Bill would tax rich colleges' endowments is the headline in the Boston Globe. My reaction is instinctive: how do we prevent the politicians from raiding private school endowments? Exeter and other successful schools come to mind as being targets.
All schools who are 501 (c) (3) tax exempt institutions really should make arrangements to pay their fair share for local services such as police, fire,… Continue
Posted by Robert Kennedy on May 11, 2008 at 6:41am —
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Spicy network of NanoScience, Nanopaprika.eu - The International
NanoScience Community started life in November 2007 and, today, counts
more than 480 members. It is a virtual meeting point for researchers,
industrial partners and students from more than 50 countries, and
covers some 20 thematic groups (nanotoxicity, nanomedicine,
nanoeducation,…). Discussions, forums, chat, videos and photos are
open to all members. Visit the www.nanopaprika.eu learn how to 'sign
up'.… Continue
Posted by andras paszternak on April 30, 2008 at 4:11pm —
No Comments
I met with our head of school just a few minutes ago to talk about 21st Century Learning/Literacy. A little nerve-wracking. He had seen a couple of videos already, which helped. He definitely has spent time processing the fact that the next 100 years will be significantly different from the last 100. He's incredibly well-read and in touch with other educational leaders, so he knows we need to reflect and move here. He was also brutally honest about the fact that, in spite of the reading and keep… Continue
I came upon this site last night and have been thinking about it ever since. Here's a video done by Bill Farren that I would like to show to audiences who've already seen and exclaimed over (or been depressed by) Did You Know or Shift Happens.
Continue
This is a cross-post from our school project blog http://linuxlaptops.blogspot.com.
I know several readers of this blog are reading it for their interest in Linux and not so much for their interest in education. However, let me speak specifically to the educators for a moment. Besides, this is going to be a long post. A lot of us are looking at our schools and seeking ways to improve the application of 21st Century Skills into our environments. Man… Continue
Posted by Alex Inman on April 26, 2008 at 3:30pm —
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I'll be leading a full week of investigation into how Web 2.0 tools can envigorate your teaching and learning as part of the four week Research Tools for Secondary Science Educators institute a the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach the week of July 21-25. This week is open to all K12 teachers, regardless of grade level or subject matter focus. There is a cap of 15 educators to keep the learning personal and a modest stipend is o… Continue
Posted by Scott Merrick on April 24, 2008 at 6:05am —
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I'll be presenting/wrangling a 9 educator panel workshop called "SLedupotential--Educational Potential of Second Life and Virtual Worlds" at this year's National Educational Computing Conference in San Antonio. See the ongoing work at the SLedupotential wiki for a preview, and join us (still a few spots left in the 30-seat maximum roster) if you're going to be there. Hey, join us even if you're not: Simply login to Second Life, get yourself an a… Continue
Posted by Scott Merrick on April 24, 2008 at 5:50am —
No Comments
From today's eSchool News:
More than 50 percent of students in grades 3-12 would like to see more educational gaming in their schools—yet only 19 percent of parents and 15 percent of administrators favor that idea.
Does this surprise us? Is anyone using any gaming beyond the traditional review game activities? I know I'm not, I 'm just not sure that I know the extent to w… Continue
A Task Force has been formed by the Berkman Center (Harvard) to address internet safety. This group will work to find technological ways to ensure child safety online.
The APA has released some interesting research showing the actual threat from online predators to be much less than the popular media would have use believe.
Greater technological safe gua… Continue
Posted by Ernie on April 16, 2008 at 2:45pm —
No Comments
Two musical references from the 80's for this one:
First one is in response to some planning we're doing on a retreat topic for our faculty next fall. I'd love feedback.
Remember the old ABBA song: Knowing Me, Knowing You?
Knowing You or, Who are our students?
How about an "tour" of our kids lives--their anxieties, their relationships, their fears, their achievements. . . and how the online world plays a part in this.
Who are we?
Guiding Question--Are we modeling what we say tha… Continue
I attended an event in Second Life that might be of interest. "Beating the No U-Turn Syndrome: A New Approach to Teaching and Enforcing Copyright Compliance" by Doug Johnson. The text of this presentation is available on Dou'g wiki. Here are my notes from the evening.
