by Scott McLeod | Aug 16, 2008 | Blogging, Communication, Miscellaneous, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
Although we need some more lists of subject-specific blogs (which I’ll work on in future posts), the blogs page of the Moving Forward wiki is basically a pretty solid resource right now. The wiki and podcast pages, however, could use some work…
If you know of an exemplary K-12 classroom wiki or podcast project, would you add the link to the appropriate wiki page?
Thanks!
[The Moving Forward wiki houses a collection of resources to help presenters and change agents as they help move schools and universities forward into the 21st century. If you have a resource to add, please do so!]
by Scott McLeod | Jul 29, 2008 | 21st Century Skills, Gaming, Reading, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
[cross-posted at the TechLearning
blog]
I’m in the midst of reading Clark Aldrich’s Simulations
and the Future of Learning. As Aldrich walks me through the process of
developing a leadership simulation, he has a number of interesting things to say
about video game and simulation design. Thanks to Aldrich’s clear and engaging
prose, I’m finding myself unexpectedly captivated by the nitty-gritty of the
workflow of simulation production.
So far the statement that has resonated with me the most, however,
pertains as much to education as it does to the gaming industry. Aldrich
said:
The goal of learning in any organization (business, educational,
governmental) should be to make its members more productive (p.
3).
I’ll agree with that. And I probably would add to the end of that statement
“… and more powerful.” I think that additional phrase takes the edge
off what might be construed as a focus solely on preparation for work and
expands it to include personal empowerment.
Productive and powerful. Isn’t that what we want
for the children in our schools? Isn’t that we want for the educators with whom
we work? Productive and powerful. I like it.
We have 50 million public school
students in the United States. Are the thousands of worksheets that they
will complete in their lifetime making them more productive? Are their countless
hours of individual seat work going to lead to greater personal empowerment? Are
they getting opportunities to be both productive and powerful on a regular
basis?
What about our subpopulations? Are socioeconomically-disadvantaged students
often getting the chance to be powerful? Do our students with disabilities or
our students whose primary language is not English have multiple, ongoing
opportunities to feel like they are productive, contributing members of our
communities?
What about our 3 million public
school teachers? Are the tens of millions of hours that they spend in staff
development and training each year actually making them more productive? Do you
think the bulk of them feel empowered by their ‘learning opportunities?’
Do we regularly ask ourselves these kinds of questions in our school
organizations? As educators, should we?
I have some hard thinking to do about my own graduate classes and degree
programs here at Iowa State…
![Blogging, tweeting, and the uncovering of personality]()
by Scott McLeod | Jul 16, 2008 | Blogging, Communication, Miscellaneous, Tech Tools |
Will Richardson has yet another post that’s generated a great deal of discussion. This time it’s about the value of Twitter for conversation. Will ponders Twitter’s impact on conversations and suspects that maybe it’s making us lazy…
For me it’s about the conversation but, more importantly, it’s also about the uncovering of personality. The social web is about people and connectivity, right? So every blog, tweet, Skype chat, comment, Flickr photo, YouTube video, Facebook update, or Ning post – they’re each another gap-filler for me. Chink by chink, brick by brick, pixel by pixel – the picture becomes more clear and complete. Is this someone with whom I want to connect? Is this someone with whom I want to converse? Is this someone from whom I want to learn?
That’s the power of Twitter (and blogging and … ) for me. Is it maddeningly disjointed and unconnected? Absolutely. But that’s what happens when everyone has a voice and when there are numerous tools to express ourselves. Our aggregation and monitoring tools will get better in the years to come. In the meantime, I’m going to celebrate the power and potential of our new information landscape, despite all of its frustrating flaws and growing pains, because I know that it has greatly enriched my life and exponentially expanded my horizons (cue the violins)…
Photo credit: weblogg-ed.com
by Scott McLeod | Jun 18, 2008 | Miscellaneous, Professional Development, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]
This is a picture of the Mobile Quarantine Facility built by NASA for astronauts returning from the Moon. It’s basically a modified Airstream trailer. The idea was to isolate the astronauts until it was determined that they didn’t have ‘moon germs.’ Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins stayed in this quarantine trailer for 65 hours after their return to Earth (Welcome back, heroes. Get in this trailer!).
