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Melissa Wilson

Magazine - Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic - 10 views

  • By Nicholas Carr
    • L Butler
       
      Nicholas Carr also wrote The Shallows an entire book about the effect the Internet is having on our brains - I highly recommend it. http://www.theshallowsbook.com/
    • Charles Black
       
      I know that we used online sources mainly for my Bachelor Senior Thesis compared to going through stacks of books and papers in the library. Google has made research a lot quicker for all of us.
    • Charles Black
       
      I can relate. I have the Google application on my phone which I use almost daily to check something such as a bus schedule, movie time, game score, etc.
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      I am the same way on my phone. On car rides, dinner, you name it with my wife and one of us will say, "I wonder..." and the phones are out and we're finding answers.  Sometimes I want to just wonder though...
  • ...47 more annotations...
    • Charles Black
       
      I would be interested to see a study done like this in the United States. In my one undergraduate class on politics and media we talked about "info snacking" which is the idea that people look for small bits of information at a time instead of reading the entire article. This is exactly what Carr is talking about here.
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      I agree Charles. However I would suggest that I think that people will have to develop a way to info. snack and be able to do conventional reading too. It seems as though there is something lost when all you are able to do is skim and scan. 
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      The other thing that I wonder quite a bit about this entire article is does "info snacking" stem from the internet or does it stem from being a generation that was raised on frequent tv, video, video games, and the internet altogether. It would seem to me that those other factors would have to have something to do with it as well. 
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      Let's also not forget the constant stream of data to our mobile device(s) as well when thinking about that.  Should this make us better, not worse, at multi-tasking. 
  • ity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. Th
  • sortium
  • that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activ
  • As part of the five-year research program, the scholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational co
    • Charles Black
       
      This is the point I read until I got distracted. The ads on the side are distracting to me, and I also needed to get going because of the time.
    • Melissa Wilson
       
      I am finding the sticky notes to be distracting. I keep skipping from the article to the notes.
    • Charles Black
       
      That is a very good point. I personally find it easier to read articles on paper instead of the computer screen because there are less distractions.
  • My mind would
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      My mind wandered off here, because of the picture to the side. 'I was thinking I wonder if this is the author?' and then I saw the caption and thought, "I wonder what those words are?"
  • Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      A friend of mine and I are going to soon put this to the test by reading the Infinite Jest, which is a very long read if you are unfamiliar with the book. I anticipate it being a difficult task. I wonder if it would have been less difficult before the net.
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      What a good analogy. Before when you swam and simmered in the information and had to take time to digest, now we can just move from one thing to another quickly. 
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      Do you feel that this style allows for anything further than "In one ear, out the other"? How do you best capture the features of the web?
  • It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.
  • “We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.”
  • Nietzsche’s friends, a composer
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      Wagner, I believe. 
  • Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      I wonder if Nietzsche would think of the Internet as Good or Evil, or even if he would consider it being part of the Overman. 
  • The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written , “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.
    • jan Minnich
       
      This segment pretty much summarizes that Carr believes that we are losing our ability to sustain deep cognitive thought. He acknowledges the tremendous benefit of the internet, but cautions that it might be coming at a price...that we have yet to fully realize.
  • Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self.
    • jan Minnich
       
      Carr's argument is that although we are perhaps reading more than ever...due to text messaging, social media sites, etc we are not taking the time to really delve into what we read and contemplate. Moreover, this premise seems plausible to a degree, as it seems generally that much of what is sent through social media may be trival or meaningless information.
  • The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental meshwork, the dense connections formed among the 100 billion or so neurons inside our skulls, was largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. But brain researchers have discovered that that’s not the case.
    • jan Minnich
       
      Although I didn't read it (how appropriate - LOL = ) ) Carr's book on "The Shallows" alludes to this concept...in that our brains may in fact be coming re-wired, due to the common every day distractions that cause us to lose focus on thought-provoking topics. His argument is that the collective human attention span is becoming reduced, essentially due to our environment of perpetual distraction- spawned by the internet.
  • With the approval of Midvale’s owners, he recruited a group of factory hands, set them to work on various metalworking machines, and recorded and timed their every movement as well as the operations of the machines. By breaking down every job into a sequence of small, discrete steps and then testing different ways of performing each one, Taylor created a set of precise instructions—an “algorithm,” we might say today—for how each worker should work. Midvale’s employees grumbled about the strict new regime, claiming that it turned them into little more than automatons, but the factory’s productivity soared.
    • jan Minnich
       
      I enjoyed learning of this story. Personally, i'm always looking for ways to be more highly efficient when I observe human systems or partake in a job or task sequence. Taylor obviously laid much of the ground work for "industrial efficiency."
  • The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction
    • jan Minnich
       
