Saturday, December 27, 2008

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Saturday, December 20, 2008

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Saturday, December 13, 2008

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Saturday, December 06, 2008

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Saturday, November 29, 2008

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Friday, November 28, 2008

The Eyes Have It


A little over a week ago, I was in a two day workshop on Instructional Coaching. One of the conversations drifted to video recording the coach and/or the partner teacher to deconstruct lessons. The facilitator raised questions about how comfortable people would be with being recorded and there were many nodding heads. But just that morning, I had seen the Playskool dance cam advertised on TV.

Then, while skimming news feeds during the session, I came across this article on boingboing about a woman who lost an eye in an accident and would like it replaced with a webcam. Is camera shy becoming a generation gap issue? There are cameras everywhere; people are always taking pictures. Video is close behind. We have already seen early uses and abuses of this.



Trend Watch and the Mutation of Preference


Google.org has announced Flu Trend. This highly altruistic example of the power of mass aggregation of data must have all sorts of people salivating. Imagine being able to sort through all the signal noise and accurately predict an emerging trend. High tech cool hunting.

Researchers in Sweden have been working with little robots that emit patterns of light. When the person interacting with the robots sees a pleasing pattern, she gives the robot a shake. Robot A then goes out into the crowd of robots; when Robot A makes contact with Robot B, the pattern is passed on. Only the pattern is not static. Robot B had its own pattern, so when Robot A’s pattern is acquired it doesn’t so much replace Robot B’s pattern as alter it. Call it recombinant, or even mutated.



Assembly Required

So, cameras are everywhere; robots recognize the patterns we prefer and communicate those patterns to other robots; like a game of genetically-enhanced telephone, the patterns mutate; before anyone is even fully aware of what is happening, Google assembles the larger patterns that emerge from our expression of preferences and predicts any number of behavioral trends--traffic patterns, fashion trends, criminal activity.

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Photo credits
Playskool Dance Cam
Flu Trends graph
Woman holding eyeball

Saturday, November 22, 2008

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Saturday, November 01, 2008

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Saturday, October 18, 2008

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  • In preparation for this post I did a little research on going textbook free and I also talked with the Junior High Social Studies teacher at our school who has moved to a textbook free classroom. What I want to offer here are some observations about why we are moving in this direction.

    tags: curriculum, textbooks, integrating_technology

  • With our district’s website overhaul out of the way, our sights are now set on ePortfolios. Our goals:

    * 100% coverage of certified staff by the end of the 09-10 school year
    * 100% of our students at the middle school maintaining them with the transfer to high school as 8th graders promote each year
    * Utilization of ePortfolios as evidence of staff mastery of state and federal technology application standards; future reporting to SBEC
    * Utilization of ePortfolios as evidence of student mastery of state an

    tags: e-portfolio, learning, integrating_technology

  • Does anyone know of some superintendents who are podcasting? If so, would you drop a URL and/or some contact info in the comments area for this post? Doug Johnson and I are looking for some examples that we can show other superintendents…

    tags: podcast, leadership, superintendent

  • David Warlick has four things the POTUS ought to know about making U.S. schools better.

    Last month I posted a manifesto of sorts to my Web site. I was following a meme started by a group of other edubloggers called "Five things policymakers ought to know!" T&L editors asked me to tweak it a bit to give our next President some big-picture twenty-first-century education advice. Here's my take.

    tags: education, leadership, policy, instructional-technology

    • The greatest gain will come from the collective
      knowledge and experience of the
      education community. Infrastructure
      must be invented and implemented that
      cultivates an ongoing professional conversation
      across the entire education
      landscape.
      • I like this quote; how do we do this well within even just within a building or district? - post by mjclausen

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Thursday, October 16, 2008

Well, that was disappointing

I'm bummed. No one showed up for my first session at MEA--Creating a Personal Learning Network. Fortunately, I only live 10 blocks or so away, so it was easy to run home for lunch.

Some of the factors that may have contributed were out of my control. The time slot was 10 am to 1 pm; crossing over the lunch hour may have killed some interest outright. The location was a bit out of the way. Most of the sessions are being held in the high school, but a few sessions are in the College of Technology, which is across the parking lot. It isn't all that far away, but on a gray day in October, it may be just far enough.

However, I wonder if my title and blurb weren't catchy enough for the general education crowd. When I offered this session at an ed-tech conference, I had a packed house. But I'm wondering if the title isn't clear enough for the non-tech types, which is who I wanted to attract (of course, it probably didn't help that the title in the quick list of sessions was "Creating a Personal Learning N...").

So, the next time I present a session like this during a general education conference, I need to put more thought into my audience. As much as I am tired of the terms, perhaps "web 2.0", or even just internet, still needs to be in the title.

Part 2 of the workshop is from 2-5 (and wasn't even listed in the quick list); I'm curious to see if anyone shows up.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

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MEA days presentation

This coming week includes our two days of Montana Education Association professional development, and on Thursday, I will be presenting two sessions on using web 2.0.

The first is focusing on RSS, social bookmarking, and RSS aggregators. I've got three hours, and I'm hoping that is enough time to introduce these concepts, get teachers set up with a tool or two, and provide time for guided practice using the tools.

The second session is largely about blogging, but I am hoping to work in some Twitter and an intro to Classroom 2.0. Again, I'm hoping to have time during the three hours to provide plenty of opportunities to use the tools while we are there as a group to work through any issues that pop up. We'll see how far we get.

My big goal for Thursday is to keep the focus on the personal use of these tools. It will be interesting to see what the participants find useful and how they choose to use the tools.

Saturday, October 04, 2008

Saturday, September 27, 2008

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Saturday, September 13, 2008

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Saturday, September 06, 2008

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