Of course my pathetic brain saw this and immediately started thinking about educational technology. How sad is that?!
This MQF (gotta love those government acronyms!) got me thinking about whether we technology early adopters need a self-imposed moratorium on talking about new technology tools, at least in certain settings. One of the most common refrains heard from teachers or administrators who listen to us talk or blog about all of these new cool tools is “Why do I care about this as an educator?” In our eagerness to share our nearly-palpable glee and excitement, we often struggle to adequately answer the “So what?” question in ways that are substantive and meaningful to the average teacher or administrator.
So when a new tool comes out – Twitter, Diigo, whatever – maybe we should hold off for a bit before we start blabbing to educators who don’t live as close to the ed tech edge as we do. Maybe we should voluntarily follow a process that looks something like this:
I believe that an emphasis on pilot testing, experimentation, and identification of both mainstream educator use(s) and optimal training mechanisms before introduction to other educators often would help us quite a bit. Instead of turning off the very educators that we want using many of these tools, some time spent in the ed tech quarantine might go a long way toward facilitating our overall goal of greater technology adoption in K-12 classrooms.
I don’t know if I’ve gotten the quarantine process exactly right. And of course many of you already do some version of this. But I think this is a concept that generally should be kept closer to the forefront of our brains. What do you think?
by Scott McLeod | May 30, 2008 | Blogging, Podcasts, Pre-Service Preparation, Professional Development, Tech Integration, Tech Tools, Videos |
I’m a big fan of the videos from Common Craft. I use them constantly in my classes and workshops. Their newest video is Social Media in Plain English:
I also ran across the Mr. Winkle Wakes video today (hat tip to Jon Becker):
by Scott McLeod | May 6, 2008 | Blogging, Communication, Miscellaneous, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
Many of you know that I’m asking the edublogosphere to gradually help me flesh out the Moving Forward wiki so that it can be a valuable resource to presenters and others who are trying to facilitate change in schools. For example, in April we identified a number of high-quality elementary classroom blogs.
This week I’m asking for great blogs that are of interest to special education teachers (particularly special education teachers who are blogging themselves). By great blogs, I mean the kind that you might show in a presentation to persuade others of the power and potential of blogging for teachers of students with special needs. If you know of any such blogs, please add them to the wiki!
by Scott McLeod | May 4, 2008 | Communication, Miscellaneous, Reading, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
I really wanted to like the Creating Valuable Class Web Sites article in the May 2008 issue of Learning and Leading With Technology. I really did. I believe strongly that teachers should be incorporating digital technologies into their instruction and communication with students and parents, and I know that teachers can use all of the good ideas, best practices, and resources that we can provide. But then I read the article (hat tip to Sylvia Martinez and Bud Hunt) and I was completely dismayed…
As Sylvia and Bud noted on Twitter, many of the web sites presented by the author are quite dated. Geocities and Tripod: weren’t those big in the 1990s? Netscape Composer: Seriously? FrontPage: didn’t Microsoft quit selling that a while ago? The inclusion of such tools calls into serious question the currency, and thus credibility, of the author’s expertise.
The Resources section at the end was similarly lacking. Take a look at Blog Connection. It was one of the two best blogging sites the author could recommend for K-12 educators? And EdBlogger Praxis? The site that hasn’t been updated since February 2007? At least the author linked to eMINTS when it came to wikis…
Instead of tables of outdated web resources and an irrelevant resources section, the author should have included current tools rather than those from 5–10 years ago. Some discussion of the desirability of using outside, non-district-sponsored tools also would have been nice. Instead, the article reads like it was cobbled together by someone who’s rooted in the technology of yesteryear rather than today. This was an opportunity squandered. Is this stuff what the author teaches her students? Doesn’t ISTE have a responsibility to do some checking of article content?
Learning and Leading With Technology is supposed to be helpful to educators in 2008, not 1998. And usually it fulfills that function extremely well. I hate to say this – because I’m rarely critical in public of others (unless they’re clueless leaders who should know better) – but the author and the ISTE editors didn’t do their job with this one.
by Scott McLeod | May 1, 2008 | 21st Century Skills, Blogging, Communication, Higher Education, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Miscellaneous, News and Events, Not So Irrelevant, Quotes, Safety and Security, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
My latest roundup of links and tools…
I read blocked blogs
Are you up to the challenge?