      I believe this segment is akin to "data mining" where companies look at human tendancies to advertise and create greater opportunities to feature their products by the locations (physically or virtually) of their prospective customers, clients or buyers. This idea (data mining) is relatively new to me, but there is no doubt that it will be a prevalent part of marketing in the future. During the reading of this article I received 5 text messages (responded to 2), but was disciplined enough not to check my email until I was finished. What portion of today's younger generation is disciplined enough to stay on task...until an assignment is completed?!?
    • Melissa Wilson
       
      This paragraph lost my attention.
    • Melissa Wilson
       
      If adults are noticing a change in reading attitude, what about children who have grown up with the internet?
  • We can expect as well that the circuits woven by ou
  • r use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.
    • Charles Black
       
      I never really thought about this. Our brains are adapting to the net earlier than ever before now thanks to web tools that are being implemented earlier in the classroom. I do not remember using computers on an active basis to at least fourth grade, and I know they are starting much earlier with them.
    • Charles Black
       
      It is much easier to type things out because of time and speed. I think this could be a good and bad thing. I don't remember the last time I wrote out by hand a letter or something long.
  • tual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. When the mechanical clock arrived, people began thinking of their brains as operating “like clockwork.” Today, in the age of software, we have come to think of them as operating “like computers.
  • al of Gutenberg’s printing press, in the 15th century, set off another round of teeth gnashing. The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectua
  • manist H
  • laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds.
    • Charles Black
       
      The world would be so different without all of the great technology advances. I think back to when I had my first cell phone and it became easier to stay connected with my friends through phone calls, and now with smart phones we can be connected to the world at all times. Some people may fear change, but I think it is good to embrace it.
    • Charles Black
       
      Overall, I do not think Google is making us stupid. I think it is our society as a whole has become so fast paced, and we need information quicker so online resources are the first thing we go to. I think as long educators keep students focused on analyzing and deep thought, we won't let Google or other web tools make our society less intelligent. 
    • Jenn Wilson
       
      The idea of not being able to sustain attention to a lengthy article or book makes me think about how difficult it is more and more kids to sustain attention to tasks in class. It seems to get worse as the years go by and I feel like more and more kids are being diagnosed with ADD. Perhaps that type of attending "problem" is going to be the norm.
    • Jenn Wilson
       
      This is the point where I scrolled down to see how much further I have to read and thought "I don't think I can make it!"
    • Jenn Wilson
       
      I find this to be very true in the computer age as well. It is so easy to type something and change it multiple times now. I wonder if we actually give as much thought to what we are typing as we once did when changing a line meant getting a new piece of paper and starting over causing minutes or hours of extra work rather than seconds.
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      I would agree with this statement. I feel that as I have gone through my education, I was taught all of the skills to read and analyze appropriately. Now that I have mastered those skills, I am only expected to recall information. If I can gather the information in a quicker/more efficent way, I will use it. But am I really learning?
  • The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      The question is, what skill do we focus our teaching on? Locating and accessing, or not being able to cover as much information but analyzing it further?
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      I find myself struggling to make it all the way through a longer blog post or video file. I need quicker gratification. Books are quickly sliding out of the picture
  • I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has change
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      The skimming strategy gives students the false sense that they are really reading. Actually, they are just finding the words that they know in a story and piece the parts they understand together.
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      At this point in the reading, I have found myself loosing focus on the article
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      Even when I have full intentions, I find myself bookmarking more pages and never end up actually going back and exploring them.
  • Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings
    • Melissa Wilson
       
      Interesting, I didn't realize that reading wasn't a natural skill. Does that explain why some people have so much trouble becoming good readers.
    • Melissa Wilson
       
      The internet has certainly taken over my life. When the internet goes down at school I find myself thinking, "Now how am I going to teach."
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      Although it is a different language, I am intrigued that the Chinese process of reading follows a different neural path than the English language
    • Melissa Wilson
       
      This sounds very similar to the grumbling I hear from teachers when they complain that standardized tests are taking all of the creativity out of teaching. Interesting that the complaints started so long ago.
anonymous

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Your Professionalism as a Teacher: The Hope Diamond in Your Pocket - 0 views

  • Teaching isn't like any other job I've had -- it is a life calling and all-consuming. 
  • You don't have the teaching profession - it definitely has you. 
  • And yet, every year, before it all starts, I count the cost.  I find myself asking myself, "How many more years can I do this?"  "Will I hold up?"  "Can I make it?"
    • Mrs Huber
       
