Get Outside Your Echo Chamber

Kevin Kelly -- KK* Lifestream

"In the network economy, nine times out of ten, your  fiercest competitor will not come from your own field. In turbulent  times, when little is locked in, it is imperative to search as wide as  possible for places where innovations erupt. Innovations increasingly  intersect from other domains. A ceaseless blanket search--wide, easy,  and shallow--is the only way you can be sure you will not be surprised.  Don't read trade magazines in your field; scan the magazines of other  trades. Talk to anthropologists, poets, historians, artists,  philosophers. Hire some 17-year-olds to work in your office. Make a  habit to visit a web site at random. Tune in to talk radio. Take a class  in scenario making. You'll have a much better chance at recognizing the  emergence of something important if you treat these remote venues as  neighbors."

Reading Kevin Kelly's admonition to cast a wider net into other  disciplines comes from the simple observation that many innovations come  from outside one's own field.  Revolutions rarely come from within.  In  that spirit I would like to request that others write a little about  the outside sources that jostle the status quo within education either  intentionally or by accident.

Here are a few sites I recommend to get you out of your edublogging echo chamber:

1. One of my favorites is Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf's The Quantified Self.  Any look at recent posts will inspire you to think about your own discipline.

* For example, why can't classes be more like Meet-Ups?   Some of my most successful classes were ones where we met socially for  breakfast or coffee/tea.  Why not have a Meet-Up Monday?
* What about observing our disciplines and student use of tools within the discipline? A recent post about Bill Jarrold describes  how he uses the command line to log productivity.  Why not use Twitter  and Twitter hashtags to "log" writing productivity of all sorts that  your students produce?  I teach composition and have wondered about my  students' writing lives.  This would be a good way to open up a can of  observation on 'em.
* What about foursquare to extend the boundaries of your classroom?  I  have been wondering about how to bring games into the classroom and this  might be it.  What are the affordances of foursquare in the classroom? This post suggests a data visualization for it and some more ideas.  Yes, I think this will do.

2. Another one is ze frank's page:

* I love how the effectiveness of the blog-comment template is shown so well here.   It is a pattern that any writer can use to attract an audience.   Besides it demonstrates one of ze frank's principles so well--surprise  is everywhere.

3.  Or Dave Snowden's excellent and evocative Cognitive Edge.  While technically inside of the envelope of learning and education he also writes about leadership and family.

* Snowden's software, SenseMaker Suite, might be applicable to my burgeoning dissertation interest in social capital in professional learning communities.
* Or perhaps you discover a quote that thoroughly bumfuzzles your mind  like this one:  "In general, if a community is not physically,  temporally and spiritually rooted, then it is alienated from its  environment and will focus on survival rather than creativity and  collaboration."  This may seem obvious to many, but to me it points to  the sterility of classrooms in general and to mine in paricular.  One of  the oddest feelings I have gotten since I moved from teaching high  school to university has been a 'coldness'.  I miss the heat of high  school and I think this quote explains this in part and points me toward  a major goal for fall classes--figure out ways to root my classes.  And  I also think about how to 'root' my online classes as well.

4.  How about Scott McCloud's Mind Dump where I discovered:

* Eric Mazur's physics class where  he  makes the awesomely sensible and arguable assertion that you can  forget facts but you can't forget understanding.  This guy is my new  hero and I am determined to apply some of his techniques for physics to  my lit and comp classes.
* Or perhaps I will be moved to print up this quote from Seth Godin that McCloud points to for  our consideration:  "The internet has dramatically widened the number  of available substitutes. You don't have to like it, but it's true. That  means you have to work far harder to create work that can't easily be  replaced."  How can I make myself less replaceable?  That is an  essential question for every world class employee who wants real job  security.

How about the blog Sports Are 80% Mental ?

* File this under the category "Everything You Know Is Wrong":   "Physical activity had no impact on weight change, but weight clearly  led to less activity."  In other words don't be hatin' on the fat man or  boy or woman or girl.  My second thought when I read this was whether  there are similar 'Truths' in my discipline that need puncturing. What  are the assumptions that guide my work that might be wrong?  I will be  on my guard for this during the upcoming school year and will report  back.

The idea that innovation comes from the margins seems right  biologically-- growth occurs along the edge (wherever that might be). So  my challenge to you is to bring back similar (and better) missives from  the fraxillated margins.  Just fold one interest right on top of  another and that's where you might want to be.

Podcasting for Kids

This is good information on how to do a podcast, how to integrate it into what teachers do, and how to justify it.  I can see how valuable this might be as a solid first step toward a larger goal.  And what would that large goal be?  To show kids how to get inside their heads and find the stuff they are passionate about and then use the tool to convey that passion.  At their age they need just enough skill to balloon their personal joys into the air. 

