by Scott McLeod | Oct 1, 2008 | 21st Century Skills, Assessment, Guest Bloggers, Leadership and Vision, Miscellaneous, Not So Irrelevant, Online Learning, Our Changing World, Professional Development, Quotes, Safety and Security, Tech Tools |
My latest roundup of links and tools…
When did the IT staff get promoted above the superintendent?
Will Richardson notes:
[A] school superintendent I spoke with … lamented the fact that his IT staff wouldn’t give him access to YouTube and even Wikipedia.
See also my older post: Principal blogging not allowed.
Math and motocross
Check out this sweet series of motocross math videos at HotChalk. The brains behind the math? Former guest blogger Jason Dyer!
“I didn’t know Sasquatch was real.”
Fun with the Pacific Tree Octopus!
Maybe we should do this for teachers and administrators too
"Seventy-one-year-old Peggy McIntyre needs to learn as much as she can about Windows before 8 a.m. Or else."
Post-Gutenberg economics
It’s now a publish-then-filter world. Clay Shirky notes that “we’re clocking a singularity a week at this point.”
We need to educate our educators
Seth Godin says:
It’s easy to be against something you’re afraid of. And it’s easy to be afraid of something that you don’t understand.
Open your brain, open your model of education
The Education Innovation blog has an interesting post on closed v. open models of education. [Note to self: this might be the world’s longest URL]
Some good thinking going on here
Thanks to Mike Sansone, I recently discovered the Union Square Ventures blog. In Power to the People, they state:
[W]e believe that we are only at the beginning of the web’s impact on the fundamental structure of education. We expect much of that change to be away from the existing educational institutions and towards empowering individuals and newly-formed groups.
In Why the Flow of Innovation Has Reversed, they note:
[T]he vector of innovation has changed. It used to be that innovation started with NASA, flowed to the military, then to the enterprise, and finally to the consumer. Today, it is the reverse. All of the most interesting stuff is being built first for consumers and is tricking back to the enterprise. . . . [O]ne reason this is happening is that the success of a web service is more often determined by its social engineering than its electrical engineering.
Students aren’t the only ones missing the big picture
The Florida Department of Education is concerned that students are missing the big picture when it comes to science. A task force stated that “teachers should provide a broader focus on scientific concepts and process in a ‘big picture’ sense.” Hmmm… I wonder if that means the Department is going to narrow down the list of required science standards and also pare down the size of approved textbooks. I’m guessing not. Download the full report if you dare.
Disempowered today = disempowered tomorrow
I left this comment at Jim Gates’ Tipline blog:
Students who aren’t fluid technology users today will be the low-wage workers and disempowered citizens of tomorrow.
I want it right THERE
Finally, if you’re anal-retentive about your Windows taskbar like I am, check out Taskbar Shuffle.
by Scott McLeod | Jan 3, 2008 | Blogging, Leadership and Vision, Online Learning, Tech Integration |
One of the things we do at CASTLE is try and expose administrators to modern technology tools with which they may be unfamiliar. For example, if we want principals to understand the power of blogging, one good way to do that is to show them (and maybe even sign them up for) some blogs that are directly relevant and helpful to their daily work.
I have updated our list of blogs that we recommend for school leaders:
You can subscribe to each blog individually or I also have created a feed that will allow you to read and/or subscribe to all of the blogs in one place:
Here’s the code if you want to add the blogs as a clip on your web site or a blogroll:
1 year ago: What do
students need to memorize?
by Scott McLeod | Oct 17, 2007 | Communication, Online Learning, Safety and Security, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
Check out the transcript of Will Richardson’s live online chat about the educational benefits of social networking. Part of the fun at this year’s T+L conference!