      This really resonated with me!
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • why is it that teachers say "I got out of the classroom" or "I got out of teaching?"
  • I dream of a day where society truly understands what it means to be a teacher and where every teacher remembers what it means to be a teacher!
  • teachers literally have a higher standard of behavior and if we do anything that detracts from the learning environment - no matter what it is, we can be  fired for it!
    • Mrs Huber
       
      I don' t necessarily think this is a bad thing!
    • anonymous
       
      This always makes me think of the sub who was using a computer when inappropriate pop-up windows began to appear. She was sued. It cost her her health, a LOT of money. In the end it was determined that it was NOT her fault, but the damage was done. That would NEVER have happened anywhere else but in education.
  • But, pay a good teacher nothing, and you've still got royalty!  There is a nobility in teaching that truly transcends money. 
    • Mrs Huber
       
      Never thought of myelf as royalty!
  • There is a nobility in good teaching that I think I and my colleague teachers often forget.  There is something about knowing that the very course of a young life will change as a result of being in my classroom and I pray it will be for the positive.  That some granule of learning will be retained and go on to bless the world in future centuries as a result of who I was to a student (or to you, my readers for that matter) is something I hang on to.
    • Mrs Huber
       
      WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well said! If we don't feel this way, maybe we need to find another profession!
    • anonymous
       
      I agree. You should NEVER gt to the point where you're a poor teacher and yet very accepting of that fact. Good teachers do great good, but poor teachers can do just as much harm.
  • If you're a good teacher, you've got your professionalism as a teacher as part of who you are.  It is in you, around you, and exudes from every pore... if you are a good teacher.  You are rich.  Your calling is noble and you will remain rich as long as you rise above, and keep your treasure.
    • Mrs Huber
       
      Truly inspiring!
    • anonymous
       
      This made me think of Raif Esquith, author of, "Teach like your hair's on fire." He has no children of his own, but he claims to have had hundreds in his lifetime. He describes himself as being very 'rich.'
  •  
    WOW! A must read! Very inspiring!
  •  
    WOW! A must read! Very inspiring!
Mrs Huber

Netvibes (682) - 0 views

  • A term like web 2.0 begets the notion that there will imminently be a 3.0, 4.0, and beyond.  The convention serves those within a specific group much more than it does those who need to understand the concept the most.  The term serves as a layer- an immediately unnecessary layer at that.  The convention allows those inside the realm of understanding to point to those outside and express how much the outsiders need the insiders in order to understand and be enlightened.  I’d rather we just all moved forward together in a way that makes sense and promotes progress rather than bifurcates.
    • Mr. R Riter
       
      We need to call it something, don't we? Web 2.0 does imply that a 2.1 or 3.0 is coming, but perhaps we need to think of it in another way. Let's say that Web 2.0 was a typo. Maybe the coiner of the term meant Web 2,0 and didn't finish the complete term. It could really be Web 2,000 for the millenium, and now we can use it for the next 1000 years(or 991). Just a thought!!
  • netbooks in hand in the next few months. There seems to be a growing commitment here to put technology in the hands of kids (instead of spending huge sums on stuff that students can’t use outside of the classroom) and to thinking about
  • The most noticeable observation I can make is the comparison of experiences from last year’s NECC to this year’s.  Last year was my first, and it was quite honestly an incredibly overwhelming experience.  I felt rather detached and fatigued as I flew out of San Antonio, and I can directly attribute that to how disconnected I was to this community.  I hadn’t yet started my blog, I was only faintly invested in Twitter, and I knew a total of about five people at the conference.  How a year can change everything.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Popular crustaceans like lobster, crabs and prawns owe their success to a unique colour control system, according to a new genetic study.
  • Programming -OK, on the programming thing, here are my thoughts.In our curriculum our objective is not as much a specific LANGUAGE. One year I may use HTML with Javascript, this past year I used LSL — what I want kids to know that when they encounter programming and coding that there are certain conventions. Some are case sensitive, some are not. How do you find out how to add to what you know about programming? Do you know where to go to find prewritten code? Can you hack it to make it work to do what you want it to do?We spend about a week – two weeks but I require they know how to handcode hyperlinks and images – they are just too important.But to take 12 weeks or 6 weeks to learn a whole language – yes maybe some value – but to me the value is HOW is the language constructed or built. What are the conventions and how do I educate myself if I am interested in pursuing. What comes out of this time is kids who say either “I never want to do that” or “this is really cool, I love coding.”They are doing very simplistic work (although the LSL object languages were pretty advanced) but since we don’t have a full course nor time in our curriculum, I do see this as an essential part of what I teach.I’m not teaching it for the language sake but for the sake of understanding the whole body of how languages work – we talk about the different languages and what they are used for as part of Intro to Computer science and have an immersive experience.To me, this is somewhat a comprimise between leaving it out entirely or forcing everyone to take 12 weeks of it. I just don’t know where 12 weeks would go in the curriculum.
  • It’s a step backward. A 1:1 classroom done at least fairly well becomes a an intense learning environment. Students are engaged, empowered, active learners instead of sitting learning to be taught. It is an active process a far greater amount of the time (and this is one area I need to improve, is getting that and letting that happen more) and the feel of the classroom changes. People that visit pick up on that. It changes from a 1:1 laptop classroom into a learning environment that uses laptops and other tools to leverage learning.
  •  
    a tech teacher discusses the benefits of teaching a program language.
anonymous