He began by talking about the image of the LMS related to copyright. Curre… Continue
Posted by Ernie on April 15, 2008 at 8:00am —
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As I am helping to organize and host the first ever gathering of NCAIS school librarians some questions have come up. Many of the NCAIS member schools are not members of NAIS. I also am discovering that many members of NCSLMA are not members of ALA/AASL. So, I'm left wondering - what are the ramifications of this disconnect between membership in local/state associations and… Continue
Posted by Ernie on April 11, 2008 at 12:30pm —
No Comments
One of the reoccurring themes we seem to discuss is encouraging professional development. I was toying with the idea of starting a ning for faculty to discuss/share ideas about general professional development and network. It would let them share ideas and network outside of the constraints of a hectic schedule. Has anyone started a social network for their faculty? What were the results? Continue
One of the touchstone questions in my life was asked roughly six years ago by Brenda Dyck on the MiddleTalk (then MiddleWeb) listserve: "What would you do if you were brave?" The question led me to think deeply and write about what kind of middle school I would want to work in, and eventually to propose that Stoneleigh-Burnham School create a seventh and eighth gr… Continue
Posted by Bill Ivey on April 6, 2008 at 10:00pm —
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I'm helping a teacher prepare a case study of one of her technology integration projects. She'll share this study on Monday at the VAIS tech conference. I went looking for good questions and found the ones involving teacher researchers to be better suited to our needs than the tech integration questions.
Do you have any question you would add?
Here are the ones I've found:
1) What did you want students to know or be able to do as a result of the project?
2) How did technology influence the p… Continue
How do we define the boundaries of what we do and what we don't do when someone has a technology problem?
This week-end at the Virginia Association of Independent Schools' Technology retreat, I'll be taking part in a conversation about establishing boundaries. Please share what have yo… Continue
So I am playing a favorite game with a colleague. She comes up with some weird, quirky problem having to do with technology, or work flow management, or collaboration. I then pull up a few sites that solve that problem.
Now, my friend and I have gone through this dance countless times. This time, however, she demands to know how I knew that thing existed. "What do you do, look up stuff on the internet every day, just in case there might be something usefull?"
A guilty stare.
"Really?"… Continue
It's cloudy and icky outside today and so I seem to be finding one depressing video on the web after another--all lamenting the US's lack of standing in international education rankings. I didn't know UNICEF ranked education systems, and I have no idea what the criteria were for this particular ranking. Here's the video though--and it uses Cheetos to represent student populations. Now I'm off to see who is behind "Edin '08 the site hosting the video.… Continue
Posted by Sarah Hanawald on April 3, 2008 at 10:10am —
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A couple of days ago on Weblogg-ed, Will Richardson posted regarding an interview with researcher Tom Austin that appeared in Fast Company. The topic was the collaborative abilities of teenagers. Richardson highlighted one quotation:
"Look at teenagers today. They're teamagers. They work on projects as a group and think nothing of
doin… Continue
to those faculty and non-techie folks then you might want to check out http://www.commoncraft.com/ a company out of Seattle, WA. They use a simple format and real-world stories to make sense of complex ideas. In short, think of UPS' commercial concept used to explain twitter, RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, etc.
Here is an excellent example of their twitter explanation - http://www.youtube.com/user/leelefever Continue
Miguel Guhlin wrote a great article about an emerging practice in conferences-- encouraging off-site participation. These same technologies could easily be applied to a classroom situation to allow anyone from anywhere to virtually participate in the learning experience.
Miguel writes, "What if you could broadcast learning at will via the Internet to a world of learners? How would that change your conception of learning? What if you could interact with pe… Continue
Posted by Demetri Orlando on March 21, 2008 at 9:00am —
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At the recent NAIS conference, Larry Kahn and I presented a basic introduction to Web 2.0 in the Classrooms of the Future on "Where the Jobs Are, Where the Kids Are, Schools in the Middle." My part of the presentation included reference to a Garageband soundscape project that could be shared on the Internet as a podcast. At the request of some who attended the session, I've included more information on the project below.
Overview:
For the past two years, my English II classes have create… Continue
Posted by Susan Davis on March 20, 2008 at 2:00pm —
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Charter School Connections
This is an unofficial and informal listserv for people interested in or working in charter schools across the US. The inspiration for this is the wonderful ISED listserv (http://www.milton.edu/ISED-L/). Charter school people need an online niche, too!