Why K-12 educators shake their heads at academia
- Rick Hess perfectly captures one of my primary complaints about academia, which is that much of what we do is completely inaccessible (and/or meaningless) to K-12 educators
No hand-held electronics in front of the kids!
I was incredulous to read … the decision by the London Catholic School Board in Ontario banning hand held electronic devices in schools. . . . Even more bizarrely … school board employees are only allowed to use these devices "in areas from which students are excluded." Taken to its logical extent then this includes staff also being unable to use digital cameras to record student work or projects, create and listen to podcasts and so on.
– Gareth Long
Like Alfie Kohn, Dan Meyer forces us to rethink / justify
New tools I’m finding quite useful
The impetus is on us, not them
Help a teacher develop an integrated lesson [that] … focuses on a local issue of real importance, in which they, their families, and/or others in their community have a genuine stake and interest. If their learning is situated in that type of context, I think you’ll find the impact of their learning experiences will be far greater, and many more of them will learn digital literacy skills alongside traditional literacy skills. Teaching in a problem-based learning environment is a lot more work than simply lecturing and delivering content to students, but it is the type of learning environment our students need to remain engaged in school work. Too many kids today are BORED by school. As the adults running our schools, it is our responsibility to remedy this situation.
– Wesley Fryer
A couple of gems from Clay Burell…
And a couple more from Gerald Bracey
We are a little egocentric, aren’t we?
And, finally, a reminder from John Pederson
One year ago: Well, what’s your answer? and Principal blogging not allowed
by Scott McLeod | Apr 17, 2008 | Blogging, Communication, Miscellaneous, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
Thanks to @rickscheibner, @abubnic, @rrmurry, @kolson29, @plugusin, @glassbeed, @pmcanulty, @tracyweeks, @NancyW, @RickTanski, @juliafallon, @swvalley, and @rwentechaney, I now have a number of new elementary classroom blogs to show my children’s principal today. What’s with the @ signs? Oh, those are Twitter IDs. What’s Twitter, you say? Well, among other things, it’s a great way to get questions answered. Fast.
I’ve added these blogs to the Blogs page of the Moving Forward wiki. If you know of any other great elementary classroom blogs – ones that have students blogging (as opposed to just teachers) – please add them to the wiki. What’s the Moving Forward wiki, you say? It’s a communal resource for people trying to facilitate change in schools. Check it out.
Thanks for the tweets, everyone!
by Scott McLeod | Apr 14, 2008 | 21st Century Skills, Blogging, Leadership and Vision, Miscellaneous, Not So Irrelevant, Pre-Service Preparation, Tech Tools |
My latest roundup of links and tools…
Some really cool posts about Twitter
Reading blogs is like visiting a new city
- I need to think this way about all of the unread posts in my feed aggregator (thanks, Mike Maloy!)
Rethink trust
Zamzar
- Like many others, I am enjoying using Zamzar, a video download / file conversion tool
Lame-o
As someone in a Ed leadership program right now, I couldn’t agree more that it is a waste of time and hoop-jumping to get an administrative license. My professor lectured for two hours to a class of adults on the importance of collaboration in adult education. Lame-o.
– Jethro
A great way to think about the social Web
- No one has ‘forgotten’ or ‘left out’ anything. You just haven’t added it yet. – Alan Levine, Wiki Way (thanks for the tip, Vicki Davis!)
The firestorm subsides
- In case you missed the latest edublogosphere hubbub, you can check it all out here (start at the beginning!). I thought that there were lots of thoughtful replies to Jon’s concerns, but Vicki Davis’ and Ric Murry’s and Tom Hemingway’s stand out for me. I also really liked Wesley Fryer’s reflective post today on his own history and the changes that he’s seen.
- One of my previous posts, Linked, may provide a useful way of thinking about blog ‘superhubs’ as connectors, not inner circles. As the conversation swirl about Jon’s post so aptly demonstrated, getting noticed by the superhubs can bring you into the conversation very quickly and get you a substantial increase in traffic. My experiences with the Did You Know? video and my post about classroom cell phone videos, both of which were picked up by bloggers with far larger audiences than me, bear witness to that truth.
Happy reading, everyone. Like Wesley, I am here for the learning revolution. Hope you are too.
