by Scott McLeod | Oct 17, 2007 | Blogging, Communication, Higher Education, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Pre-Service Preparation, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
A few months back, Susan McLester, Editor in Chief of Technology and Learning magazine, asked if I would write a monthly column on higher education technology issues. Always mindful of opportunities to spread the word about CASTLE, of course I said yes!
Here are my first few articles:
by Scott McLeod | Sep 28, 2007 | Miscellaneous, Tech Tools |
Like others, I am finding that Jott is becoming an integral part of my life. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the service, you call a toll-free number, talk for up to 30 seconds, and then a typed transcription appears in your e-mail inbox. You can also use Jott to post to your blog, Twitter, get a Zillow estimate, add to your to-do list, and so on. For me, the best part of Jott may be that I can send myself reminders for a specific date and time. I also like that I can send a message to an e-mail group (like my family or my Educational Administration faculty team).
The service is free. All you have to do is register your e-mail account and phone number. Check it out!
by Scott McLeod | Sep 5, 2007 | Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
I received this recently:
Dr. McLeod, I am a math teacher in [school district] and have attended two of your presentations (one last school year). I am wondering if there is a place where I could create wikis for my classes that allow students to enter math equations, use correct geometric notation, etc. (similar to MathType). It doesn’t seem like this is an option?? Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated.
Got any suggestions for him?
by Scott McLeod | Sep 3, 2007 | Assessment, Pre-Service Preparation, Professional Development, Tech Tools |
[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]
Even when principals and teachers have access to data, they often aren’t sure what to do with it. That’s why CASTLE (okay, it was me!) created School Data Tutorials, a web site intended to help K-12 educators work with raw student and school data.
The tutorials on the web site highlight many of the Excel skills that are helpful when working with building- and district-level data. The tutorials are targeted at data managers, principals, guidance counselors, teachers, and other school personnel who have the responsibility for collecting, analyzing, and reporting K-12 performance data (which is just about everyone these days!). You will see that the tutorials are much like the ones created by Atomic Learning (they trained us!) but are focused on data-driven decision-making needs of educators rather than being generic.
Below are the four sets of tutorials we recommend for every teacher and administrator. If every educator knew how to do these four things, schools’ capacity to do some basic monitoring of student progress would be greatly enhanced. They take just over half an hour to watch once, and of course they can be viewed as many times as necessary to accomplish mastery.
Many more tutorials are available on the site, including instructions on how to make your own data collection templates. Let me know if you feel empowered after watching these!
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Note that you may need to turn off your browser’s pop-up blocker or install the latest Flash plug-in to view these tutorials. Happy viewing!
by Scott McLeod | Aug 29, 2007 | Blogging, Communication, Miscellaneous, Tech Tools |
[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]
What social networks do I belong to? Let me see…
MySpace. Ning Classroom 2.0. Facebook. Ning EdubloggerWorld. LinkedIn. Ning Stop Cyberbullying. The blogosphere. The Did You Know? 2.0 wiki community. And my burgeoning list of Twitter friends. And the folks in my Skype and other instant messaging networks. And also my only-sometimes-electronic personal and professional networks: other professors, principals, superintendents, technology coordinators, assessment coordinators, former students, friends, family. And so on… (do listservs count? Second Life? my classes in WebCT?)
A few things are becoming clear to me about all of this social networking that is occurring:
- I don’t have time to do much of it. I see the active Twittering that’s going on, the vibrant dialogues occurring in Ning, the questions that others are asking and answering in Facebook. I’m already exhausted trying to balance everything. I can’t keep up with the reading, not to mention the posting and participating. I’ve essentially chosen e-mail, the blogosphere, and live people over more formalized social networking and instant messaging tools. Maybe I’m starting to become one of those antiquated old fogies that the young whippersnappers complain about… (Q: if I have a bunch of social networking “friends” but never participate, does that make me “antisocial?”)
- I spend more time in the networks that push notifications out to me via e-mail or my RSS aggregator. I’d likely be more active in Facebook, for example, if I could subscribe to all of its functionality rather than having to remember to go visit.