The purpose of this list is to facilitate conversation and the sharing of resources. This list is not limited to just tech talk. Teachers and adminis… Continue
Posted by Lucy Gray on March 16, 2008 at 4:00pm —
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I am interested in how other schools handle the technology "special" class. At our school, this class is considered a "special". This means the technology teacher comes to the classroom with the mobile lab. The classroom teacher leaves the class for a planning period, etc. and returns after the class is over.
At many of the conferences that I have recently attended I have learned that some schools are setup with the classroom teacher remaining in the classroom during "technology". He/She is the… Continue
I'm at a "Public Sector Multi-Customer" briefing at Lenovo's facility in Raleigh. We just heard from Charlie Prestia, Executive Director of all Public Sector sales in the US. He told us a little about how Lenovo is structured. My big take aways:
60% of their public sector sales are in education. We're an important sector.
Their goal is four days from order to delivery. Currently they are at 10 days. Should be at 8 days in the next 4 months. That sounds interesting to someone (me) who has somet… Continue
Back on the soapbox.
I don't know how many times I've heard over the years "I don't have time to learn how to do this. Why can't it be part of in-service? We should have time put into our schedules to learn [insert whatever here]."
Professionals learn on their own. They don't wait for their company, business, school, etc. to hand them the information they need to get better at what they do. They make a personal commitment, sacrifice some of their valuable time, and make the effort to learn som… Continue
This is my rant to all the educators out there clamoring, "I need a Smartboard! I need a Smartboard!"
PROVE IT.
Show me how you have far exceeded your teaching capabilities and can no longer continue without one. Show me the in-depth multimedia presentations that engage your students but are missing the chance to go up and poke the screen. Show me how your students' educations are suffering because you don't have one hanging on your wall to use as a big movie projector. Show me a teacher who c… Continue
Recently, a teacher at our school asked me some questions about other schools and their expectations of teachers regarding homework pages and posting assignments. I went to several independent school websites and tried to peruse the middle school homework pages. I ended up really frustrated. Almost all the pages required a logged in account on that school's system. (Whipple Hill?)
Why? Does your school require this? Why is homework protected? From whom? Is this a deliberate decision or is it "j… Continue
We are seeking articles to help us better understand why students spend so much time on social network sites and other socially connective technologies such as IM and multiplayer games. Can you recommend good reading on this topic? I know of one really excellent article: danah boyd in response to the Econo…Continue
In my prior entry, I wrote of the need to create contexts to foster and sustain educational innovativeness and described a particular project we've undertaken at Phoenix Country Day. I prefer the word contexts because it can help us to move beyond narrow notions of professional development. It enables us to more easily take the step of seeing every situation as an opportunity for growth. (Trite as that may sound, imagine the entire faculty and administration of your school practicing it o… Continue
Posted by Eric Neufer on March 9, 2008 at 3:38pm —
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There is some benefit to having that constant connectedness. The fact that I have my AOL IM on my phone or that in one day I can have a text messaging marathon. Quickly and efficiently, I can get my thoughts out to multiple people with a click of a few buttons.
Let me introduce briefly Camille. I have known Camille for the last ten or so years, she was the one who introduced me to speed skating and who I still to this day enjoy pie with on most Wednesdays. She is also the one who on more than o… Continue
You are invited to write for the next issue of Etni Rag online journal by joining the etnirag wiki at http://etnirag.wikispaces.com
Thank you.
Nellie Deutsch Continue
Posted by Nellie Deutsch on March 8, 2008 at 6:54pm —
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I am very excited. I was invited by the Linux Foundation to attend their Collaboration Summit in Austin, TX April 8-10. I will serve on a panel providing end user feedback to the leaders of most of the major development teams in Open Source. I know there are a handful of you out there using Linux Desktop. I started a discussion thread in the Open Source Group on this topic. It would be great if you… Continue
Posted by Alex Inman on March 7, 2008 at 1:43pm —
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So one of the issues I have with our smartboards is the general patina of ink that they build up, leading to general unusability after several years. A few days ago we had an incident and got a lot of ball point ink on one, adding a few of those years all at once. So I'm launching into finding a way to clean/resurface these beasts. I've got the usual suspects as far as chemicals go to start with. I know about the Dryerase marker trick. I'm debating using car polishing compound to strip a bit of… Continue
Cross posted from my blog
In February, St. Raphael's Catholic School hosted their annual State of the School. As I was assisting the teachers on their presentations and talking about various topics regarding educational technology, a nagging thought kept coming into my mind, "What is Global Contribution?" We talk as educators that we want our students to contribute to the community, but is today's community larger than our local neighborhood?… Continue
Posted by Lisa Sjogren on March 5, 2008 at 3:30pm —
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We’re suffering from too many good ideas.
