Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Wally Cleaver obviously didn’t contribute to the latest article in Time on school reform.

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Technorati Tags: “leave it to beaver”, reform

I currently am managing three professional weblogs. I’ve got more personal blogs but let’s just talk about professional or work related blogs.

Many of you do similar things. I know Jeff Utecht operates the Thinking Stick and Utecht Tips. I’ve been trying to figure out how and why I need three that are all very similar. Here’s my thinking.
1. Ideas and Thoughts From an Edtech ….This my first blog that began two years ago. I have almost 400 articles written and my audience is quite diverse. You are my audience and I value your input and connections. I view you as my Professional Learning Community or as some call it PLN. Most readers are interested in a wide range of topics that include education and technology in general. It is here where I deal with everything and anything I choose.
2. Curriculum and Instruction …This a group blog I’ve started to encourage our school division to dive into blogging. Thus far we have 4 groups blogging, including our Curriculum and Instruction team. This was started to be highly conversational. Communicate new ideas, challenge each other and in general create good conversations about learning. While it may provide some resources, it’s largely a forum for ideas for our local teachers and staff.
3. Technology and Instruction …This is my most recent blog. This is where I will house links to potential resouces and post quick links and tips for teachers and students. More of a “how to” spot. This will be patterned after Jeff’s site and also the Swan Valley Tech site.
Okay, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. So I’ll ask you, why do you have more than one professional blog?

Youtube just added a new feature called Quick Capture allowing people to record and upload video within youtube. (via CBC) I think this will be useful for vloggers. I’ve never been a big fan of the talking head video but for some this will be appealing. It may be something I’d use for quick video messages between friends and family. But like anything else, it will evolve and be used in more creative ways than i can currently imagine.

It seems the world of online video storage is becoming quite competitive and we are the beneficiaries. But also, it makes the choice difficult. Although, this page provides a nice visual for quality, is there a matrix available rating the various services, features and quality?
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Technorati Tags: youtube, videos, quickcapture

I’ve been having some issues with my feeds from Technorati.  I have 5 search feeds that I subscribe to and for about the past month, I am continually getting hammered with outdated posts that appear to be updated but I know aren’t (some of them are mine).  Is this just me or is this an issue? Somebody smarter than me, please help.

Technorati Tags: technorati, feeds, bloglines

I’m using Microsoft Office 2007 and one of the features within Word 2007 is the ability to post directly from a Word Document to your blog. It took no time to configure this to my Wordpress account. I haven’t quite got the picture options squared away but I’m sure I’ll figure that out. I looked at Windows Live Writer as well but didn’t explore it too deeply. I’m not sure I’ll use this much as it’s too awkward moving back and forth from my browser to find links. But for those who need the comfort of a word processor, this might be a good thing. I’ll try and post and image and you’ll see if it shows up.

I wonder how long schools will continue to fight technology. This recent article from the CBC via teachinghacks, continues to shed light on the inevitable: “YOU CAN’T STOP IT SO JUST SAY UNCLE!” The article, in case you don’t read it, deals with teenagers who provoked a teacher into a tirade, recorded it on cellphones and posted it on youtube.
As has been mentioned many times in various discussion around the blogosphere, our feeble attempts as educators to block students from using technology in any number of ways is being proven futile.
But still we try:

A teacher approached me following a talk I recently gave and said something like, “Jeez, don’t tell all of them about YouTube. We’ve been doing our best to keep it out of our school. We don’t want our teachers and students to even know about it.” via Rick Schweir

It’s just way too easy; and whether or not your school removes its computers and network, you’ll still be dealing with the issue. I read Wes Fryer’s blog the other day and he talked about about being photographed and having his pictures posted on Flickr. It was quite harmless and fun. I don’t know if the photographer asked permission to post them but you get the point….someone may be watching and documenting your every move. This is the reality of our world and we need to get our heads around it. This is not to condone the behaviour but as mentioned many times, an opportunity to teach.

David Warlick has been working at helping folks understand that we must do a better job at thinking about what is best for kids. You might think it would be best if kids didn’t have myspace accounts or that they should never post private videos on youtube. You’re living in a dreamland…that ship has sailed. Now the question becomes, “Are we going to continue to spend our energies trying to turn back the clock or deal with the world we live in now and more importantly the world that we will live in 5 or 10 years from now”?