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Has the benchmark for technology use changed? Yes...while teachers were getting ready to add tech-enhanced functionality to their toolkit, technology was reinvented and now isn't about enhancing but serves as a life-changing conduit, a journey of the mind into a world where being human is but one requirement.
Continue reading "Virtual Indivisibility" »
"It's not personal, it's business." Those are the words that Tom Hanks' character shares with Meg Ryan (You've Got Mail! (I was forced to watch it)), paraphrasing The Godfather. Today, getting personal is what the Web is about...but do we as educators get it when it comes to learning?
Continue reading "Personal Learning" »
"Pedagogy comes first," shares Chris Lehmann (Practical Theory). "Always. How we teach and the values and beliefs that our schools hold as dear are more important than any piece of technology. We can't hand kids laptops and hope good things happen."
Continue reading "An INSISTENT Voice" »
Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, blogs are being introduced in schools as easy ways to publish student work online. Yet, aren't the same mis-uses of tools we caution parents against still possible inside these walled gardens? Why are we lying to parents, engaging in blog paranoia, or "bloganoia?"
Continue reading "Bloganoia" »
I walk the halls of schools, their eyes and faces, smiling, shining eyes, in their faces, a desperate adoration. I see them in resplendent buildings, signs of wealth about them. I see them in old buildings, their most reliable technology, a pencil.
Continue reading "Desperate Adoration" »
As we become more transparent in our work and writing, where everything is laid bare, the challenge we face as educators is acknowledging that our work has value...that everything we do in the classroom has value and should be shared.
Continue reading "Of Larger Interest" »
"Web 2.0" describes non-techie, easy use of the Web, the ability to write content to the Web as well as read information. That ease of content production is epitomized by blogs, wikis, audio/vid-casts and easy setup of online discussion boards. This ease of publishing has made it easy for anyone--including pedophiles--to create an "echo-chamber."
Continue reading "Pedophiles 2.0" »
The phrase "a revival" appears as one way to define the word "Resurgence." When I think of Resurgence, I think of a surge of water lifting a ship from the rocks. Yet, the word 'revival' excites me because it has religious overtones, especially of the old time religion, folks congregating 'neath the Big Tent, being slain in the spirit, shriven of their sins, their lives beginning anew...in short, born again. As I reflect on the weary frustration our teachers labor under...I wonder if our schools don't need a resurgence, a "continuing after interruption."
Continue reading "Resurgence" »
In the ongoing brawl as to whether Flickr is OUT or IN in schools, the following idea popped into my mind. Maybe it's something I've read before but don't remember the source. Maybe it's frustration, a dream of what could be. Either way, I hope the Yahoo Flickr people are listening.
Continue reading "EduFlicks.org" »
In the movie "Amistad," John Quincy Adams--played by Anthony Hopkins--says something along the lines of "He with the best story, wins" to Mr. Joseph (Morgan Freeman). They're talking about how to best handle the situation with the slaves from Amistad. It's a powerful scene because it underscores the power of storytelling. As powerful as that movie was in emphasizing the power of sharing WHO we are, rather than the physical WHERE we come from, as a story...I found one more compelling.
Continue reading "Stories" »
Flickr, BubbleShare, and other Web 2.0 services are the rage in schools today. But, should school administrators allow teachers to chase off after these "here today, gone tomorrow" technology fads? Anne over at edublog insights shares this first draft letter requesting use of Flickr, presumably in K-12 school district for a new blogging project they are starting.
I can easily imagine the response of a school district administrator....
Continue reading "Flickr-ing -- OUT" »
When I was 22 years old, at the beginning of the school year, I remember sitting in a cafeteria crammed with teachers, wondering what I needed to do to escape...escape the droning voice, the boring activities (or lack of), the desire to run to my classroom and try to set things right before the children arrived. The experience led me to ask, "What would I do different if I were the person at the front of the room?"
Continue reading "Change Your Fate" »
With over 50 million blogs floating around in the blogosphere, some might ask why Technology and Learning.com has one. Sure, the blogerati--David Warlick, Wes Fryer, Terry Freedman, David Jakes and the Unknown Blogger--bring a lot of topics to the table...but how can we gauge the value of blogs like Technology and Learning's? And, how are the challenges we're facing with the T&L Blog similar to what other organizations encounter when trying to distribute high quality content to the masses?
Continue reading "Share Some Blog Feedback" »
In a blog entry last week, I shared the strong reactions of some regarding 1:1 laptop initiatives. Dr. Richard Smith and Jim O'Hagan make some interesting points in the comments. Essentially, what it boils down to is that 1:1 laptop initiatives do nothing to help students achieve the academic objectives traditional schooling has for them...and this then IS a boondoggle, expensive, too.
