Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

I’ve been given the opportunity at our district’s administrator’s meeting to take 20 minutes and provide some type of Professional Development. That’s not a lot of time but understandable given their agendas.

I decided this week to present some ideas from Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat . I used these key sections from his MIT lecture:

• 11:10-12:10 Comparison with Columbus
• 15:30-18:25 Globalization 3.0
• 35:34-42:00 Vertical to Horizontal
• 46:00-47:39 The World our Kids will Grow up in

This isn’t as powerful as the whole lecture or obviously the book but I hope it begins to challenge our thinking around an education system that is largely based on old world standards and hierarchy.

Those days are done. We do have a good number of teachers that realize this and have begun to change. But we need more. I hope that as leaders, we can provide the constant push to see change happen.

Here’s a collection of weird stuff I’ve come across over the past few days.

1. Animated stereograms. Remember those 3-D pictures from 10 years ago where you had to look cross-eyed to see the image behind the pixels? Here’s a video version of the same thing. You’ll have to watch it a few times to see it. via Dave Weinberger
2. Million Dollar Homepage. I only wish I thought of this one. Alex Lew, a college student thought he could sell a million pixels of webspace a dollar at a time. He started 2 months ago and now has over half a million dollars. I’d say his education is now paid for. via Alan Levine
3. 250,000 Bouncy Balls. A new commercial for a plasma tv sees a quarter of a million bouncy balls relaesed in San Francisco.



4. The Drive Home videoblog. I’ve done a podcast from my vehicle which makes sense when you commute. I don’t, that’s why I’ve only done it twice. This guy uses a video camera during his daily half hour commute in Massechussets.