 

 

via ScribeFire

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Quel Difference!

Wow, Alan Kay explains what a difference an "s" makes in our understanding of the world.

• McGee’s Musings : “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” – Dorothy Parker - Annotated

   

  • It's largely about the enormous difference between News and New to human minds. Marketing people really want News (= a little difference to perk up attention, but on something completely understandable and incremental). This allows News to be told in a minute or two, yet is interesting to humans. New means "invisible",  not immediately comprehensible, etc.

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Academic Productivity » The Future of the Journal, by Anita de Waard

This advice for researchers is apt for ANY writer at work from now on end.

• Academic Productivity » The Future of the Journal, by Anita de Waard - Annotated

   

  • A somewhat related idea are the 5 stars of open linked data:

    
    

    ★ make your stuff available on the web (whatever format)

    ★★ make it available as structured data (e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table)
    

    ★★★ non-proprietary format (e.g. csv instead of excel)

    ★★★★ use URLs to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff
    

    ★★★★★ link your data to other people’s data to provide context

    
    

     

    • 
      

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Principals Say: “I Don’t Know How To Do That” « Pedagogies of Abundance

Must read for anyone who wants to walk in the shoes of our principals.

Quotes:

Principals Say: “I Don’t Know How To Do That” « Pedagogies of Abundance

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Principals Say: “I Don’t Know How To Do That” « Pedagogies of Abundance

Must read for anyone who wants to walk in the shoes of our principals.

Quotes:

Principals Say: “I Don’t Know How To Do That” « Pedagogies of Abundance

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ipadio: Terry's phlog - 12th phonecast

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YouTube - RSCON10_How_to_register.mov

Nice use of screencast for showing how to register.

YouTube - Various Teachers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2RHHHqr8l8

Unboxed - Yes, People Still Read, but Now It’s Social - NYTimes.com

• Unboxed - Yes, People Still Read, but Now It’s Social - NYTimes.com

  tags: no_tag

  • “THE point of books is to combat loneliness,” David Foster Wallace observes near the beginning of “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself,” David Lipsky’s recently published, book-length interview with him.

  • other readers have highlighted the passage on their Kindles, making it one of the more “popular” passages in the book.

     

    • - post by tellio
  • Thanks to e-mail, Twitter and the blogosphere, I regularly exchange information with hundreds of people in a single day: scheduling meetings, sharing political gossip, trading edits on a book chapter, planning a family vacation, reading tech punditry. How many of those exchanges could happen were I limited exclusively to the technologies of the phone, the post office and the face-to-face meeting? I suspect that the number would be a small fraction of my current rate.
    • - post by tellio
  • high-level thinking when the culture migrates from the page to the screen.
    • - post by tellio
  • Mr. Carr’s original essay, published in The Atlantic — along with Clay Shirky’s more optimistic account, which led to the book “Cognitive Surplus”
    • - post by tellio
  • The intellectual tools for assessing the media, once the province of academics and professional critics, are now far more accessible to the masses.
    • - post by tellio
  • The question is not whether our brains are being changed. (Of course new experiences change your brain — that’s what experience is, on some basic level.) The question is whether the rewards of the change are worth the liabilities.
    • - post by tellio
  • Quiet contemplation has led to its fair share of important thoughts. But it cannot be denied that good ideas also emerge in networks.
    • - post by tellio

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Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Noteflight - GingerTPLC's Home

  the best way to create, store, listen to, print, search and share notated music scores.

  Tags: noteflight, music, composition

  • - By Ginger TPLC

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Skype Keeps on Getting Better

Image via CrunchBase

Download the beta version of Skype for Windows




I have been enamored of Skype for as long as it has been around.  It is one of those tools like etherpad, diigo, and zotero that just works.  It is the one tool that I recommend all teachers become friends with because it is a gateway to long distance sharing and learning with others.  Now Skype has five-way video conferencing.  And as David Gurteen points out it has screensharing as well for both Windows and Mac.  Here are some more 'hidden' features:

Forward your calls for free to another
Skype name, e.g. from your home PC to your work PC.
Use Skype and IM-chat simultaneously--redundancy is good.
Emoticons add-on.  And how to add them to Mac.
A directory of plug-ins.
Use it as an answering maching or a lie detector.
Or just read this very clear and useful post.

