(Via TechCrunch) In the never ending quest to digitize all print content, Google has announced that it wants to archive 200 Years of News which, I think, is an absolutely
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hat jut out from the sidelines and become part of the game, and dim fluorescent lighting that depending on the level of sunlight filtering in from the grimy skylights makes the basket a dark target. It’s a no blood-no foul type of game they play, the fundamentals of which are no look passes and under the basket scoop layups which even on a 10-year old level are both beautiful and at the same time difficult to watch. For most of these kids, basket
Highlighted by kimmcgill
But in an interview Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan praised Schwarzenegger’s moves as “courageous” and said they could transform the state into a national model for reform.
Highlighted by mrtakher
So here’s a question I was discussing a couple of weeks ago with a superintendent at a gathering of educational leaders: What percentage of the teachers at your school do a good job of preparing kids to take meet the requirements, pass the tests, and get prepared for college, and what percentage do a good job of teaching them how to learn? Not suggesting that the two are mutually exclusive, but as we talked about it, she shook her head at one point and said “I think 90 percent of my staff is really good at delivering the goods, but only about 10 percent really get student centered, inquiry driven, lifelong learning.”
Highlighted by greenfrog
Courageous? You’re kidding me, right? Courageous? Try “helpless.”
I expected better.
Highlighted by mrtakher
Courageous? You’re kidding me, right? Courageous? Try “helpless.”
I expected better.
Highlighted by mrtakher
s almost time to report out on my move to the MAC, but first, I have to say that Flock is quickly becoming my favorite tool of all. And I’m sure I’m not even scratching the surface. The ability to blog from any page, to blog right from my RSS reader (which, btw, is every bit as good if not better than Bloglines), the one-click to del.icio.us function, and now the geotagging extension for Flickr uploads through the browser have all made me totally forget about IE and are quickly leaving even Firefox as a fading memory.
Highlighted by chelita_27
There are some other tools that I’ve been playing with like Writely and Diigo that I’m finding pretty amazing…especially on my MAC. More about those at some point.
Highlighted by chelita_27
Courageous? You’re kidding me, right? Courageous? Try “helpless.”
I expected better.
Highlighted by mrtakher
But in an interview Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan praised Schwarzenegger’s moves as “courageous” and said they could transform the state into a national model for reform.
Highlighted by mrtakher
In the midst of all of the “uproar” over the President’s planned speech to school kids on Tuesday, I keep thinking about what all of this says about schools, about what they are for, and about the perception that a lot of people in this country have of them.
Highlighted by cclausen
of all of the “uproar” over the President’s planned speech to school kids on Tuesday, I keep thinking about what
Highlighted by kbaldwin
Last night some edubloggertweeterwikiists launched a pretty cool idea for marking the best Twitter posts for the month of March. The idea is pretty simple; see a valuable Tweet and ReTweet it with the hashtag #gr8t. You can then either read them as they come through on this wiki page, or subscribe to the RSS feed from the search.twitter.com results page.
Highlighted by pannie
What percentage of the teachers at your school do a good job of preparing kids to take meet the requirements, pass the tests, and get prepared for college, and what percentage do a good job of teaching them how to learn? Not suggesting that the two are mutually exclusive, but as we talked about it, she shook her head at one point and said “I think 90 percent of my staff is really good at delivering the goods, but only about 10 percent really get student centered, inquiry driven, lifelong learning.”
Highlighted by mtebbano
It would seem to me that there should be no better place for my children to watch that speech (or any other, for that matter) than in a place where ideas are encouraged, where critical thinking about those ideas is a natural part of the conversation, and where appropriate response and debate can flourish. Where the adults in the room lead my kids to dig deeper, to validate facts, and consider the many levels of context in which every speech and every debate takes place. Where the discussion around it is such that it lays to rest the concern that many seem to have about this particular speech in general, that in some way the President will be able to “indoctrinate” our kids into some socialist mindset. If schools are the fully functioning learning communities that we hope they are, they should be the place where our kids learn to make sense of ideas, not to fear them. That, however, is not the message we are sending.
Highlighted by garystager
no better place for my children to watch that speech (or any other, for that matter) than in a place where ideas are encouraged, where critical thinking about those ideas is a natural part of the conversation, and where appropriate response and debate can flourish. Where the adults in the room lead my kids to dig deeper, to validate facts, and consider the many levels of context in which every speech and every debate takes place. Where the discussion around it is such that it lays to rest the concern that many seem to have about this particular speech in general, that in some way the President will be able to “indoctrinate” our kids into some socialist mindset. If schools are the fully functioning learning communities that we hope they are, they should be the place where our kids learn to make sense of ideas, not to fear them. That, however, is not the message we are sending.