FYI, tomorrow is an online discussion with Thomas Hutton, senior staff attorney for the National School Boards Association, on navigating the legal landmines associated with new technologies. You know I’m looking forward to reading that!
by Scott McLeod | Sep 26, 2007 | Communication, Higher Education, News and Events, Online Learning, Pre-Service Preparation, Professional Development, Research and Evaluation, Tech Integration |
It is my great pleasure to announce that Dr. Chris Gareis and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach are the recipients of the 2007 Technology Leadership Research Award. Here is the abstract from their co-authored article, Electronically Mentoring to Develop Accomplished Professional Teachers:
With nearly half of all new teachers leaving the classroom within five years, schools are faced with the challenge of retaining early-career teachers while simultaneously providing them with the support they need to develop into effective professionals. Mentoring novice teachers by pairing them with experienced teachers in schools is a widely adopted practice for addressing these needs; however, face-to-face mentoring is subject to challenges. A promising complement to face-to-face mentoring may be found in the innovative use of computer-mediated communications, such as online forums. In an effort to support, develop, and retain novice teachers, The College of William and Mary has partnered with the Center for Teacher Quality to create ENDAPT – Electronically Networking to Develop Accomplished Professional Teachers. ENDAPT is an asynchronous online forum that brings together novice teachers and teacher leaders in a virtual mentoring community. This article provides an overview of the program model and presents research findings from a study of participants’ postings using content analysis methodology to identify and describe the nature of professional conversations among mentors and novice teachers.
Although we can’t share the actual article with you (because it’s currently under review by a journal), Chris and Sheryl will be giving a presentation on their paper at the UCEA conference in November which we will try to make available to folks.
I would like to publicly thank the other practitioners and academics who took the time out of their extremely busy schedules to participate in the anonymous review process this year:
- Kurt Bernardo, Technology Coordinator, Orange City (OH) Schools; 2005 Ohio Technology Coordinator of the Year
- Dr. Jim Morrison, Editor-in-Chief, Innovate
- Dr. Chris Sessums, Director of Distance Education, University of Florida College of Education; Best Individual Blog, 2006 Edublog Awards
- Dr. Jon Voss, Coordinator, Northern Star Online (MN) Schooling Collaborative
The Technology Leadership Research Award is jointly sponsored by CASTLE and the UCEA School Technology Leadership Special Interest Group.
Kudos to Chris and Sheryl. I’m looking forward to the submissions for next year!
by Scott McLeod | Sep 19, 2007 | Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Online Learning, Tech Integration |
I received this question recently:
What resources (contacts, advisors, print, online, etc.) do you
recommend to our school leaders – and lawyers – so they can make
informed decisions about student access to social networking tools?
Anyone have any suggestions? Is there a place for current social networking tools in our students’ education?
![Largest U.S. universities]()
by Scott McLeod | Sep 11, 2007 | Higher Education, Online Learning |
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Surprised? Two primarily online universities and one community college among the top five. FYI, the University of Phoenix has more than twice the number of students (117,309) as any of the next four (which range from 54,169 to 50,663).
[Source: Chronicle of Higher Education. Campuses with the Largest Enrollments, Fall 2005. August 31, 2007.]
by Scott McLeod | Jul 27, 2007 | Communication, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Online Learning, Planning and Funding, Tech Integration |
Earlier this month I featured a
report from the Communication Workers of America (CWA) as my
Report of the Week. Although I know that each of you
usually reads every comment on this blog (hah!), Beth Allen of the CWA left
a later comment that I thought was worth bringing to the forefront:
by Scott McLeod | Jul 9, 2007 | Miscellaneous, Online Learning |
A few choice items related to virtual worlds…
by Scott McLeod | Jul 3, 2007 | Higher Education, Interviews, Online Learning, Quotes |
Is it already July 3? Way back on June 20 I had the pleasure of talking with Chris Craft about online learning for a class he’s taking. The focus was mainly on higher education but much of our conversation was relevant to the K-12 world as well. Chris posted our discussion as a podcast in case you’d like to hear it:
multimedia textbooks: A strategic investment
multimedia textbooks: Follow-up