Education Week: Filtering Fixes - 0 views

  • Instead of blocking the many exit ramps and side routes on the information superhighway, they have decided that educating students and teachers on how to navigate the Internet’s vast resources responsibly, safely, and productively—and setting clear rules and expectations for doing so—is the best way to head off online collisions.
    • anonymous
       
      This is nothing new, but it seems this is one of the VERY few districts that puts its filter where its mouth is.
  • “We are known in our district for technology, so I don’t see how you can teach kids 21st-century values if you’re not teaching them digital citizenship and appropriate ways of sharing and using everything that’s available on the Web,” said Shawn Nutting, the technology director for the Trussville district. “How can you, in 2009, not use the Internet for everything? It blows me away that all these schools block things out” that are valuable.
  • While schools are required by federal and state laws to block pornography and other content that poses a danger to minors, Internet-filtering software often prevents students from accessing information on legitimate topics that tend to get caught in the censoring process: think breast cancer, sexuality, or even innocuous keywords that sound like blocked terms. One teacher who commented on one of Mr. Fryer’s blog posts, for example, complained that a search for biographical information on a person named Thacker was caught by his school’s Internet filter because the prohibited term “hacker” is included within the spelling of the word.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The K-2 school provides e-mail addresses to each of its 880 students and maintains accounts on the Facebook and Twitter networking sites. Children can also interact with peers in other schools and across the country through protected wiki spaces and blogs the school has set up.
    • anonymous
       
      We find it hard to even imagine this, don't we?
    • anonymous
       
      the entire approach to filtering is based on this sentence, isn't it?
  • “Rather than saying this is a scary tool and something bad could happen, instead we believe it’s an incredible tool that connects you with the entire world out there. ... [L]et’s show you the best way to use it.”
  • As Trussville students move through the grades and encounter more-complex educational content and expectations, their Internet access is incrementally expanded.
  • In 2001, the Children’s Internet Protection Act instituted new requirements for schools to establish policies and safeguards for Internet use as a condition of receiving federal E-rate funding. Many districts have responded by restricting any potentially troublesome sites. But many educators and media specialists complain that the filters are set too broadly and cannot discriminate between good and bad content. Drawing the line between what material is acceptable and what’s not is a local decision that has to take into account each district’s comfort level with using Internet content
  • The American Civil Liberties Union sued Tennesee’s Knox County and Nashville school districts on behalf of several students and a school librarian for blocking Internet sites related to gay and lesbian issues. While the districts’ filtering software prohibited students from accessing sites that provided information and resources on the subject, it did not block sites run by organizations that promoted the controversial view that homosexuals can be “rehabilitated” and become heterosexuals. Last month, a federal court dismissed the lawsuit after school officials agreed to unblock the sites.
    • anonymous
       
      Hmmm - a lawsuit? And the Assistant Sec of Education didn't understand what I meant when I suggested that lawsuits control decisions and guide curriculum.
  • Students are using personal technology tools more readily to study subject matter, collaborate with classmates, and complete assignments than they were several years ago, but they are generally asked to “power down” at school and abandon the electronic resources they rely on for learning outside of class, the survey found. Administrators generally cite safety issues and concerns that students will misuse such tools to dawdle, cheat, or view inappropriate content in school as reasons for not offering more open online access to students. ("Students See Schools Inhibiting Their Use of New Technologies,", April 1, 2009.)
  • A report commissioned by the NSBA found that social networking can be beneficial to students, and urged school board members to “find ways to harness the educational value” of so-called Web 2.0 tools, such as setting up chat rooms or online journals that allow students to collaborate on their classwork. The 2007 report also told school boards to re-evaluate policies that ban or tightly restrict the use of the Internet or social-networking sites.
    • anonymous
       