Bionic Teaching

Education is failing.
Our solution is not to work, to spend money and time on our teachers, to help them become better, instead we send our money away, spending precious time testing products of a system we insist is broken.
We buy software. We buy content. We buy external experts.2 We buy reputation. We buy “trust” and “quality” because we don’t believe either really exists in our schools.
Invest that money in our teachers, on smaller classes, on things that have been proven to matter.
Make teaching a career that isn’t based on martyrdom. Martyrs die flaming deaths. Systems based on them don’t last. There are no easy answers. You can’t buy, process, software, magic your way out of this.
There is no microwave dinner version of educational reform.

Lots of very strong sound bites.  I suspect that the writer would agree that we have had a problem with the experts being on top and not on tap.

Twitter: Gateway to Teaching Professionalism

Image via Wikipedia

Educational Hash Tags  

Many of us started demonstrating Twitter without a thought as to its practicability.  I know I did.  I recalled showing it to a group of teachers in a summer writing academy almost three years ago to the deafening yawn of....meh.  I knew it was a big wave building, but had no idea how its complex iterations would flood my own professional life.  Now?  If I want to get my 'regular' work done I better not open up TweetDeck.  Just this morning I followed the #wisdom2conf hashtag to a fabulous TEDxTokyo talk by Dr. Hiroshi Tasaka on Invisible Capitalism  and from there to Umair Hacque on Behavioural Innovation and from that to RSA Animate's glorious animations including Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathic Civilisation.  The biochemical high from scratching the itch of the curious is my mostly positive addiction especially when combined with its necessary consequent--sharing.  I guess that is why I conflate teaching and learning to the point where I am so overcome by my good fortune that I occasionally turn to my class with a conspiratorial whisper and say, "They pay me to learn!" 

One of my goals this summer is to get my twitter professional development on track and to help others do the same.  This means taking in another river of information.  I can hear you saying good luck with that to which I respond with a hearty, "Thank you.  Any help you might lend in this OED-ian task would be gratefully acknowledged with words but no money."  The educational hashtags link above is a good place for me to start sharing a little bit more deeply with the Twitter community what I am raking in.  It is time for me to innovate my own behavior, to disrupt my own personal learning algorithm, and to extend an empathic toe into my professions water in preparation for leap into the shallow end.  At least I think it is the shallow end. 

Google Voice and RubrickJetpack Mashup?

Google Voice - Inbox (2)

From Fish to Infinity

Reading a new opinion columnist in the NYT—Stanley Strogatz.  His column is called “From Fish to Infinity” (which I can only guess is a paean to cosmologist George Gamow's One, Two, Three...Infinity) and explores what he calls a second chance at math.  It is a new way (to me anyway) for subjects to be explored in the Times because it takes a slightly more academic bent in its treatment of sources.  It cites them. Who knew?  That is a ‘new’ model.  Better yet it has introduced me to a book and an article that I might never have seen as a math lover from afar. 

1. “E. Wigner, “The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences,” Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960), pp. 1-14. A pdf version is here.  I put this one in my iPod touch and use the app, Papers, to read it.  My skim of it can only come up with one word--mordant.
   
2. P. Lockhart, “A Mathematician’s Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form” (Bellevue Literary Press, 2009).   This one goes on my wishlist at Amazon.  Please, anyone feeling generous?  Otherwise I will have to get it via Interlibrary Loan (which the Firefox extension Book Burro found for me quite handily).

I have laid the breadcrumbs out.  They are tasty and lead to a gingerbread house of an article.  I look forward to following and commenting on his entire series.

Google Voice Embeds

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Eskeletons

  Fascinating view of the skeletons and habitats of different primates on Earth.

  Tags: Biology, anatomy, LifeScience, science

  • - By Ginger TPLC

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Microsoft recommends parents filter the internet - Security - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

  Tags: cybersafety, onlinesmarts

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Panel Releases Proposal to Set U.S. Education Standards - NYTimes.com

  Tags: no_tag

  • - By Raymond Lai

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• Enquiry based learning @ The Langwitch Chronicles

  Tags: langwitch, language_teaching, Learning2Learn, PLTS, Enquiry

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

YouTube Doubler at bavatuesdays/Touchstone for Other Class Uses

YouTube Doubler at bavatuesdays

"Could see that being a very effective way for thinking through video editing, which is a series of important choices that one learns through both practice and example—and one needs to learn right away that cutting and editing have become synonymous for a reason—you must cut, cut, and then cut your shots again. "

 This could also be a lesson to writers as well. Kill yer babies. Clip back the flush of verbiage. I can also see it as a way to promote creative presentation ideas in the classroom.  And a simple but fun collaborative project to get students to work together.