- An anonymous school head, as quoted by Robert Evans
It is not realistic to ask teachers to do all that they do and add yet another new thing without thinking differently about the old things.
- Alan Bain
Mastery of new concepts, materials, and methods, though typically the unique focus of staff development efforts, is actually the last stage of a complex cognitive and affective process.
- Robert Evans
Several years of experience with educatio… Continue
This past weekend I spent time with people who are from the Greatest Generation and I listened to them complain that nothing is made in the Great United States of America anymore. They went on to say that maybe our country is not so great anymore. This made me reflect on a few things.
* First, is the number of products made in the USA a benchmark for defining great?
* Second, if it is not products what defines great?
These are two very tough questions and I firmly believe there are many answe… Continue
Posted by Dorothy Bialke on March 4, 2008 at 10:49am —
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Once in a while things are going good. I'm sitting in my lair planning Summer projects or smiting(figuratively) students... And then I get the phone call. And I find out that something that I thought was working well enough to be a point of pride just isn't.
It's like a bucket of cold water getting tossed on me.
Off to the front lines. Continue
So I've been developing a plan to lifecycle faculty/staff laptops this summer. What to get was pretty easy. How many to get was pretty easy once I figured out how many laptops could fit in the building and divide that by three. Where they need to go wasn't too hard. Now I'm looking at the names of the people and thinking about how I'm going to pry the old laptops from their fingers and I think it's going to be a long summer. Continue
At long last, I've finished editing the wiki , "Digital Natives, Global Citizens," created by my 11th-grade students in response to our semester-long study of technology and civilization as part of my Language Arts class. Other than the editing, the wiki was created and designed by students from start to finish.
Here are some teasers from their Proposals for how to bring these issues to a larger audience:
"But we are getting mixed… Continue
Several years ago I taught Modern World Literature as a one-semester English elective for seniors. At that time, I included texts such as Fountain and Tomb by Naguib Mahfouz; Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton; Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard; and The Sound of the Waves by Yukio Mishima. We also studied short stories by Kafka, Camus, and Marquez and the poetry of Octavio Paz.
I will be resurrecting that course as a junior/senior elective for the fall semester next year and am cur… Continue
Posted by Cindy Douglass on February 21, 2008 at 12:22pm —
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Hi Everyone,
I feel way to busy to do this, but feel that it's way to important not to do this. I already have another blog started so why don't you take a look over there. Continue
Posted by Susan Smith on February 20, 2008 at 3:05pm —
No Comments
Just a reminder that we are participating with Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach in a year-long professional development opportunity next fall. We are beginning to form the core group of 20 schools, so if you are interested, don't hesitate to email if you have questions. Here is part of my previous post. You can look for the rest below!
We, at Fredericksburg Academy, have the opportunity to participate in a national program with key people engaged in this process. The Powerful Learning P… Continue
I just read Ted McCain's Teaching for Tomorrow (2005). It is a quick (90 page) book that lays out a great rationale for changing pedagogy towards real-world project-based-learning where the teacher step… Continue
Google announced a competition for k12 students today based on their famed Google Doodles, a whimsical tradition in which holidays and important dates are noted. Artist Dennis Hwang draws these doodles around the Google logo and can be viewed from time to time on Google's home page.
In this contest, students are asked to ponder the question, "What if..." and use their imaginations to construct their very own Google Doodle. The winner will have their doodle appear on Google's home page for a day… Continue
Posted by Lucy Gray on February 13, 2008 at 7:00pm —
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Next Monday, we'll spend a professional development day considering the following prompt:
The world is changing, content is cheap, and collaboration is easy. We should....
