Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

I got tagged a couple of times so with the premise of not over thinking these things and their importance, I’ll bite.

1. My oldest daughter went to university when she was less than a year old. I married my wife when I was only 20 and had just completed my first year of university. We both were attending university for the first 4 years of marriage. We had our first child during my 4th year and my wife’s 3rd year, and on occasion, when babysitters were an issue, we took her to class with us.
2. I have a wealth of useless sports trivia knowledge, particularly golf. I was a sports statistic freak as a child and still am when it comes to PGA golf and NFL football. I’ve even been consulted very regularly from friends and family to resolve disputes on the matter.
3. I do almost all the cooking in our house. Probably not the the extent of Mark Ahlness but I have a few specialties.
4. I taught grade one for the first 6 years of my teaching career. There were few and still aren’t many males teaching primary students. It was a great experience and I’d highly encourage men to pursue this.
5. I like TV. My favourites being Seinfeld (seen every episode dozens of times), The Office, King of Queens, almost anything on the Documentary, Biography channel and the NFL Network, college basketball and golf. I also challenge those who pride themselves in the statement, “I don’t watch a lot of TV, there’s nothing good on.” My wife, who is a teacher-librarian says it’s like kids who come into the library and ask, “Are there any good books in here?”

I guess you’re supposed to tag others so here goes:

Clarence, Kelly, Tom, Anne, and Tim.

I really like when bloggers take the time to cull through their writing and reveal their best or favourite pieces. Certainly the ease of web 2.0 publishing often means that the good stuff can get quickly buried in favour of the more current work.

In a effort to avoid the dreaded “list“, I’ll simply post some of my favourite posts of the past year with a quick explanation of why I thought their were especially important or interesting.

• Asking the hard questions…February 7th. Challenging our text driven curricula
  
• Podcast 14… Dinner with Bloggers...March 27th. Face to face meeting with Will Richardson, Wes Fryer, Steve Dembo and Tim Wilson
• Telling the new story Part 1 Podcast 16…May 12th. Interview with Darren Kuropatwa.
• Telling the new story Part 3 Podcast 18…May 17th. Interview with Clarence Fisher
• Telling the New Story…the Video…May 19th. Video I created that’s been used by myself and others to show the life and times of Kathy Cassidy, a primary teacher who embraces web 2.0
• The easiest Masters degree ever…May 28th. Reflections on my Masters degree
• Digital Storytelling at its best…June 3rd. Always nice to share others good work…especially students.
• I don’t want to look busy…October 10th. Another idea I need to remember.
• Podcast 20…Blogging with Administrators…October 24th.
• PowerPoint Extreme Makeover…November 28th…Received many nice comments and trackbacks on this one.

Most Challenging…Posts that received some criticism or challenged my thinking.

• Is a blog a blog if there are no comments?…June 10th. One fairly lengthy response was particularly interesting.
• Telling the Old Story…April 4th. Caused a bit of stir locally when I criticized a technology project.
• Too many consultants?…September 12th. Created a lot of talk locally.
• Blog rage…September 17th. Reflections from a USA Today article with some interesting comments.

Wishing all my friends a very Merry Christmas. I’ll be spending Christmas with my family and friends here in Moose Jaw.

A special treat for me was to sing with my three girls at our Candle Light Service.

The added bonus was we got to sing a James Taylor song. Love J.T.

Ever since Tom Hoffman’s post about lists, it has made me think about the authority of rankings. Rankings and lists make it easier for people to sort through content and organize. Rankings also infer authority.

The recent edublog awards seem to be the lastest benchmark for educational blogs. The authority is fairly easily identified in that it’s voted on by fellow educators, although Graham does express some concern in the having more information about the voting data but Darren doesn’t see it as being all the important.
Today I discovered via ITM, that I’ve been listed in the top 100 educational blogs by the Online Education Database. What’s that? Who is the OEDB? It does sound somewhat impressive and perhaps authoritative. My first inclination was to click the About Us page. This tells me more about what “they” do not who they are. So next I see a link to a press release. This again provides me with one name, Jimmy Atkinson but little more. At the bottom of the post, it simply states,

As with any list of this nature, there are bound to be flaws. These are just our personal favorites. If you would like to contact us with your own suggestions, please e-mail contact@oedb.org.