 

EBSCOhost: EYE ON RESEARCH: 'Value Added' Gauge of Teaching Probed

• EBSCOhost: EYE ON RESEARCH: 'Value Added' Gauge of Teaching Probed

  tags: no_tag

  • "value added" methods
    • - post by tellio
  • value-added assessments
    • - post by tellio
  • a "falsification" test
  • For example, he asked, what effect do 5th grade teachers have on their students' test scores in 3rd and 4th grades?
  • Because it's impossible for even the best teachers to have an impact on students' previous learning, Mr. Rothstein reasons, there should be no impact.
  • value-added calculations are based on the assumption that students' classroom assignments are random,
  • teachers' long-run effects on individual students and finds that they tend to decay or fade out after the first year.

  • The study also found, as Mr. Rothstein did, that the teacher effects faded in their students' performance from one year to the next, which may be the more important issue, according to Mr. Staiger.

    "When calculating the potential value of shifting the teacher-effectiveness distribution, we and others have typically assumed that the effects of a strong teacher persist in the children they teach," write Mr. Staiger and Mr. Kane, who is the faculty director of the Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's project on policy innovation.

    • - post by tellio
  • We still have the reliability problem,

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Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

• YouTube - I Need My Teachers To Learn 2.0.mov

  Poignant song for our times.
  Download the QT version here: http://kevinhoneycutt.org
  Visit my sites for more stuff!
  http://artsnacks.org
  http://podstock.ning.com/
  http://mysafesurf.org

  Tags: Kevinhoneycutt, 2.0.mov, creativity, professional development, computers and tech

  • - By Ginger TPLC
  • My friend Rae helped me with this version!
    Download the QT version here: http://kevinhoneycutt.org
    Visit my sites for more stuff!
    http://artsnacks.org
    http://podstock.ning.com/
    http://mysafesurf.org

• YouTube - I Need My Teachers To Learn 2.0.mov

  Tags: education, learning, web2.0

Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Picture time

Pix

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10 Ways To Learn In 2010: The eLearnin...

Let's get this party started.

Quotes:

10 Ways To Learn In 2010: The eLearning Coach

Spezify

viewzi

Kart00

search-cube

Wordle

TagCrowd

• youth

Amazon’s Askville

Yahoo Answers

Answerbag

Gotta Mentor

BlurtIt

WikiAnswers

LinkedIn

UC Berkeley Webcasts

MIT’s Open Courseware

Learning Space

Lab Space

Get Docued

Free Documentaries

Free Online Documentaries

Ted

Big Think

Fora.tv

Ideas Project

Twazzup

Tweetzi,

IceRocket

TweetScan

Debategraph

Debate.org | Debate, Online Debates, Internet Debates, and Debating Community

Welcome to Debatepedia! - Debatepedia, Debatepedia the Wikipedia of Deba tes

Pipes

Scrapplet

Prezi

Mindmeister

Xmind

Mindomo

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10 Ways To Learn In 2010: The eLearnin...

Here is a report I generated on Diigo after creating a Webslide Show.

Quotes:

10 Ways To Learn In 2010: The eLearning Coach

Spezify

viewzi

Kart00

sea rch-cube

Wordle

TagCrowd

• youth

Amazon’s Askville

Yahoo Answers

Answerbag

Gotta Mentor

BlurtIt

WikiAnswers

LinkedIn

UC Berkeley Webcasts

MIT’s Open Courseware

Learning Space

Lab Space

Get Docued

Free Documentaries

Free Online Documentaries

Ted

Big Think

Fora.tv

Ideas Project

Twazzup

Tweetzi,

IceRocket

TweetScan

Debategraph

Debate.org | Debate, Online Debates, Internet Debates, and Debating Community

Welcome to Debatepedia! - Debatepedia, Debatepedia the Wikipedia of Deba tes

Pipes

Scrapplet

Prezi

Mindmeister

Xmind

Mindomo

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REdefining Work Context

Work context? Why not the art of defining knowledge and skill requirements? After all, we are talking about learning here, and training is obviously a part of that, right? Certainly, it is…and that is exactly the point of this writing – training is indeed a part of learning – and in some cases, only a very small part. Josh Bersin of Bersin & Associates referenced in July 2009 on the “The Future of the Business of Learning” webinar that training organizations spend upwards of 80% of their time and resources focused on formal training activities. He also noted that there was a dramatic increase in the use of informal learning. Training organizations will not keep pace with that trend unless their discovery efforts include the work context where informal learning opportunities surface.

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Thiagi's Newsletter for a New Year

Thiagi's Newsletters are full of fascinating and applicable ways to help students learn.  Here are ten tips, but you need to go look at the article to get the good stuff.  No, I don't have any reason to drive traffic there, just a desire to share really good, practical, and tested training advice.  Here is the link.