Continue reading "Imagination Island" »
Will 1:1 laptop initiatives really make a difference in K-12 education? Some seem to think so, but recent conversations on various listservs have brought that into question. You see, it all started with this posting about the Texas Technology Immersion Pilot (TIP) evaluation report....
Technorati Profile
Continue reading "1:1 Laptop Boondoggle?" »
Stumble through a few thousand--maybe more--blog entries regarding NECC 2006 Conference, and you start to appreciate the request for a simple way to find NECC 06 podcasts. If you're an iTunes user--enslaved to Digital Rights Management (DRM)--then finding that list is fairly easy. But, what do you do if you've embraced a life of freedom from DRM oppression?
Continue reading "Podcast Panacea" »
"Freedom of the press," shared A. J. Liebling, New York Times journalist and critic, "is limited to those who own one." Using services like YouTube for video sharing, Flickr and Bubbleshare for photos, and a legion of social networking tools, people are proving this assertion true in a way that Liebling perhaps never imagined. This is self-publishing at its best.
Continue reading "Learning Imprisoned" »
"We'll have to start our own radio station soon," shared my supervisor with me. We had joked about this possibility a few years ago, but neither one of us had followed up on it. But now, we needed to do it because the Communications Department was interested. "May I interpret that as a mandate?" I asked.
"Sure."
With a talented staff member handling the technical details, and another one working on content development, twenty-four hours later, using free, open source tools, my district had its first online radio station (accessible only via the Intranet for now).
Often, we are called upon to come up with solutions for sharing ideas and information with a wide audience.
Continue reading "Facilitate Communication with Free Tools" »
In considering how to best reform education, perhaps we first need to advocate for change in ourselves. It seems unbelievable, that by changing oneself, one can effect change across complex organizations. Yet, some say that is the ONLY way to accomplish deep change.
A pearls on the string approach is one way to share some of the wisdom I am wrestling with, trying to better understand.
Continue reading "Pearls on a String" »
LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. - High school students are going to be held accountable for what they post on blogs and on social-networking Web sites such as MySpace.c*m. The board of community High School District 128 voted unanimously on Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of "illegal or inappropriate" behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action. The rule will take effect at the start of the next school year, officials said. District officials won't regularly search students' sites, but will monitor them if they get a worrisome tip from another student, a parent or a community member.
Source: Daily Herald, Tuesday May 23, 2006
Continue reading "Be Like Them" »
Source: Happy Feet Movie Trailer (#2) - Click picture for
details)
When I worked as a teacher in Cotulla ISD, Cotulla,
Tx--same place as Lyndon
Baines Johnson taught, BTW--I taught reading and writing. I have to
say, my kids would walk out of my class completely worn-out and there
was great writing going on. Why was it great? It was great because it
was real, rooted in their life experiences, like the Josefina's story of
catching rattlesnakes (you wouldn't doubt a fifth grader if you saw what
she looked like).
Continue reading "change the world" »
"When was the last time you updated your campus web site?" asked the old prospector (imagine a popular Wolf Brand Chili commercial a few years ago), "Well, that's too long!" Fresh content on a campus/classroom web page is a pipe dream, some say. "Teachers don't have time to learn how to edit web pages using Dreamweaver and post their own content. Certainly, principals can't do this."
Yet, while these assessments were true a few years ago, the advent of Read/Write Web technologies have made publishing much easier. Hence, we see students publishing through MySpace.com and Facebook.com, and many other sites. Why can't we take advantage of these same technologies for educational purposes?
Continue reading "Podcast: K-12 District Content Management Systems" »
On my way to work a few weeks ago, National Public Radio shared an interview with a musician who also happened to have been knighted. I regret that I couldn't take notes and have forgotten every detail of the conversation, except what I'm about to share here. Let's just say that as I listened to the story, I found a remarkable coincidence between the knight's appraisal of how we treat hunger and education today. He said something along the lines of, "We know what the right things to do are, yet we consistently fail to do them."
Continue reading "Doing Right: A Few Examples" »
The community of educators supporting Strategic Open Source Special Interest Group in Texas have created a remarkable resource. You can find this resource at http://www.sosoftexas.org/.
This past February, a group of technology directors and coordinators came together. They came together to find a way to overcome some of the challenges they faced in making technology accessible in school districts. Large, medium, and small, the districts represented all shared something in common--the strategic use of free, open sources software in schools. Their vision was to eliminate barriers to technology access. Free, open source software (FOSS) enables districts to accomplish this because it allows everyone access to the same software solutions.