      YES!! What do you think?
  • Federal Requirements for Schools on Internet Safety The Children’s Internet Protection Act, or CIPA, is a federal law intended to block access to offensive Web content on school and library computers. Under CIPA, schools and libraries that receive funding through the federal E-rate program for Internet access must: • Have an Internet-safety policy and technology-protection measures in place. The policy must include measures to block or filter Internet access to obscene photos, child pornography, and other images that can be harmful to minors; • Educate minors about appropriate and inappropriate online behavior, including activities like cyberbullying and social networking; • Adopt and enforce a policy to monitor online activities of minors; and • Adopt and implement policies related to Internet use by minors that address access to inappropriate online materials, student safety and privacy issues, and the hacking of unauthorized sites. Source: Federal Communications Commission
    • anonymous
       
      This is the Act that schools cite when giving reasons for blocking what they do. Can you justify it from this? Granted, it's not the coplete law, but they sure do use this to justify everything.
  • “We believe that you can’t have goals about kids’ collaborating globally and then block their ability to do that,” said Becky Fisher, the Virginia district’s technology coordinator.
    • anonymous
       
      Hear! Hear!
Rich Smith

Zite: Personalized Magazine for iPad and iPhone - 0 views

  •  
    "A personalized magazine that gets smarter as you use it" RSS feeder that as you like articles, it finds others that are similar to it
  •  
    "A personalized magazine that gets smarter as you use it" RSS feeder that as you like articles, it finds others that are similar to it
anonymous

QR Code Generator - Create Your Own QR Codes - Delivr - 0 views

  •  
    This is VERY easy. Choose the Code type, from a url to contact information, SMS, Text, and more. Complete the form it gives, then click the generate the image. Save it so you can put it on your website. There's even a link to find apps for your phone that will read the codes. I'm using QRky Scan for the Droid and it works perfectly.
anonymous

A Fistful of Challenges for Ed Tech -- THE Journal - 2 views

  • In the fourth slot was nothing short of the "fundamental structure of the K-12 education establishment," specifically, as the authors described it, "resistance to any profound change in practice."
    • anonymous
       
      What do you think of that statement?
  • The lack of congruence between what students are learning outside of school and what they're being taught in the classroom is causing a disconnect in educational practices.
    • anonymous
       
      Hasn't this ALWAYS been the case? What makes it different now?
  • The existence of a wealth of online tools and communications tools is allowing teachers to "to revisit our roles as educators."
    • anonymous
       
      Yes, it makes it easy to revisit their roles, but DO they?
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • "As IT support becomes more and more decentralized, the technologies we use are increasingly based not on school servers, but in the cloud,
    • anonymous
       
      But what if they can't afford or choose not to ensure adequate bandwidth?
  • "The digital divide, once seen as a factor of wealth, is now seen as a factor of education
    • anonymous
       
      Powerful statement, no?
  • Digital literacy will also play an increasing role in career advancement, according to the report.
    • anonymous
       
      But wait - I thought the kids were supposed to be Digital Natives and come to us digitally literate. No?
  • The ways we design learning experiences must reflect the growing importance of innovation and creativity as professional skills."
    • anonymous
       
      I think it's interesting that the students themselves resist this kind of learning. Care to guess why?
  • "It has become clear that one-size-fits-all teaching methods are neither effective nor acceptable for today’s diverse students," according to the report. "Technology can and should support individual choices about access to materials and expertise, amount and type of educational content, and methods of teaching."
  •  
    In the fourth slot was nothing short of the "fundamental structure of the K-12 education establishment," specifically, as the authors described it, "resistance to any profound change in practice."
L Butler

Four Pillars of Technology Integration | nashworld - 0 views

  • Think transformation of the way teaching and learning is done in your district, as opposed to integration into it as it exists.
    • L Butler
       
      The success comes when new lessons are created creatively utilizing the technology. It feels awkward when technology is just tacked on to an old lesson - just so there is technology.
  • Learn what they learn.
    • L Butler
       
      Unless people learn / play with the technology, they can not possibly understand the potential power in the classroom.
  • don’t filter the very usefulness out of the web
    • L Butler
       
      Love the wording of this ... sadly it is so true
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The fourth pillar of “instructional model” is more than a quick soundbyte allows.  I see three levels of this notion with increasing value as follows:  1) You have thought about and encouraged good instructional practices in your building/district.  2) You have a well-articulated plan for effective instructional practice that is building or districtwide.  3)  You have a true learner-centered instructional model in place in grades K-12 that credits the constructivist nature of human learning.
  • At this point, the vast majority of school systems are behind the curve in this area.  Being this far behind might just have one distinct advantage.  If there is no way to see any of the individual trees in a forest, you are likely going to be forced to start your mission with a whole-forest view to begin with. 
  • You don’t need a flashlight.  It’s not that dark in there anymore.  Trust that there are others who have proceeded down this path before you, and they have learned many important lessons.  Collaborate.  Learn from their successes and failures.  Do not go it alone. 
  • Ask yourself: what can we do with these new tools available today that we couldn’t do before?  If we could remake our curriculum any way we wanted, how would we do it? 
  • All systems need what I will call an “innovation engine.”  Whatever the system, whatever the setup, schools and school systems need pockets of sponsored innovation.
  • Soon after access is all around you, it doesn’t even feel like “technology,” it just feels like the way things are done.  This is a good thing, for when technology becomes invisible, we can finally focus on the value added from new uses of these tools. 
  • So where does all of this leave you?  How many of these pillars have been already constructed around you?  What have you done to help in that construction? 
  •  
    Interesting blog which addresses technology integration from the perspectives of all the parties involved - admins, technology coaches, teachers, students, etc. Worth the reading.
anonymous