Ten Exciting Ways To Waste Your Training Dollars

1. Analysis and Planning
2. The Finish Line
3. Content is NOT king
4. Information Please!
5. Multimedia Spectacular
6. Passive Learning
7. Activity Abuse
8. Testing, Testing
9. Follow the Script
10. Beyond Smile Sheets

Learning Credos are Teaching Manifestos

Dan Gilmour has some advice for journalism students on being a literate person ten years into the 21st century.  More importantly, I think this 'advice' is a  learning credo which means that it is also a teaching manifesto.  I highly recommend reading the whole article.  It is full of insight that can only come from having been a reflective participant for decades.  This article is a year old and I am sorry I missed it when it came out.  As usual the comments are thought provoking and humbling.  The Berkman Center continues to provide a useful and interesting forum for new ideas prompted by our evolving digital ecologies.  Their podcasts are a steady staple for my commute time:  Audio and Video.

• Principles for a New Media Literacy – Center for Citizen Media

  • Principles of Media Consumption: the principles come mostly from common sense. Call them skepticism, judgment, understanding, and reporting.
  1. Be skeptical of absolutely everything.
  2. Although skepticism is essential, don’t be equally skeptical of everything.
  3. Go outside your personal comfort zone.
  4. Ask more questions.
  5. Understand and learn media techniques.

APA Citation via Zotero: 

Gillmor, D. (2008, December 12). Principles for a New Media Literacy – Center for Citizen Media. Center for Citizen Media. Blog, . Retrieved December 30, 2009, from http://citmedia.org/blog/2008/12/27/principles-for-a-new-media-literacy/.

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Amish Web Sites and New Scientist Curmudgeons

This is not exactly an awe inspiring article, but the gist of it is that technology needs to be on tap, not on top.  There is a value to curmudgeonry as long as it does not conflate its position with the Perennial One--capital T Truth.  The argument made here is the same one that the Amish have wrestled with for centuries: how much technology is enough?  They tend to draw the line where it diminishes family connection.  Kevin Kelly's article on "Amish Hackers" puts this distinction another way.  They distinguish between owning and using technology.  Consider their rules when you, your company, your school, or your business is thinking about the next new new thing.

The Amish are steadily adopting technology -- at their pace. They are slow geeks. As one Amish man told Howard Rheingold, "We don't want to stop progress, we just want to slow it down," But their manner of slow adoption is instructive.

• 1) They are selective. They know how to say "no" and are not afraid to refuse new things. They ban more than they adopt.
• 2) They evaluate new things by experience instead of by theory. They let the early adopters get their jollies by pioneering new stuff under watchful eyes.
• 3) They have criteria by which to select choices: technologies must enhance family and community and distance themselves from the outside world.
• 4) The choices are not individual, but communal. The community shapes and enforces technological direction. 
  

Kelly, K. (2009, February 11). The Technium: Amish Hackers. The Technium. Retrieved December 29, 2009, from http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/02/amish_hackers_a.php.

Below is a quick summary of the New Scientist piece that inspired this post using Diigo's annotation features.  All material is quoted with some connective language added to aid the reader. 

• 
  
  Free yourself from oppression by technology - opinion - 27 December 2009 - New Scientist
  
  • 
    
    "THE age of melancholy" is how psychologist Daniel Goleman describes our era.
    
    
    
  • 
    
    Our lifestyles are increasingly driven by technology.
    
    
    
  • 
    
    Technology can be hugely useful in the fast lane of modern living, but we need to stop it from taking over.
    
    
    
  • 
    
    • the computer has become the centre of attention; it is the medium through which we work and play.
    • 
      
      adults and children increasingly believe that in order to belong and feel good about themselves, they must own the latest model or gadget.
      
      
      
    • 
      
      psychologist Tim Kasser of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, has shown that people who place a high value on material goals are unhappier than those who are less materialistic.
      
      
      
    • 
      
      As one unhappy human-resource manager in a high-tech company put it: "They gave me a mobile phone so they can own me 24 hours a day, and a portable computer, so my office is now with me all the time - I cannot break out of this pressure."
      
      
      
    
    
  • 
    
    Psychologists generally believe that the lack of a clear separation between work and home significantly damages our relationships with loved ones.
    
    
    
  • 
    
    Modern society is in danger of swapping standard of living for quality of life.
    
    
    
  • 
    
    My prescription is self-determination theory, developed by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan of the University of Rochester in New York state.
    
    
    
  • 
    
    three vital elements
    
    
    
  • 
    
    First is autonomy
    
    
    
  • 
    
    It is easy to see how technology undermines autonomy, but also how to regain it. This may be as simple as switching off mobile phones during meals and family time, setting aside specific times to answer emails, and being available only when we choose to be.
    