Continue reading "Strategic Open Source" »
The nation has begun to seriously look at the restructuring of our schools. The crisis of education demands it. The future of our nation's ability to compete in a new, global economy depends on it. And to promote learning in America, dramatic changes in all areas of
education--from in-class instruction to school-building design--are being contemplated.
The beauty of that quote is that it works in 2006, as well as 1990 when it was originally written.
Continue reading "Put Fear Aside" »
"What? You haven't heard of the MySpace controversy? Where have YOU been?" I asked a friend. Stuck in my hotel room at a conference in February, I got an eyeful of MySpace.com being used by sexual predators, passing themselves off as youngsters. If you've been watching the news at night, subscribe to national education technology lists (e.g. EDTECH and/or WWWEDU), or, you work with teenagers, you've probably had to survive the raging, albeit professional, debates.
Why has MySpace set off this powder keg of sentiment? Why are educators divided down the middle about this?
Continue reading "Know Thyself" »
"What students are learning," writes David Warlick, "is less important than how they are learning it and what they do with it." Ever sit in a meeting where everyone agrees with this idea, but then, you realize that the question is no longer how students use the technology. Instead, the question becomes, "Do your students have technology they can use on a daily basis, or not?"
Continue reading "Invest in People, Not Things" »
"Linux? No way," I'd start out when someone asked me to consider it. "There's just not enough educational software out there for it, it's too hard to install programs, and what's really out there for it?" I always imagined a command line, clunky interface, and balding 40 year olds singing the praises of a Microsoft-free system.
However, in November, 2004, my curiosity finally got the better of me (I also took one step closer to 40 even as my hairline receded). The free software quest begun with Download a la Mode series opened my eyes to what was available online. What finally convinced me was installing UbuntuLinux on my old, original iMac. Where I had a completely worthless computer system, obsolete and ready for the junkyard, I now had a system using the latest version of Firefox and OpenOffice (a MS Office compatible suite). When my wife used it to access the Web version of her gradebook, incompatible with Mac OS 8.6 running Internet Explorer, I knew I was onto something.
Continue reading "Getting Started with Linux" »
This is a call to action, action to realize a new social reality. Now...is there anyone in K-12 education that has the imagination and is willing to use it outside the classroom in public?
Continue reading "Power for a New Social Imagination" »
Do you agree with the statement that "...despite promising experiments, the billions already spent on technology have not had a significant impact on school effectiveness?" Some argue it's about information, but for me, it's really about Passion and Reason...the essence of who we are as humans.
Continue reading "It's About Relationships and Passion, Not Information" »
Out of step with a society racing towards technological nirvana, K-12 education struggles to keep up, clamoring for everything from more funding to an Office of Educational Technology Director. Some dismiss the conversations about educational reform on the Web as just so much sound and fury. "It's easier to write a check," said Anne Mulcahy (Xerox Corporation CEO), "than it is to rethink the way you work." Conversations are only the first step. It must be followed by action, then that action must be reflected on. And, perhaps, only by embedding technology in the fabric of society, can we achieve the desired changes. Two definite actions we can take is to exercise, as educators, our power as parents and our power to vote.
Continue reading "A Parent Speaks" »
Are you a learning junkie? Can't get enough magazines and information about how to better do your job? Or, maybe the information you get just isn't personalized enough for you. Blogs as personal learning networks can change that and open you up to a whole new world of possibilities.
Continue reading "Blogs as Personal Learning Networks" »
As edtech funding decreases, the question is, how much more money will continue to flow to companies that have hooked us on expensive hardware and software rather than for use in schools? Do we really need everything we're being sold in schools today? Or, is the real problem with how we approach teaching and learning?
Continue reading "Taking Back Our Schools" »
Since college days, when I get depressed and don't know the reason why, I'm terrible to be around. Looking back over the last zillion blog entries, I can tell that it has had its effect in my writing. But, better to write that here than somewhere else (e.g. work). Today, the feeling that has been growing in me finally subjected itself for close scrutiny--Disillusionment. While I'm still banishing the feelings of disillusionment, I'm left with a void. I've made it to the top of the heap, so to speak, but now have to ask, what am i looking for? Like Tom Fulghum, maybe it's time to start back down the mountain and focus on the simple things.
Continue reading "Banishing Disillusionment" »
If you haven't read the letter from Geraldine (Tincy) Miller from the Texas State Board of Education, you should. Here are some of the high (or low) points. I've included my reaction in between each block quote.
Continue reading "Archaic Education Systems" »
"Podcasting is motivating, because people all over the globe can tune in and learn what we are doing in school. It is pretty awesome that I can go to iTunes, click on Podcasts and Boom! I'm listening to myself online."
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