Weblogg-ed » The Larger Lessons - 0 views

  • There’s much more here, obviously, in terms of even bigger questions about the roles of schools and teachers and classrooms in a networked learning world. But I agree that here is where we have to start. What is it we most want our kids to know about what it means to be a person of this world, and how do we best convey it in ways that make sense for the times we live in? Everything else flows from that. What do you think?
    • anonymous
       
      Maybe she's had enough of the term "21st Century" this or that, but I think it's an important concept to hold onto for a while, yet. We may be tired of it, but there are FAR too many others who haven't heard it or who don't truly understand what it looks like. So, let's not rush into the idea of abandoning it just yet. I DO think it's important that leaders answer the question, "What do we want our kids to know about what it means to be a person of this world?" Without a CLEAR statement about that you can't begin to set your goals and curriculum.
anonymous

Justin Reich - Better Strategies Needed for School Internet Access - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

  • The millions of stimulus dollars to be spent on modernizing classrooms won't transform learning if students can't participate in the online forums that are reshaping the economy, journalism, government and society. If government has any helpful role to play in making school Web surfing safer, it should fund the development of online safety curricula and research into effective supervision software and strategies. Requiring more filtering would throw more resources at a failed approach. Another emerging and misguided strategy is requiring certain Web sites, such as social networks, to use age verification software; evading these new obstacles won't be much harder than evading filters.
  •  
    Great article about school filters. Read it and pass it along to your administration, maybe. But certainly, discuss it with them.
anonymous

MixedInk - Free Collaborative Writing Tool - 0 views

  •  
    This is excellent! It may not be perfect yet, but it's as close as I've seen for collaborative writing assignments. Make sure you watch the tour video to get a sense of how it works. They will be making more enhancements for education (no student emails required, better reports, etc) soon. Even as it is, it's great, I believe. This may be the PERFECT tool forthe AUP assignment that appears to be floundering. ;-)
  •  
    This is excellent! It may not be perfect yet, but it's as close as I've seen for collaborative writing assignments. Make sure you watch the tour video to get a sense of how it works. They will be making more enhancements for education soon (no student emails required, and better reports), but even now I think it's excellent!
Melissa Wilson

Flipped: Trends, Tips, Tools, and Myths | Adventures with Technology - 0 views

    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      I am also very curious about the flipped model for my classroom to an extent. It feels hard to trust that my kiddos/parents will practice their rote knowledge, ex. math facts, outside of school when you sometimes don't see homework come back all year from individual students.  I have heard some interesting fixes to this, such as, having students perform the homework while you and the class do a fun activating activity such as a game, etc. This could work... but the question remains; what about kids that have no support at home, need help, and you can't give it to them because you are busy activating the thinking of 20+ other students?  This is also a problem with the current model of education as it stands, those students that don't receive supports at home need more attention, we are only one person, and can't make up for all the lost attention/time at home the way we'd like to. So how can you leverage the technology to help those kids and give them more supports? 
  • They did say that the students connect better when it is their own teacher. You would miss that connection if you just found videos from other people.
    • Ryan Donnelly
       
      Finding videos of other teachers doing your flipped lesson would feel impersonal, tend to alienate those students that are already weary of being connected in school, and most likely just have irrelevant material included amongst the important content. You can't tell a student, "Oh just ignore minute 2:30 to 2:45, they went out on a confusing tanget for a minute" because of their personality/teaching style. You NEED to have your own tangents/teaching style. It's what connects your students to you!
  • Perfection will just result in frustration
    • Matthew Rogers
       
      If you are looking to use this material consistently with universal results, is it worth it to have the videos up to snuff?
  • ...1 more annotation...
    • Melissa Wilson
       
      Would be interesting to give this a try with the 8th grade science teacher I work with. Seems like such a perfect fit for science. Do students need to prove that they watched the videos?
Ryan Donnelly

Edudemic | Social Media & Schools | Scoop.it - 1 views

  •  
    Great compilation of online articles about using social media in the classroom. As an added bonus, it is laid out using a gorgeous Web 2.0 Magazine creator: scoop.it. 
Michelle Krill