    • 
      
      Second is a sense of competence
      
      
      
    
    
  • 
    
    being truly competent must be a continuation of our autonomy: knowing which activities are important to us and carrying them out in the most effectual way possible, making use of technology where applicable.
    
    
    
  • 
    
    The third factor is relatedness.
    
    
    
  • 
    
    Psychologists have found that the pivotal difference between happy and unhappy people is the presence or absence of rich and satisfying social relationships. Spending meaningful time with friends, family and partners is necessary for happiness.
    
    
    
  •  
  • A added fourth factor is critical thinking.
  
  

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Innovative

• The Innovative Educator: Five Ways Innovative Educators Can Use Texting As a Professional Tool

  tags: no_tag

  • Five Ways Innovative Educators Can Use Texting As a Professional Tool
  • Texting as an Efficient and Effective Communication Tool
  • disruptive announcement system
  • enables educators to communicate short, efficient messages to one another without robbing students of instructional time.
  • Enhancing The Home-School Connection
  • The Journal has an excellent article on how schools are using notification tools for more than emergency alerts. In fact some schools are using it in a way that can revolutionize parent involvement moving beyond basics using services such as TeleParent (thejournal.com/articles/22398 04/01/08)
  • According to the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory study, “Students with involved parents are more likely to attend school regularly, earn higher grades, and have better social skills.”
  • Free Audience Response System
  • With Poll Everywhere everyone's voice can be heard by texting 99503 and texting in your vote just like they do on American Idol. No equipment needed or software to download within seconds educators have audience responses.
  • SMS Tweeting from Your Phone to Gain a Collective Intelligence on Topics of Importance
  • Twitter is a great tool for schools to use to share interesting and relevant information with the student body, staff, parents and family.
  • Once you're set up, you can start tweeting your way into the microblogging community. Here are some ways you may want to use Twitter. 1) If school staff are attending a conference or professional development activity they tweet reflections, favorite quotes, or reactions to what they're learning. You can read how a group of school leaders did this at Leading By Example - Transforming Education for the 21st Century (http://tinyurl.com/leadbyexample). 2) School staff can tweet interesting announcements, updates, and activities at any time into the school account. This can be fed right into a school website providing the school community, parents, and more with an ongoing stream of updates about school happenings. See how one school does this at www.martavalle.org. 3) Use your class, library, or lab twitter account to share news and information with your students and teachers. For a great example of how this is done, follow Tracy Karas of Marta Valle High School in New York City at http://twitter.com/MartaVLibrary.
  • Google SMS as an Educational Tool That Can Be Used Directly From Your Phone
  • Editors note: Unfortunately, even as a Technology Innovation Manager, I have been cut off from using this innovative digital tool since October after a decision was made for NYC DOE employees that ALL TEXT MESSAGING capabilities for DOE account holders will be disabled. It was a NYCDOE policy decision to disable the text messaging feature from all DOE issued devices. The rational for the disabling this service is all devices provided are for DOE business related communication and this communication must be documented. It is also the DOE position that communication thru text messaging is primarily for “personal use." Upon further investigation I learned the service could be restored if a professional case was made for using texting. I made my case more than two months ago and still have no service.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The $75 Future Computer http://ping.fm/NrBdz

Reshaping Learning from the Ground Up | Edutopia

• Reshaping Learning from the Ground Up | Edutopia

  "Alvin Toffler's School of Tomorrow

  • These are the fundamentals of the futurist's vision for education in the 21st century:

    • Open 24 hours a day
    • Customized educational experience
    • Kids arrive at different times
    • Students begin their formalized schooling at different ages
    • Curriculum is integrated across disciplines
    • Nonteachers work with teachers
    • Teachers alternate working in schools and in business world
    • Local businesses have offices in the schools
    • Increased number of charter schools"

I am astonished at the simultaneous niavete and common sense in this interview.  Hard to describe.  I have the anger that rises when I see an "expert" who it is utterly apparent never sets foots in a classroom yet I also see someone who is not in the least non-plussed by that.  Worth a New Year's Read.




Citation: 

Daly, J. (2009, December 23). Reshaping Learning from the Ground Up | Edutopia. Edutopia. Blog, . Retrieved December 23, 2009, from http://neo.glef.org/future-school?page=7#.

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Teacher in a Strange Land: Online Grading: Treat--or Trick?

• Teacher in a Strange Land: Online Grading: Treat--or Trick?

  A fascinating alternate take on how assessment (or the appearance of such) is the tail that waggeth the digital dog.  It also introduces the idea of  parents who "creep on their progeny".  Before you go creepin' on the ol' proj consider the following quoted from the article.

