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I agree with Stephen about encouraging this. Perhaps not without
permission but if we want our students learning to be more transparent
I’m assuming the same goes for our teaching.

Update: Embedding youtube videos into WordPress is not that straigthforward. If you use tiny_mce it seems to have issues. Blogging with Flock should work but it seemed to really mess with my template. If you have any suggestions for embedding youtube videos in WordPress, please pass it along.

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Weinberger asks:

So,why is it that you don’t see such frank notices in traditional sources such as newspapers and encyclopedias? Is it because their articles don’t ever suffer from any of these human weaknesses? Oh, sure,newspapers issue corrections after the fact, and “This is non-neutral opinion” is implicit on the Op-Ed page. But why isn’t there any finer grain framing of the reliability and nature of what’s presented to using their pages? Can we come to any conclusion except that traditional authorities are more interested in maintaining authority than in helping us reach the truth?

Wikipedia at the least, encourages us to be critical thinkers. I know when I go there, it may be inaccurate. I’m okay with that. Let’s help our kids not to be brainwashed by the media into believing everything they read and see.
I love the behind the scenes type shows on TV. I love the special features on a DVD showing how the movie was made and any other background information that provides context. The discussion portion of wikipedia entries is well worth the time, especially on these types of disputed articles.
Will we ever see a wiki newspaper?

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Here’s the URL:

http://www.youtube.com/group/K12

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Saskatchewan has been one of the last provinces in Canada to move towards standardize testing. We’re still not there yet but recent changes worry me. In an effort to become more accountable we are moving dangerously close to models were test scores determine funding and support.
My argument has been that these type of bureaucratic models will lead to the lowest common denominator of work which is low level thinking and testing in order to produce the required results. Good assessment takes time and thought. Good assessment is not simply assessment OF learning but assessment FOR learning. Data collection in these circumstances for this large number would not likely be able to handle thoughtful, messy assessment. (See Wes Fryer and Brian Crosby for more on messy assessment)

Personally, I’ll be coordinating a number of projects this year relating to the 21st century classroom. It will be largely experimental and self directed for the participants. I want to assess not only for its success (assessment OF learning) but more importantly to make learn from it (assessment FOR learning). I’m struggling with the right type of assessment and the right questions. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

One final thought. If you think of these districts like the NY Public school district or even Saskatchewan Learning and compare it to a classroom, how effective is assessment when you have a large class of 50? Not very in depth. That’s why I argue the validity of these test scores as true indicators of learning. It can’t possibly measure your students learning alone, why would we expect it to reflect the learning of a school? Also I hope that teachers don’t pull their support/funding when they see how poorly students have done. Shouldn’t we provide more support for schools that achieve less? Weird.

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We’ve  been asked to pass this along.  Perhaps I’ll consider a proposal…I know how about “Using Microsoft Word in the Classroom” Yah right. But I’ll think of something.

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Is this a slap in the face to Open Source and Creative Commons or is there something good here?

Realisitically how many teachers are paying for online resources now? Is this the notion of “if it’s free it can’t be good”?

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Your yearbook committee may be obsolete. Well there are many good arguments why this won’t work, there are some compelling reasons why this is a valuable idea. A group of teenagers have created a site called MyYearbook.com to create student designed yearbooks.

…during Spring Break 2005, just 2 high school students flipping through a yearbook, realizing it sucked. Imagine if these were online,and if everyone in them were too, everyday

“We just think yearbooks are obsolete,” said Catherine Cook, 16. “If you think about it, all you’re going to do with it is put it on theshelf and never really look at it.”

Josten’s of course argues this point.

“…will anyone want to haul a laptop to the 25th class reunion? And whathappens if the technology changes, or something happens to the dot-com?”

I’ll bet in 25 years, we’ll have many options for carrying around our digital content. (we already do). Besides, why only look at a few photos when you can access a full range of multimedia memories.
Like it or not, kids are making it very clear what’s important and the Read/Write web enables them to pursue these ideas.

How many off shoots of Myspace need to be created before more people begin to realize there is something important and valueable happening?

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Unfortunately I had no luck finding software or tutorials for fireworks. I did find a tutorial for Photoshop. So this morning I spent about 15 minutes walking through it step by step and came up with this creation.

Having walked through the tutorial, I had no real idea what I was doing and if it would turn out. This is fairly similar to many students experience with school. Just follow along and don’t ask questions. You’ll see it’s right in the end.
In this case, it was fine. The key here is I had a goal and was willing to walk through the steps blindly to reach it. Is this just in time learning? Not really. I didn’t really learn anything. I couldn’t reuse any of the tools and step in the tutorial for anything else. There is no transfer of learning. For some things, that’s okay. I’m happy with the outcome but don’t have anything reusable. Students need to experience more transferable learning and yet understand the value of this type of “throw away learning”.

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