Highlighted by cclausen
There is still a real emphasis on the implementation of “stuff” without the hard
conversations about pedagogy that deal with preparing kids for a connected
world. There are pockets of that, but not much that is being discussed within
the frame of a long-term plan or real vision as to what classroom learning is
going to look like in say, ten or even five years. (I put out a Tweet last week
asking what the timeframe was for the technology plans at the schools where
people are teaching, and most said three years with an occasional five year plan
or a “Technology plan? What’s that?” thrown in. I’m wondering, by the way, when
we’ll stop calling them technology plans and just call them learning plans.)
Highlighted by mrtakher
and debate can flourish. Where the adults in the room lead my kids to dig deeper, to validate facts, and c
Highlighted by kbaldwin
The one teaser point I’ll throw out here deals with why we need to think of the function of writing very differently. It’s not a new concept if you’ve frequented these parts, but it’s just so validating to hear someone like Kathi articulate it as well. It’s this: an important value of writing today is not simply to communicate but to get others engaged, to build a larger conversation around what we write. As she states in “Writing in the 21st Century” (a must read, btw) writing is now “newly technologized, socialized and networked.”
Highlighted by sshephard
What I’m most hopeful for, however, is that their stories about school will change. Last year, far too much of the reporting about their days started with “I got a ___ on my ___ test!” or “Yes, I’ve got homework” (said in the same voice as one might say “Yes, I’ve got ringworm.”) School was something that rarely sparked a conversation about learning. Usually, it was a topic to be avoided or ignored. I hope to hear more excitement this year, more passion about learning, more thinking and doing. To that end, I’ve been coming up with a mental list of the types of questions I’m hoping they might answer:
What did you make today that was meaningful?
What did you learn about the world?
Who are you working with?
What surprised you?
What did your teachers make with you?
What did you teach others?
What unanswered questions are you struggling with?
How did you change the world in some small (or big) way?
What’s something your teachers learned today?
What did you share with the world?
What do you want to know more about?
What did you love about today?
What made you laugh?
I think their answers to those questions (and others that I’m hoping you might add below) would tell me more about what they learned than any test or quiz or worksheet that they brought home for me to sign. And here’s the deal; I expect them to be talking answers to these types of questions every day. As a parent, I think I have every right to expect that my kids are immersed in spaces where learning is loved and enjoyed and shared every single day. Classrooms where they are engaged in meaningful work that makes them think, a majority of time doing stuff that can’t be measured by some impersoanl state test. (I can give them software to do much of that.) Where the adults that surround them are models for that learning work themselves. Is that too much to ask?
New schools, new opportunities, renewed expectations. We’ll see how it goes…
Highlighted by gstone55
It’s pretty obvious to me that my own kids are going to be living much more transparent lives than most of their teachers would be comfortable with. I’ve written and spoken ad nauseum of the need for them to be “Googled well”, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a parent’s responsibility to start that process for them. (That’s a post for another day.) I really do believe that in this moment, however, that schools also have a responsibility to help kids lead transparent lives online in ways that prepare them for the highly complex relationships they will be having in these virtual spaces as adults. But to do that, schools have to get more transparent themselves.
Highlighted by leighmurrell
role we as a society have assigned to our schools. And that is truly something to fear. School is the place kids go to learn the stuff they need to pass all of the tests, not the place th
Highlighted by kbaldwin
Future generations of learners will no doubt look back at the global economic crisis of 2008-9 and reflect on which institutions were agile enough to make a difference by bringing the wisdom of their scholars together with the acumen of their technology officers and the ingenuity and determination of their university leaders. It’s actually not only the future of the university that is in play. How we produce, organize, and distribute open education resources is at the heart of the future of education around the world.
Highlighted by findbecca
But what was different in my reading of the Johnson essay as opposed to the Kelly essay was my ability to interact with it through Diigo. Over the last few months, I’ve become more and more enamored with Diigo as a tool for notetaking and bookmarking, sure, but as a platform for some interesting conversations. And, while I’m not sure Johnson even knows of its existence, it’s already bringing to fruition many of the social reading potentials we’ve been thinking of as futuristic. The idea that I can not just annotate a paragraph or a sentence or one idea on a webpage but that I can engage with others in sharing our thinking about that particular sentence or idea is at once powerful and daunting. I mean, imagine the meta conversations we might be able to have over different passages in the classics once they all get scanned and put online by Google (or someone else.)