How would you answer that question? You can follow along with the discussion Collegiate-Richmond at this wiki.
http://willstalk.wikispaces.com/
I'd love to hear your thoughts! Continue
This morning's blog post by Larry Ferlazzo offers excellent advice to those working with teachers to integrate educational technology. He says, "Identify teacher self-interests through listening and relationship-building, and afterwards help them see how using technology can help them get what they want — if it can." Then he mentions a commu…
I know many people will be attending NAIS about this time, but if you're looking for an alternative consider the following.
Illinois Computing Educators' annual conference is taking place in St.
Charles IL
February 26-29 with the theme of Learning Outside Boundaries. Anyone is
welcome to attend. Our keynote speakers
this year are Dan Buettner of Blue Zones Quest fame and Mitch Resnick
of MIT.
Spotlight speakers include retired Mabry Middle School Principal Tim
Tyson, Vicki Davis of the… Continue
Looking for a way to easily manage, organize and download all those great new video resources on the web? Take a look at Miro. An outstanding free open-source tool for working with Internet video. Thanks to Kerri Richardson for pointing out Miro on the NYCIST listserve!
Fred Continue
Posted by Fred Bartels on January 31, 2008 at 5:51pm —
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When I look at my office I start hearing the creepy music from ghostbusters... That's okay. I need what I need to keep things up and running and running better. But one thing I can't do without is the well stocked and organized back room, when I need to know how many 2.5" hard drives are on hand, I really need to know.…
So, all of you with Microsoft on your campus subscribe to TechNet, right? If not, you need to check it out right now - the ROI is significant! Free software and access to great resources.
Like this video demo on hacking by Marcus Murray: http://www.microsoft.com/emea/spotlight/sessionh.aspx?videoid=351 Knowing the Enemy - A Lightning Demonstration on how hackers attack networks
No, it's not a really bad case of atheletes foot.
It is a revolutionary way to teach computer science concepts. Created by the same folks who made BlueJ.
Take a look here: http://www.greenfoot.org/
Fred Continue
Posted by Fred Bartels on January 28, 2008 at 10:01am —
No Comments
Is anyone else out there experimenting with Seesmic?
I've just started using it, and am intrigued by the possibilities... it's "video conversations"... kind of like twitter, but easier to follow threads, and all of it done over video not text, so you retain all of the non-verbal co…
Yesterday and today I've been tuning into sessions at "EduCon" - an ed-tech conference being hosted by Chris Lehman at his school, the Science Leadership Academy, in Philadelphia. Several of the sesssions have been streamed lived over uStream and it's been fun to sit here in my living room listening (and seeing) Gary Stager, Chris, Will Richardson, Sylvia Martinez, Joyce Valenze, and David Jakes, etc discuss interesting questions about implementing technology in meaningful ways. The conference h… Continue
We
had
an
alumna
return
last
week
to
give
a
gallery
talk
to
kick
off
an
exhibit
of
her
photography
at
our
school.
Her
subject
matter
is
interior
spaces
-
she
says
she
learned,
visiting
nursing
homes,
that
often
photographs
of
someone's
surroundings
show
more
about
that
person
than
a
traditional
portrait.
Writing
an
essay
on
the
topic
for
our
middle
school
newsletter,
I
looked
at
my
own
interior
space
at
Stoneleigh-Burnham,
and
burst
out
lau… Continue
I had the good fortune to audit a beta course from Learning Tree International a few weeks ago called "Windows Administration using Windows Powershell."
I would highly recommend this class or one of the new Powershell books out on the market to anyone who administers Windows servers, or those who supervise them. This scripting tool is phenomenally powerful and well worth the time it takes to dig into the scripting language. It even standardizes much of the syntax used by the diverse tool…
Sustainable Schools: Billion Dollar Endowments Under Attack
Spicy world of NanoScience
The "vision thing"
Linux and Open Source: The epitome of 21st Century Skills - My reflections on the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit
Professional Development/Learning Model
Internet Safety
Social Networking as a Professional Development Tool
Risk is Progression
Case Study Questions: Have any good ones?
I hear this Internet thing is going to be a big deal.
Teenagers or Teamagers?
Tuning In to Learning
Poetic Soundscapes (NAIS Follow-Up)
Charter School Teachers List
Dropping the students at the door...
"But I don't have time to become a better teacher...waaaaa!"
More to Do and More to Reflect On
The Millennial and The Friend
Defining Great.
World Literature
New to blogging
Miro - A Great Tool for Managing Internet Video
TechNet - Hacking lightning demo
the library