that resonated with them.

A real sense of community developed by the end. Many participants in the chat added new people to their blogrolls, exchanged twitter usernames, and contact information.

What's Next?

A number of other people are thinking about ways to engage the mainstream media in their communities around the world. What will happen here in Winnipeg? Well, maybe more people reading and commenting on edublogs, joining the conversation, more local attention for the good work my students have done and are doing. Or maybe not.

The Last Word

... in the chat was about penmanship. A valid point I think. Emphasis my own.

There is no excuse for the lack of skills of today's students. Successful handwriting can be taught to anyone in a short period of time, with a little effort on the part of the teacher. When I taught school, I reduced handwriting down to ten easy lessons, and with a plan of attack for the students to use on their own. I can boast an unusually and significant success rate. One of my lessons was entitled "One Letter at a Time". Pick a letter. Decide how you want it to look. Learn how to write it very slowly and deliberately. Then for a week or so, every time you write it, take the time to do it properly. When satisfied, choose another letter, and repeat the procedure. No student ever gets through the whole alphabet. However, overall penmanship improves drastically.

We had a blast! Richard Cloutier was a wonderful host. His passion for the topics we discussed was palpable and he clearly "got it." Thanks Richard for inviting us into the studio.

Dean, Sheryl, Wes, and I were joined by one of my former students, Mark Rabena, and a crowd of educators from across the globe in the chatterous space we had for the event. There were over 1000 comments shared in the online chat. I'm still absorbing it all and will blog about it soon. In the meantime, if you weren't there I made an mp3 file of it without all the commercial breaks. You can listen here or download it to listen on your iPod or mp3 player.

Time: 1 hr 46 min 33 sec Download: 64 MB

Sometime in October I went for coffee with a local radio station host, Richard Cloutier from CJOB. That conversation lead to Richard observing me teach a couple of times in the following months and finally to an on air interview scheduled for tomorrow, 2 January 2009, 9am to 11am central. This is the 30 second promo spot they've been running on the radio for the last little while:

We'll be talking about education in the 21st Century, numeracy, the impact of rapid technological change on teaching and learning, and the K12 Online Conference. Dean Shareski, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, and Wesley Fryer, my fellow conveners and colleagues, will all be joining the conversation for part of the show and I hope you will too.

The show will be streamed live over the internet (click on the grey Listen Live button in the top centre of the page). We'll tweet out to our twitter networks that we're on so you can listen and join in the conversation in an open Chatterous space I made special for the event. The local listening audience will be invited to participate in the chat which Richard and I will be monitoring from the studio. I'm hoping that you all act as "chat captains" keeping the conversation grounded, pushing it into good places, fostering deep conversation, and engaging and helping the local listeners as needed. This may be a new experience for many of them. Hopefully a lot of listeners will also be parents. I'm looking forward to an engaging two hours and appreciate whatever time you can spare.

If you're planning to join us ...

Check the time for where you live.

Listen here.

Join the live chat.

Hope to see you in the chatterous room!

Whenever I drive to or from work I like to listen to CBC radio. On the way home I listen to Margaux Watt who hosts "Up To Speed". So on Friday, after my Extreme (web 2.0) Lesson Plan Makeover workshop I was a little chuffed to be interviewed by Margaux on her show.

A friend recorded it and sent me the audio file. It's only about five minutes long. While we were talking the podcast I do with my students, Student Voices, came up. Margaux suggested she might play one of those interviews on the radio. I don't know if that will ever happen, but if you listened to the show on the radio and came here looking for those podcasts you can find them here.

Two five minute talks in as many days ... I can say exactly two things about five minute talks:

(1) Five minutes is very short.

(2) Five minutes is very hard to do well.

Here are my five minutes on the radio:

Several months ago I received an email from Robyn MacBride. She teaches physics in Rochester NY and is finishing her Masters degree in educational technology. She's writing her thesis on how blogs can be used as an educational tool and asked me if I'd be willing to be interviewed by her. I said yes and about two weeks ago, January 10, 2006, we did a skyperview. I asked Robyn if it would be alright to record the interview and publish it as a podcast. She said yes.

In the interview we explore the role of blogs in the past, present and future in my classes. We also discussed issues of internet safety, how I dealt with a student publishing inappropriate content, connectivism, and some of my perspectives on education in general.

It's about an hour long. I know I don't always have that much time to devote to listening to a podcast but if you do find the time to listen questions, concerns, complaints, comments, compliments, confusions, uncertainties and other perspectives are encouraged and welcomed; as always. ;-)

My Classroom Has Glass Walls - the interview

Show Notes


Pre-Cal 40S

AP Calculus AB

Pre-Cal 20S

Pre-Cal 30S

How Will I Orchestrate It This Time?

Karen Cameron

Learning Inspired By Students (the introduction of chatboxes)

Blogging on Blogging (from day 3 -- not the post I was thinking about,
but it was the event I was thinking about)

Where Have We Heard This Before (the post I was thinking about came a
month later -- it had even greater impact)

OLÉ - My Tango ...

Rip, Mix, Learn

What If Your Blog Was Gone?

Konrad Glogowski

EduBlog Awards 2005

Tools Interiorized (Konrad's post about his class "losing" their blogs)

S1 Math

Consumer Math 20S

Blogging on Blogging (from Pre-Cal 40S)

Blogging Assessment

Pre-Cal 20S Visitor Map

You're Here Let's Begin! (Pre-Cal 20S - my first post)

Blogging on Blogging (Pre-Cal 20S - my second post)

Students Made This! (Pre-Cal 20S - my third post)

Bud The Teacher

Steve Lazar

Rip, Mix, Learn

Bloggers 'R 'Us

A New Level of Functionality and Interactivity (Stories from the
chatboxes)

The Evolution of Teaching and Learning (what I'm learning)

George Siemens

Jay Cross

Stephen Downes

New Pre-Cal 40S

Graeme's Massive Notes Post

Editor's Initiative

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

Lunch in Alabama

Brainteaser (grade 7 math blog in Alabama - read the comments)

The Scribe Post

Scribe Once Again!!!

A New Level of Functionality and Interactivity (see comments)

Scribe For Today