news «Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Beatrice, you’re way off!

Thanks to a tweet by Clarence, I just listened to a podcast of an angry parent upset with the Langley School District for not blocking social networking sites.

The mother, Beatrice, is conceded some authority by CBC since she has a computer science background. Unfortunately her knowledge of ports and key logging software is about all [...]

Onside parents

Clarence shares this article via my Shared Feed in Google Reader and it spoke to me on many levels.

Here’s a parent who, although obviously tech and internet saavy hadn’t realized the power of the internet for his own kids:

I’ve written about my kids literally hundreds of times and published dozens of photos of them. [...]

A teacher and soldier in Afghanistan

Paul Park is a high school English teacher in our school division currently serving in Afghanistan. I’ve worked with Paul over the years with a variety of web tools. Just prior to Paul’s leaving last month, he volunteered to spend time in a number of our schools talking to students about his upcoming adventure. Paul [...]

This is what we are dealing with

Last week, the CBC asked for viewer feedback on the recent ban of Toronto school boards on cellphones. I weighed with this comment:

I’m not surprised by these comments. Most parents and educators are stuck in an old model of education where the teacher is in full control of the learning and disruption is a [...]

2 Things to Consider

As I pack up for the day, 2 posts grabbed my attention.

Will’s post on the OLPC and especially the exchange in the comments between Gary Stager and Tom Hoffman and Will. The fact that we cannot find a way to provide kids with the essential tool of our day continues to astound me.
Virginia shooting on [...]