Highlighted by melissalim
someone who manages the culture of the school by focusing not on outcomes as much as how learning is writ large in the system. Someone who also understands the ways in which social Web technologies accentuate the need for the learning skills we’ve desired all along: creativity, critical thinking, independent thought, collaboration, etc.
Highlighted by mtebbano
The Waldorf School that we are looking at seems to look at kids as individuals and treats the curriculum as a journey not a deliverable. Sure, the rhetoric gets a bit crunchy at times, even for me, but I can’t deny that it has a strong appeal for me, especially in the context of the conversations I’ve been having the last seven years. But here’s is the irony: the school uses very little technology. That undoubtedly will play into any decision we make, but it’s not a deal breaker for me. My kids have lots of access at home, and I know they’ll love having me mentor them if it comes to that. (Really. I mean it.)
Highlighted by lauren
But this new potential to learn easily and deeply in environments that are not bounded by physical space or scheduled time constraints requires us as educators to take a hard look at how we are helping our students realize the potentials of those opportunities.
Highlighted by witchyrichy
Nobody will read alone anymore. Reading books will go from being a fundamentally
private activity — a direct exchange between author and reader — to a community
event, with every isolated paragraph the launching pad for a conversation with
strangers around the world.
Highlighted by msgroom
I keep thinking about what kids are learning by the way their schools are reacting, what it says to them about what school is and its value in their lives.
Highlighted by maedemaemae
on 2009-09-16 by maedemaemae
Well does the general public value what our students have to say? When do we hear what students value in their lives. In the schools, it means at least one teacher is asking the question of what they value in their lives and how school fits. Why didn't we hear more about what students thought of the speech. After all, they were the intended audience.
What I’ve liked about this trip is this sense that I’m getting, here at least, that some people are beginning to think about 1-1 in ways that scale, and that it’s not just about technology for technology’s sake but that the
Highlighted by pshircliff
What’s something your teachers learned today?
Highlighted by teachpaperless
“Do use our network to connect to other students and adults who share your passions with whom you can learn.”
“Do use our network to help your teachers find experts and other teachers from around the world.”
“Do use our network to publish your best work in text and multimedia for a global audience.”
“Do use our network to explore your own creativity and passions, to ask questions and seek answers from other teachers online.”
“Do use our network to download resources that you can use to remix and republish your own learning online.”
“Do use our network to collaborate with others to change the world in meaningful, positive ways.”
Highlighted by doris3m
my interest has been moving away from classroom practice more toward individual learning and how we help educators understand the potentials of these spaces for their own learning first and their teaching second.
Highlighted by cburell
whether it’s a paean to Stalin
Highlighted by teacherben
and then engage my kids in conversation about its merits, its flaws and its omissions.
Highlighted by teacherben
on 2009-09-09 by teacherben
This is an excellent way for kids to learn these skills. That's how I learned. It was modeled at home and at school.
The shift has been deepened by my work with Sheryl in PLP, but it’s also rooted in the continued frustration I have with a) the pace of even a coherent conversation about systemic change and b) teachers resistance to looking inward before moving outward when considering these shifts.
Highlighted by jeffreab
Godin talks about all of this in the context of leadership, of how important it is for leaders to fight through their fears, to actively seek ideas worth criticism, to fear the status quo. Fear is the reason we don’t change either individually or systemically.
Highlighted by tellio
hen you compare the un-annotated Ke
Highlighted by rjemppu
It’s difficult to understand the impact that online learning networks and communities can bring (and their potential downsides) without being a part of them.
Highlighted by jeffreab
“…teachers need to learn the way other professionals do—continually, collaboratively, and on the job.” If that’s not a description of what I see most of us doing in these spaces I don’t know what is.
Highlighted by jeffreab
Somehow, by luck or hard work or a combination, those of us who are taking advantage of the affordances of learning in online communities and networks have found a way to invest the time, not in big chunks in a physical space classroom but in as-needed, passion-driven, hour-here-fifteen-minutes-there learning flow that relies on the interactions of many learners, not on the expertise of any one person. And it’s in knowing how to effectively navigate those interactions where the value lives, not in effectively navigating the tools.
Our continued emphasis on tools in pd misses that larger point, obviously, because the power of the Read/Write web is not the ability to publish; it’s the ability to connect. Broken record, I know, but tools are easy; connections are hard. And so the question becomes how to best help educators realize these potentials in the learning sense first. Because at the end of the day, community building has to become an integral part of what we do in our classrooms with our students, as well. We have to be able to model those connections for them and understand them in ways that are meaningful to our own learning practice.