Points to consider:

• • Expecting parents to track their children's grades--and do something about low grades or missing assignments--shifts responsibility for learning and monitoring the grade to parents. And guess what? It's the student's job to do that, not Mommy's.

    • When parents are suddenly hawking their gradebooks, teachers feel compelled to put lots of numbers in the book, proving that they're organized and soldiering away, assigning lots of homework and giving lots of grades. My principal sent us a memo suggesting that we add at least one new grade per week, it being worrisome when parents see that several days have gone by with no grading.
    • Some of those grades represent formative assessment: constructive feedback to students in the process of learning to master a concept or skill. Formative assessment is supposed to be non-punitive--information that helps a student improve. If curriculum is appropriate--in the sweet spot where it challenges, but builds on prior learning--then formative assessment will show lots of room for growth. Try explaining that to one panicked parent at a time
    • Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. (Einstein said that, not me.) An online gradebook converts all assessment data to numbers. Because it's...digital. Sometimes, kids need coaching or commentary, not a comparative percentage. Sometimes, it's OK to paint a pumpkin, just to see how it turns out. You don't have to grade everything, to make it real or valuable.

Citation: 

Flanagan, N. (2009, October 31). Teacher in a Strange Land: Online Grading: Treat--or Trick? Teacher in a Strange Land. Blog, . Retrieved December 15, 2009, from http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2009/10/online-grading-treator-trick.html.

Artistic Insubordination: Ethics at Work (not Work Ethic)

• Artistic Insubordination: Ethics at Work (not Work Ethic) «

  • The mirror in a middle school girls’ restroom is rusted to the point that one can not see her reflection.  The Principal recognizes that not being able to primp properly before class is making girls tardy to class and affecting their learning.  She asks the janitorial staff to replace the mirror.  The district has a policy that mirrors are not replaced unless they are broken.  The Principal calls the district to confirm, and promptly breaks the mirror with a hammer in order to solve this problem.
  • Creative or Artistic Insubordination emerged as a concept in the 1970s, according to Eric Pitts, a graduate student in Counseling at Western Carolina University, to do the most amount of good, while minimizing the repercussions from superiors.
  • Already presented at international conferences, with a head nod from the Executive Director of the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA), their goal is to legitimize Artistic Insubordination as an alternative to teachers (and others) who want to “do good” rather than just “do no harm” through their work.  Kappan Journal will publish an article on their research as well
  • Many, nearly all bureaucratic structures are perceived by the citizenry as rigid, inflexible and unaccommodating.
  • it is recognized by those in public servant leadership positions as an effective means of accomplishing things quickly that would otherwise take months or years.
  • No Child Left Behind and the attitude of some state legislatures and governors has made creative insubordination a regular part of staying afloat in teaching.

My question here is this:  are there more examples of this out there and how could teachers use this to change draconian filtering policies, for example?  Just asking.  Guerilla teaching for our students?  This isn't just about sticking it to the man, it is also about rising above groupthink and 'insane' institutional imperatives.  There have to be reasoned approaches to why we do what we do in school. If they are not reasoned, then they are fair game for ridicule, for challenge, and for artistic insubordination.

Here is the article:  http://www.filesavr.com/hanneli2009insufficientquestioningphideltakappan91365-69

Citation:     Hannel, I. (2009). Insufficient Questioning. Phi Delta Kappan, 91(3), 65-69.

Wii Therapy for Special Needs Students

• Wii Therapy for Special Needs Students

  • The Wii can be used in special needs classrooms to:
    

    - help students with their hand/eye coordination
    - encourage students with physical disabilities to move, providing much-needed circulation to their limbs
    - enable students to take part in virtual sports such as baseball, bowling, volleyball, golf and tennis
    - aid students in gaining balance and coordination through virtual dance programs
    - increase/develop the ability to concentrate for a long period of time
    - motivate students to achieve goals
    - help with problem-solving, reasoning, and communication skills
    • - post by tellio

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) ICT policy handbook - Zunia.org

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) ICT policy handbook - Zunia.org

ICTAC MEMO iPhone Apps for Education

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23745742/ICTAC-MEMO-iPhone-Apps-for-Education

ICTAC MEMO iPhone Apps for Education

Measuring social capital: an ... - Google Books

http://books.google.com/books?id=-xeaH2Qgn7kC&printsec=frontcover&dq=social+capital&lr=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&as_brr=1&ei=1BElS7i8OYP2zQTAzvSMCw&cd=1

 

The Golden Triangle of Tech Applies to eLearning Solutions too!