21st century learning: How online videos enhance education at home and in the classroom... - 0 views

  •  
    "YouTube videos in class, calls it "21st century learning" and says because video technology is such a part of the students' lives it makes sense to incorporate it into the educational experience."
mary heuer

Blogging helps encourage teen writing | Top News | eSchoolNews.com - 9 views

  • Blogging is helping many teens become more prolific writers.
    • Michelle Krill
       
      Wow! What a statement!
    • janae kauffman
       
      I know!
  • it and revise their writing on a computer, the report says. Nearly six in 10 students (57 percent) say they edit and revise more frequently when they write using a computer. Teens who use a computer in their non-school writing believe computers have a greater impact on the amount of writing they produce than on the overall quality of their writing. Yet, there is a great deal of ambiguity with respect to the impact of computers in each of these areas. Among teens who use computers in their non-school writing, four in 10 say computers help them do more writing, and a similar number believe they would write the same amount whether they used computers or not. In comparison, only three in 10 teens who write on computers for non-school purposes at least occasionally believe computers help them do better writing–and twice as many (63 percent) say computers make no difference in the quality of their writing. Parents are more likely than teens to believe that internet-based writing (such as eMail and instant messaging) affects writing skills overall, though both groups are split on whether electronic communications help or hurt. Nonetheless, 73 percent of teens and 40 percent of parents believe internet writing makes no difference either way. Most students (82 percent) believe that additional instruction and focus on writing in school would help improve their writing even further–and more than three-quarters of those surveyed (78 percent) think it would help their writing if their teachers used computer-based writing tools such as games, multimedia, or writing software programs or web sites during class. The telephone-based survey of 700 U.S. residents ages 12 to 17 and their parents was conducted last year from Sept. 19 to Nov. 16 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. Link: "Writing, Technology, and Teens" survey var a2a_config = a2a_config || {}; a2a_config.linkname="Blogging helps encourage teen writing"; a2a_config.linkurl="http://www.eschoolnews.com/2008/04/30/blogging-helps-encourage-teen-writing/"; Comments are closed <script language=JavaScript src="http://rotator.adjuggler.com/servlet/ajrotator/173768/0/vj?z=eschool&dim=173789&pos=6&abr=$scriptiniframe"></script><noscript><a href="http://rotator.adjuggler.com/servlet/ajrotator/173768/0/cc?z=eschool&pos=6"><img src="http://rotator.adjuggler.com/servlet/ajrotator/173768/0/vc?z=eschool&dim=173789&pos=6&abr=$imginiframe" width="300" height="250" border="0"></a></noscript> Recent Stories with Comments Kentucky offers cloud-based software to 700,000 school usersNo access for bad guysU.S. court weighs school discipline for lewd web postsParent video protesting state budget cuts goes viralEditorial: Threats to innovation <SCRIPT language='JavaScript1.1' SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/N5621.125531.9553987353421/B3794502.5;abr=!ie;sz=300x250;click=;ord=996778?"> </SCRIPT> <NOSCRIPT> <A HREF="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/N5621.125531.9553987353421/B3794502.5;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;ord=996778?"> <IMG SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N5621.125531.9553987353421/B3794502.5;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;ord=996778?" BORDER=0 WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 ALT="Click Here"></A> </NOSCRIPT> Educator Resource Centers Computing in the Cloud How technology can help with language instruction Communication and Collaboration for More Effective School Management Expert Blog: Security Insights Boost Student Achievement with Connected Teaching Private: Testing ERC Page Solving key IT challenges with virtualization Online Learning: One Pathway to Success Re-imagining Education One-to-one computing: The last piece of the puzzle Recent Entries Customers question tech industry’s takeover spree New rules bring online piracy fight to U.S. campuses Judge orders school newspaper to delete stories Ed-tech grant program aims to boost college readiness Lawmakers tra
  •  
    "Survey reveals that student bloggers are more prolific and appreciate the value of writing more than their peers"
  •  
    I am trying to get rid of this but cannot delete because it has been annotated by others....that's what I get for playing around ...
Michelle Krill

Write4net: Publishing is a matter of click. - 0 views

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    Publish full articles without needing a blog or site. There's no setup or login. Just write your text and Write4net will publish it using your Twitter account. That's it. So easy. And free! You can format your text with several features, including pictures and YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion videos. Your text will be published and instantly tweeted. Plus you get a personal page, blog style, where everybody can find all your articles (it even has RSS!).
Michelle Krill