Highlighted by cburell
not in big chunks in a physical space classroom but in as-needed, passion-driven, hour-here-fifteen-minutes-there learning flow that relies on the interactions of many learners, not on the expertise of any one person.
Highlighted by jeffreab
The web offers a whole new way of restoring this way of learning directly from an expert rather than from an institution.
Highlighted by demetri
Howard Gardner’s “Five Minds for the Future”
Highlighted by rjemppu
my continued frustration with my kids’ education which is the system’s inability to help them find and nurture the areas they truly have passion for.
Highlighted by demetri
would be nice if the institution were the place that connected my kids to the experts they desired and needed to support their learning
Highlighted by demetri
What did you make today that was meaningful?
What did you learn about the world?
Who are you working with?
What surprised you?
What did your teachers make with you?
What did you teach others?
What unanswered questions are you struggling with?
How did you change the world in some small (or big) way?
What’s something your teachers learned today?
What did you share with the world?
What do you want to know more about?
What did you love about today?
What made you laugh?
Highlighted by kmhale
to really change what we do in schools we have to first change our understanding of what it means to teach in this moment
Highlighted by demetri
Highlighted by kmhale
But unless the schools are equal to the task of absorbing the new digital media, and making acute use of their potentials while guarding against their abuses, schools are likely to become as anachronistic as almshouses, teachers as anachronistic as barber-surgeons. Any culture that wishes to survive will ensure that learning takes place, but the forms and formats remain wide open.
Highlighted by tryggestad
So bear with me as I try to capture this: somehow I got to Sarah Stewart’s post on the Connectivism course and hopped from there over to this mind-bending post at Mike Bogle’s blog which led me to graze around his site a bit to find this post which sent me to this conversation about Open Educational Resources on Brian Lamb’s site which led me to this comment by Mike Caulfield which provoked me to search for and find this very cool concept of Rip-Mix Learners. Setting aside the beauty of that idea, let’s reflect for a second on that process, one that I’d bet most teachers would dissuade their students from practicing. At every point, my decision to click was motivated by an interest for context, for moving more deeply into the one idea in the maze of stuff that was pulling me most at the moment. I didn’t read half of these posts in their entirety, nor do I feel the need to go back and do so. If I had, I most certainly would not have ended up where I did. And while I know that I just as easily could have ended up someplace even better, I let my interest drive the narrative, not the expectations.
Highlighted by kcaise
Highlighted by nrosenblatt
For the last two years, 99% of teachers at Central (3,200 students 9-12, btw)
have had their own Tablet PC (for personal and professional use) with wireless
connection to an LCD and wireless Internet in every classroom, part of the
teacher model that Rob and I started before I left. I would defy anyone to show
me a school that has a better customer service oriented technology support plan
for teachers and classrooms to make sure everything works. The school has made a
fairly substantial financial commitment to the work (with the support of the
community…budgets pass). And, 99% of kids in the district have Internet access
at home.
Highlighted by bryant352
“Googled well”
Highlighted by nrosenblatt
A few months ago, a tech director for a fairly large school district looked me
straight in the eye and said “I’m not giving teachers desktop overrides to
anything on our filter ’cause I know damn well they’d abuse it by going to eBay
or somesuch or taking their students to places they shouldn’t.” (And that’s a
quote that I wrote down right after the conversation.)
Highlighted by mrtakher
This year’s amazing guest speakers include:
• Deborah Meier - Veteran educational innovator, author, small schools pioneer, blogger and first K-12 educator named a Macarthur Genius
• Herbert Kohl - A giant of progressive education and author of more than 40 acclaimed books about teaching and learning
• Lesa Snider King - Expert in digital imaging and photography, author of Photoshop CS4, the Missing Manual
• Brian Silverman - If you’ve used Logo, LogoWriter, MicroWorlds, programmable LEGO or Scratch, Brian had a hand in creating those
• Peter Reynolds - Award-winning illustrator, illustrator, animator, software developer and children’s book author
Highlighted by rjemppu
Our faculty includes myself, Dr. Cynthia Solomon (one of Logo’s 3 creators), Sylvia Martinez of Generation YES and John Stetson who IMHO is the world’s best teacher.
Highlighted by rjemppu
Highlighted by rapple
Public Comment
on 2009-09-01 by bryant352