The Golden Triangle of Tech Applies to eLearning Solutions too!: "The question I get the most these days is, "Brent, what's the next big thing you see out there in eLearning". The simple answer is, "not much". But that doesn't mean there isn't exciting innovation happening. The big innovation over the last year has not been a new technologie or app, but the convergence of some, or many existing technologies. Alone they are simply isolated fun little apps, but combined with several other apps or technologies they begin to take shape into the powerful life-changing tools they were meant to be. And that magic convergence has recently been given a name: The Golden Triangle.
I stumbled onto a blog post from A VC blog. The author could not remember who said it but I thought it was pretty cool too: 'The three current big megatrends in the web/tech sector are mobile, social, and real-time.' That's the golden triangle. Mobile, Social, and Real-time. Apparently, new startups that have a golden triangle are deemed highly likely to have a successful company/product to offer. Certainly there's more too it than that but I digress. How does The Golden Triangle apply to eLearning? One word - PERFECTLY!

MOBILE, the first of the 3 sides is obvious. Everything is going mobile. I love my iPhone more than any other technology I have ever owned. One thing I discovered early in my iPhone experience was apps that were MORE than just iPhone apps became the most used and applicable to my work and life flow. More than just an iPhone app means that it also has a desktop and/or cloud counterpart. Think banking. My accounts reside in the bank's servers (their cloud). I access my bank information from both my desktop AND my iPhone (and the physical location, but not that often). I can watch video, do email, text messaging, record video, take pictures, and on and on with one simple device that fits in my pocket. THAT, in my humble opinion is the coolest thing EVER!

The second side of the triangle, and only slightly less cool, is SOCIAL. Many "learning gurus" have stated that all learning is social and many others have argued against that statement. I think the biggest issue is the use of ALL. Anytime you say "all" you're sure to set off somebody, somewhere, who can come up with an exception or two. The reality is that our nature is to be social. Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging, and all social networks in general, give us the ability to find other people we want/need to connect to for any number of reasons. In these spaces we build groups, or networks, of friends/followers who share their knowledge with us. Before the internet our networks were important but it was a complicated, and long process to gather and maintain a professional network. With today's web-based social networks it's almost too easy to create connections across many channels. In the long run the knowledge resides less in your own brain and more in the collective brain of the network. Let's argue that point later, but for now it certainly seems to be moving in that direction. So, SOCIAL connectivity is important to the future of our personal learning environments.

And lastly we have the REAL-TIME completing the third side of the triangle. Twitter is the best example of real time. And yes, twitter can also be considered SOCIAL, but the piece that makes twitter and micro-blogging different is that the conversations you see are the conversations happening RIGHT NOW. Conversations that happened yesterday, or even 2 hours ago or less, will run off the bottom of the interface and not be seen unless you search, or sort by hashtag. Even then, the real use and benefit is in the real-time nature of the tools. Its the idea used by many that its like jumping into and out of a giant cocktail party and actually listening to all the conversations that are going on simultaneously. While that can be overwhelming, it can also be quite exhilerating.

So, can our learning content be created for mobile devices with a social element connecting us with subject matter experts that we can access in real time?
I think so. There's also no reason why all 3 sides of the triangle can't be tracked AND measured. The current problem seems to be the legacy systems trying to make new media work with old media systems. There is also a legacy of design that the golden triangle does not yet fit into. At least it does not fit well.

I feel like many people are already learning in a personal environment that reflects the golden triangle with the existing tools. And that's what seems to be frustrating to many. There is no control of it just yet, and so many need that sense of control. It will come in time. It won't be exactly like this. But it will be close. Perhaps it will end up being a Golden Square, or hexagon. For now, I like the simplicity of the triangle and hope we can figure out how to make it happen.

America's Top College Professor - WSJ.com

• America's Top College Professor - WSJ.com

  
  

  • Like Prof. West, Prof. Burger believes that empathy is the key to good teaching.
  • Prof. Burger says that he wants "to think about what it's like to be sitting in that audience, in a sea of people, when the professor is so far away he's a dot and I'm looking at overhead transparencies. What is that experience like?"
  • Prof. Burger says that the role of a teacher is to change lives.
  • As much as he finds math fascinating, he realizes that most people will not use calculus after college. The utilitarian promise "is an empty one," he notes. "You don't need to know how to build a bridge to go over one." He says that the hardest thing professors can ask themselves is "the 10-year question." "What will my students retain from my class 10 years out?" And so his lecture is devoted to showing the audience how to "think mathematically."
  • "I don't give grades; I just report the news"
  • he is only convinced a student understands a concept when he can "explain it to an 8-year-old."

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