DoInk.com | Draw, Animate, and Collaborate - 0 views

  •  
    A free online drawing and animation tool that runs right in your browser. You can treat it like Microsoft Paint and use it to do just a quick doodle, or take advantage of its layer cloning and vector-based designs to create relatively advanced animations.
anonymous

Microsoft Office Labs vision 2019 (montage + video) - istartedsomething - 0 views

    • anonymous
       
      What are your thoughts on this version of the future? Does Moore's law begin to make more sense, now? Does this version of the future excite or worry you?
    • Timothy Laubach
       
      I love this vision of the future.  I can see tremendous benefits.  Just think of one specific instance, say you are having a medical issue, when the paramedics arrive, they could have instant access to the information they need to help you.  Fascinating.
    • Kati Hoover
       
      Wow. A digital credit card? And not just that, but the other items, as well. It is hard for me to believe that these items are actually a possibility and close to being unveiled to the public. This video excites me more than it worries me. Yes, I think there are some drawbacks, but the possiblities are amazing.
    • Lauren Hummel
       
      This is exciting and intimidating at the same time. Everything from advanced to simple technologies will be right at our fingertips. Although it's simple, updating the prices on the shelves is a very cool technology.
    • anonymous
       
      The digital credit card WAS cool. I'll bet it only works if it sense YOUR fingerprints, too. Otherwise, how would it be secure?
    • Lucy Chubb
       
      I'm excited! I can see it, as Kati said, getting people up and moving. The possibilities are endless for education, think of the liberation from the classroom, the ability to stand outside in the sun and look at the Antarctic.
    • Sandra Benedict
       
      I think the future is exciting and also very scarry. Technology advances are unlimited. I wish we would apply our energies and creativity to an oil, gas free society.
    • Mary Richards
       
      I remember years ago my father swore that the techonology that was produced today could have been produced months prior. He believed that the "tech creators" were sending out slower versions of everything in order to get us to buy more, thereby increasing their profits. It's the first thing I thought of when I saw Moore's video, althought I don't know that I've every completely agreed with my father - does make me wonder though. I responded to Moore's law on the class discussion board - my replication of that response, in a nutshell, is how exciting all of this is.
    • carol powell
       
      Many years ago there was talk of smart glasses that would register information from our refrigerators (like our shopping lists), which would then remind us as we passed by a grocery store, essentially 'talking to' the grocery store about what is needed at home. The video was fascinating. I jokingly tell people that soon we will have microchips implanted in our heads, akin to the idea that there will be contact lenses that will serve as an overlay of information as we look at the world. Nothing surprises me anymore, but I do wonder about the issues of privacy (becoming more of an archaic idea) as we move forward.
  •  
    I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts on this video.
anonymous

ShowMeWhatsWrong.com - 2 views

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    Now THIS is a VERY cool idea. Send someone a link. They click the link and open an app that allows them to record their screen. When they finish they click stop and it gets uploaded to the web and an email is sent to you with a link to a playback page. Watch it there or download it. Now folks can show you exactly what they're doing "wrong."
L Butler

Schools should embrace cell phones - 0 views

    • L Butler
       
      In my district, the bigger issue is bandwidth. We are moving towards 1 to 1 - however, the connecting to the internet is what is getting in the way. But I would agree, most high schools do not have enough computers for everyone to use.
  • most high schools in the United States do not have enough computers for all students to use at once. By allowing cell phone usage, the ability to access the Internet will become much easier and will help schools save money. Since a cell phone uses a separate network to access the Internet, wireless networks will be spared the rugged strain all school wireless networks undergo. With a less stressed wireless network, fewer repairs will need to be made, thus relieving the IT staffs at schools.
    • L Butler
       
      I agree with this. My district is attempting to move towards 1 to 1 classrooms, but they have found that access to the internet is the big issue. It is easier to add computers, it is more of a challenge to increase the bandwidth. I think it could cut back on the school wireless network.
    • L Butler
       
      80% have cell phones - but many of the examples that are given for how students could benefit from having cell phones would require a cell phone and a data plan. Personally, I have been unwilling to spend $120 a month to have a data plan, and I imagine many parents would feel the same way.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Many critics argue that kids will become distracted if cell phones are allowed in class. Cell phones, however, potentially create the same distraction that comes along with sitting next to a classmate.
    • L Butler
       
      Great quote ... however if the teachers management style is not strong enough, the cell phones could be another reason students are off task. If they are not connected to a school network, there is no way to track to see if they are on task.
  • Homework alerts and project directions can be sent via text message
  • One of the many missions of the educational system in the United States is to prepare students for life as adults so they can be productive citizens in a vastly changing world. Technology has been around for decades and is only growing and advancing. So why are schools not informing students on how to use it safely and effectively?
  • 80 percent of high school students in the United States have cell phones.
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