- I agree with Wired.
- We need to be sure that one of the 21st century skills students learn is “navigating and managing multiple, potentially overlapping, worldwide social networks” (or something like that).
- As some of us encourage educators to dive into social networking, it behooves us to explicitly acknowledge the challenges of time management, multiple network management, etc. It’s not all glam and glitz.
- There are a lot of social networks out there. Some of them are a little lame (wait a minute! I belong to one of these!).
- Right now RSS is the key. Services like Feedburner’s subscribe via e-mail are stopgaps to bridge old technologies with the new.
- Maybe I need a dedicated widescreen social networking monitor, one that I just load up with open social networking, IM, RSS, Twitter, and e-mail windows. That way I’ll never miss a beat (and also never get anything else done).
I need to get over my worry that I’m going to miss something. I’m saying no to the next social network invitation I get. I don’t care if it’s the “People who want to give Scott McLeod a million dollars” network. Sorry. My brain is full.
P.S. #4 is really important.
by Scott McLeod | Jul 27, 2007 | Miscellaneous, Pre-Service Preparation, Professional Development, Tech Tools, Videos |
If you haven't seen these three films from Common Craft, I think they are great introductions for educators, parents, and others who are not familiar with these interactive Web 2.0 technologies:
You'll notice that the links are to the dotSUB versions of the videos (thanks, Wesley!). dotSUB is a fantastic new service that uses volunteers to create video subtitles in different languages. I just uploaded Did You Know? 2.0 to the site. Awesome!
by Scott McLeod | Jul 26, 2007 | Communication, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Research and Evaluation, Safety and Security, Tech Tools |
Some of you may remember that I’m headed to Iowa State University in about a month. I ran across a story on its news service last week about Chad Harms, a professor in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, who has been doing research on how online sexual predators ‘groom’ their child victims and how their online communication can be coded to detect predatory behavior. Read the story and follow the links. This looks like interesting stuff, particularly if you could automate the coding so that it could be done by computer software.
by Scott McLeod | Jul 23, 2007 | Blogging, Tech Tools |
I just learned you can post to blogs from Word 2007 (thanks, Six Apart!). Anyone doing this? If so, how’s it working?
by Scott McLeod | Jun 19, 2007 | Tech Tools |
As I look around at all of the technology gear I’ve accumulated over the past few years, I can only come to one conclusion: I’ve got too much stuff. I mean, seriously, do I really need six different computers? Four printers? Four digital cameras? Seven external hard drives? Boxes worth of headphones, cables, cords, and adapters? I know why this has occurred. My professional desire to stay current has combined with my eagerness for the latest and coolest, but it’s time for me to cool it.
As I head to Iowa State, I’ve got the golden opportunity to whittle down my technology profile. Anyone got some thoughts on what an ideal technology setup would be, one that enabled maximum user power while simultaneously required as little hardware (and accessories) as possible? If you had the chance to start over with a blank slate and a desire to reduce your overall technology footprint, what would you get?
I’d love to get your input on how I can simplify my tech life. Comment here or, better yet, post your thoughts on your own blog and link back to here (TrackBack or comment).
by Scott McLeod | May 25, 2007 | Assessment, Interviews, Leadership and Vision, Podcasts, Professional Development, Tech Tools |
I have had the pleasure of working with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) on several occasions over the past few years, primarily in conjunction with its Principal Technology Leadership Institute (PTLI), which is a collaborative venture with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). I really enjoy the CPS folks. They face numerous challenges but are some of the most dedicated educators I know.
Some of the principals participating in the data-driven decision-making strand of the PTLI (which I helped design) had some questions that they wanted me to answer about data-driven leadership, so today I had a very pleasant conversation with Phala Daniel, who works in CPS’ eLearning office along with Gerry Beimler (who is one of our CASTLE graduate certificate students). I recorded our 37-minute discussion and present it for your listening pleasure:
FYI, here’s one example of a protocol for a data-driven team meeting (as mentioned in the conversation). Hope you enjoy the podcast. Let me know what you think!