So at least I know it’s simply a list of favorites, I just don’t know “whose favorites”. It makes me think about internet literacy and determining authority. I also don’t quite know how I ended up in the Internet Culture category. Recognition is great but I’m as pleased to be quoted by my fellow bloggers whose authority I know and trust than to be singled out by a person or organization I’ve never heard of or can find much information about. Maybe I’m looking in the right spot but I’d like to know who places me in the top 100. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining and when I look over the list, I like the company. (The first blog I looked for was Clarences’ which thankfully was listed although strangely not in the category I suspected)

I’d just need to know a bit more before I place the badge permanently on my sidebar.
Reminds me of a Seinfeld episode:

(Jerry turns to walk out.)

IZZY: Uh, oh, wait. (Izzy rummages on his bedside table and picks up a t-shirt. He holds it up to his chest so Jerry can read what’s written on it. ‘World’s Greatest DAD!’)

IZZY: How ’bout that, huh? The World’s Greatest Dad. My son made it for me.

JERRY: (humouring him) That’s very nice.

IZZY: The best in the world. (pointing to himself) Which means I’m better than just number one.

JERRY: Well, I don’t know how official any of these rankings really are.

Update: Darren and Miguel and also have similar thoughts….maybe that’s what makes us top 100. ;). Stephen Downes wonders about it too.

Technorati Tags: blogs, awards, rankings, seinfeld, edublogs

Saw this ad this morning on TV. Although it’s from Cisco, the message is pretty powerful. Quotes like:

A world

• “where people subscribe to people, not magazines”
• “where books rewrite themselves” (you’ll notice a shot of wikipedia)
• “where you can drag and drop people where you want them to go”
• “where libraries travel across the world”

…and my favourite:

• “where we’re more powerful together than we ever could be apart”

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About six weeks ago I pointed a number of key people in our division to Will Richardson’s article The New Face of Learning. It sparked some discussion and interest, and in an effort to bring forward these ideas, we invited any interested teachers to gather informally to discuss what this article might mean for schools.

So we gathered together using a hodge-podge of technology. We had 16 in Moose Jaw, 4 in Assiniboia via Polycom, 1 in Bengough via Skype and 2 in Eston via Skype as well (Kelly Christopherson and a colleague using a mic-less computer but he did participate via chat). Then Will joined us from New Jersey. Here’s a large version of the image.

What you hear is the last 20 minutes of Will’s portion and another 20 minutes of conversation that took place after he signed off. Sorry, I only remembered to start recording after 40 minutes into our talk. What impressed me was the diversity of the group both in both teaching positions (grade 1-12) and in experience using technology. Yet the common understanding seemed to be that things must change. While many have already embraced the change, everyone recognizes it must happen. We may not agree on exactly how that must happen but the beginnings of these conversations are important. Those of us using these tools have been having these conversations for some time so to see others joining in is encouraging.

Here’s a short clip taken with Jeff’s Treo.

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We hope to offer a few of these types of sessions to promote some discussion and interest around web 2.0. We ended by agreeing to bring in students to try and better understand how they use technology…Stay tuned. Thank you Will for taking time…buy your son something nice and send us the bill!

Show notes:

• Will Richardson
• post on cell phones
• post on teacher blogging
• George Siemens
• Alan November
• David Warlick
• Kathy Cassidy (Primary Blog)
• Clarence Fisher (Middle Years teacher blog)
• Post about student choice
• Clarence Fisher (Middle Years classroom blog)
• Post asking students about their learning
• Calculus Blog (High School Math classroom)

 

 Conversations on Change: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (785)

According to Gartner, blogs will peak next year. If you haven’t already started one by then, you likely won’t. But with my experience with teachers, I’d disagree with this statement:

Gartner analyst Daryl Plummer…said those who loved blogging were committed to keeping it up, while others had become bored and moved on.

I don’t think it’s boredom that’s the problem. It’s lack of time to allow users to fully understand and appreciate it. For those looking for an audience, it takes time, even if your audience is parents or other teachers. Often teachers are introduced to the technology without the time to consider how they’ll use it. I’ve often said, just because it’s easy, doesn’t mean they’ll use it.

I heard someone say this the other day (I think it was from Doug Johnson via Tim Wilson’s podcast but I’m not sure), “I guess I’m one of those compulsive communicators.” Interesting term. Is that the target audience for blogs? Aren’t we all compulsive communicators? I don’t know.

Flickr offers some Easter Eggs. Not to mention some upgrades in their services.

Add a note to a photo with the text ho ho ho beard or ho ho ho hat and you’ll get a resizable Santa hat or beard to drag and drop onto the unsuspecting subject’s head or chin.