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We talk about what teaching and learning ought to look like, without ever really being clear about what we want an education to do. Pictures have different purposes. Their intent may be to record an event, evoke an emotion, preserve a memory, provide documentation, honor an individual, or just please the eye. A great work of art might do all of those things, but it is unrealistic to expect all art to accomplish all of them. Knowing more about the subject of the work, the mind of the artists, the goals of the person who commissioned the work, and cultural setting in which the work was produced my help us understand more about how to view a work of art. So what exactly is it that we are looking for in public education? Do we value symmetry over emphasis? Are we looking for accuracy or imagination? Should education inspire or indoctrinate? Do we want an education that gives us answers or asks us questions? There are a lot of people critiquing the “art” of educating our children. Is the picture of public education all wrong? Or is it that we don’t always know how to look, or where to stand, or what to look for once we’ve got to where we need to be? I don’t know the answers, but it seems to me that the questions are worth asking.

Digital Vaults gives you and your kids a place to find raw materials that are arranged in ways that may make more sense to them. The site is set up a bit like a social network.

I think where I’m going with this is that I worry that the ed. tech. blogosphere is reasonably saturated.  Related to Darren Draper’s post on Twitter Set Theory, I feel like there are some central figures whose spheres overlap considerably and a whole lot of us outsiders trying to penetrate that inner circle.  It’s as if folks like Will Richardson, David Warlick, Wes Fryer, Vicki Davis, Dean Shareski, Stephen Downes, Chris Lehmann…(and, yes, you Scott) are having an awesome cocktail party conversation and I’m standing on the outside staring over their shoulders and listening in, trying to get a word in, but not penetrating that conversation at all.  I know there are LOTS of us on the outside looking in. 

My theory is– don’t worry about getting your voice out there, or comments, or rankings, or even being invited to the right parties (inner circle) — rather focus intently on children, your vision, and leaving education better than you found it. Concentrate on helping those within your sphere of influence to make principled changes in education that is in the best interest of kids.

Web 2.0 has inspired intense and growing interest, particularly as wikis, weblogs (blogs), really simple syndication (RSS) feeds, social networking sites, tag-based folksonomies, and peer-to-peer media-sharing applications have gained traction in all sectors of the education industry (Allen 2004; Alexander 2006)

Web 2.0 allows customization, personalization, and rich opportunities for networking and collaboration, all of which offer considerable potential for addressing the needs of today's diverse student body (Bryant 2006).

In contrast to earlier e-learning approaches that simply replicated traditional models, the Web 2.0 movement with its associated array of social software tools offers opportunities to move away from the last century's highly centralized, industrial model of learning and toward individual learner empowerment through designs that focus on collaborative, networked interaction (Rogers et al. 2007; Sims 2006; Sheely 2006)

this list of 100 tips, apps, and resources is worth browsing. Find out how to get started with Twitter, ways to use it in an educational setting, and tools to help you use it better with these resources

It appears that most teachers today underestimate the amount of learning that is happening among youth outside of schools.  Since this informal learning sometimes dubbed “hanging out”, “messing around” or “geeking out”  happens outside of the classroom and doesn’t look like traditional learning, it’s easy for educators to miss. The quality and quantity of learning, the process by which it occurs, and the way authority is established in these informal environments, should be something that teachers become familiar with. Will Richardson, who writes extensively on these matters, believes that, “One of the biggest challenges educators face right now is figuring out how to help students create, navigate, and grow the powerful, individualized networks of learning that bloom on the Web and helping them do this effectively, ethically, and safely.” (see article)

It appears that most teachers today underestimate the amount of learning that is happening among youth outside of schools.  Since this informal learning sometimes dubbed “hanging out”, “messing around” or “geeking out”  happens outside of the classroom and doesn’t look like traditional learning, it’s easy for educators to miss. The quality and quantity of learning, the process by which it occurs, and the way authority is established in these informal environments, should be something that teachers become familiar with. Will Richardson, who writes extensively on these matters, believes that, “One of the biggest challenges educators face right now is figuring out how to help students create, navigate, and grow the powerful, individualized networks of learning that bloom on the Web and helping them do this effectively, ethically, and safely.” (see article)

It appears that most teachers today underestimate the amount of learning that is happening among youth outside of schools.  Since this informal learning sometimes dubbed “hanging out”, “messing around” or “geeking out”  happens outside of the classroom and doesn’t look like traditional learning, it’s easy for educators to miss. The quality and quantity of learning, the process by which it occurs, and the way authority is established in these informal environments, should be something that teachers become familiar with. Will Richardson, who writes extensively on these matters, believes that, “One of the biggest challenges educators face right now is figuring out how to help students create, navigate, and grow the powerful, individualized networks of learning that bloom on the Web and helping them do this effectively, ethically, and safely.” (see article)

I tried out Diigo educator and was REALLY impressed. This let me very quickly (and with no email addresses needed) set up accounts for 30 students. I then created a group for all 3 classes to use and added all the students to the group. In this case, since I only have one more day with the kids and am not sure if they'll be using Diigo after this, I just used the 30 accounts for multiple classes, but if this were for my actual students, I would have created an account for each student. Anyway, once all the students were added to the group, I just instructed them to make sure to share every bookmark for this project with the group. All of the students will then be able to view all of the bookmarks. Again, we couldn't install even the diigolet, but saving right from Diigo worked fine for our purposes. They used the same technique of tagging with last name, class hour, and other appropriate tags. I taught both of these methods in a 45 minute class period and the actual explanation of the bookmarking technique took only 7-10 min. of each class period. The kids (7th graders) picked up on it EXTREMELY fast.

for long term use and for individual projects I strongly recommend using Diigo educator, especially since I use Diigo so heavily in my personal and professional web research.

I highly recommend Diigo Educator to any teacher!

Tests involving children as young as three months suggest biological differences and not social pressures dictate which toys children like to play with. The U.S. study looked at babies aged three to eight months - before they can identify even the gender of other people.

Researchers placed a doll and truck inside a puppet-theatre style box and showed them to 30 children - 17 boys and 13 girls - for two ten-second intervals.The findings, from researchers at Texas A&M University, overturn conventional wisdom that children's toy preferences are down to social conditioning.

For the study, led by Gerianne Alexander, researchers set up a presentation box similar to a puppet theatre and placed a doll and truck inside.