These are the types of decisions that continue to promote the “us vs. them” mentality.  What incites me is the reason they give for banning cell phones:

There’s the disruptive nature of the phone ringing or vibrating during class.

Students can text message each other and send answers about exams, a high tech way to cheat.

They can also access the Internet over the phones, making it too easy to surf or find answers they’re supposed to know while class is in session.

Phones can also act as MP3 players, another interruption.

And the built-in camera capabilities in them have been used by some students to post embarrassing and harassing videos to sites like YouTube.

Teachers are enthused.

Disruptive? That might be a good thing. But even if we don’t view the term disruptive in a positive sense, can we not involve students in developing policies that everyone agrees upon? In my experience, anytime students are given the opportunity to develop rules, it saves everyone a great deal of trouble in enforcing them.

Students can text message and cheat? Read this.

They can access the Internet over their phones. That’s a bad thing? Potentially but again, consider that if we value the idea of computers, kids are now bringing one with them to class, less cost on the taxpayer and the potential for learning is pretty great. We need teachers who understand the power and potential of having the sum of human knowledge in their hands. That’s an assest, not necessarily a liability.

Phones can act as MP3 players. Good. Heard of podcasts? Even if kids are listening to music while they work, why is that always bad? Perhaps this could be addresses with students as well.

Built in cameras? Could they use them for something like this?

Teachers are enthused? Why? I’d be infuriated.

I’m not suggesting the cellphones don’t cause problems. So do laptops, pencils and power saws in shop class. But until we realize the potential and involve students in developing responsible use policies, this lame approach will continue to be used in an effort to control things. Good luck with that.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Scott McLeod

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 she has when it comes to her understanding of social networks. Admittedly her 12 year old daughter had been to some less than educational spaces and likely was pursuing content not fit for a 12 year old or anyone. Her reaction was to block all these sites, ban her daughter from the home computer and demand the school district to install content filtering that would prohibit any access to social networks. Craig Spence, a representative from the school division gives a very intelligent response in this interview to her complaints arguing the importance of teaching students about these spaces and recognizing these spaces will still exist outside the school. This article might indicate the school district is buckling somewhat under pressure.

This parent makes a number of comments that demonstrate a lack of understanding and fuels the fire of hysteria and in my opinion, bad judgment.

She admits that living in a rural area, the internet has become “for a lack of a better term, connection” for her daughter. Lack of a better term? That’s exactly what it is…a connection. From her eyes the connection is obviously negative, but that’s got nothing to do with the technology. Her daughter’s connections will remain questionable even without the technology. Her response is to ban her daughter from using their computer until she says,”it will be safe again.” When will that be? When all the nefarious sites have gone away? When her daughter is 18? When she determines that the only value of the internet is looking up stuff?

She worries that a child in grade 3 will be online at school and will accept a date with a stranger thinking it’s another child and will be whisked away by a predator. Once again, there is no case of anything remotely like this. While I understand why she might have this fear, the facts just aren’t getting through. That’s why in part, I don’t just ignore stories like this but feel compelled to speak out. Even the reporter lacked the background information to challenge her claim. I’ve written about this too often to reprise.

She also feels schools should be teaching reading, math, science and computers (how to use a computer) but social networking should be taught in the homes. Think about that statement for a while.

For every site one person deems educational, someone will disagree. For every social network site you block today, three more will arise tomorrow. These are bandaid solutions. Being proactive, supervisory and purposeful are by far the best approaches. Teachers are our best filters at school and parents should be the best at home.

This is why it’s so critical that we continue to promote teachers doing this in Kindergarten and Grade one. At some point we won’t even call it social networking. We’ll just call it learning.

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. But, I’ve always drawn the line at showing their faces. Every picture I’ve posted is a shot from the back, a photo with the face turned away, a costume disguise, you name it- I’ve become a master of the private, public persona. So I have to admit, that when I saw the YouTube video and Tasha waltzing up to the camera, I was a little aghast.

But although he was “aghast” at first quickly changed his view.

But then a light bulb went off. She was excited that the video was going online and that sense of enthusiasm was evident in each of the kids as they made their presentation.

Reminds me of someone.

He goes on to write about how the author of the book connects with the student.

Where it gets more interesting, is that the author of the book discovered the YouTube video and wrote about it on his blog. In fact, he wrote: “My favorite is the girl who liked Fox because he’s part of the dog family and is cute.”

Reminds me of someone and someone else

Then he “touches ‘em all” with this quote:

Anything that gets kids excited about learning is something that I will stand behind. But it takes a teacher who gets how the technology can be leveraged to make this work.

And another home run with this one:

Seeing Tasha and her friends on the computer screen, it dawned on me that I’ve been participating in an online ecosystem, but with one foot still planted firmly in a largely imaginary safety zone. I think I’ve become the technological equivalent of the parent who won’t let their kids play unsupervised in the fenced back yard at an age when they themselves used to be allowed to wander six blocks to the park as long as they promised to be home before dark.

Not only should we be leveraging our students as evidence and support for online connection and engagement but finding more parents who will support and speak out. Whether we like it or not, we have a marketing issue on our hands and satisfied customers are valuable resources.

Image: Brilliant Minds, Brilliant Hardware: Bonding Moment
http://flickr.com/photos/courosa/413146410/in/set-723361

Technorati Tags: clarencefisher, karlfisch, davidjakes, aleccouros, internetsafety

The Sandbox

He’s already posted a few times and is directed much of the content towards students. Here’s an email Paul sent out to our teachers yesterday:

It’s still in its infancy but I do have three posts up already that might be of interest to you and your students. I’ll try to post as often as I can but things are pretty busy here in KAF–I don’t get any days off so I have to squeeze my computer time into my evenings. I’m aiming for at least two posts a week. Maybe I’ll even try to set a routine so that you can build it into your own schedule. No promises, though, because the situation is always changing here so I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to post at any given time. I will try, however.

A small warning–my blog is about my experiences in Afghanistan. Make no mistake, it is a theatre of war and I will be discussing some mature subjects. This is not to say that I will be getting into gory details and I will try to be positive for the most part. However, the topics of war, religious differences, politics, fighting, injuries, and unfortunately, death, will come up. My aim is to post topics that will allow students to better understand Afghanistan in many respects: the culture, the politics, our presence here, daily life both in KAF and the country itself, and, of course, the conflict. Ultimately, I want to make connections and generate discussion. To that end, I will write about these topics in the most respectful, professional manner that I know how but unless you’re willing to discuss these topics with your students, you might want to steer clear.

This is a great opportunity for your students to connect with an educator/soldier. He’s also expressed interested in live Skype calls.

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 bad thing.

Cellphones have the potential of computers. Good and bad. Good teachers understand how to use technology for learning. The cellphone is already being used in powerful learning ways. I understand most readers think of them as disruptive and in no way educational. A desktop computer is no different.

In addition to the potential for learning, the recent events in Virginia will likely prompt increased use.

To those that talk about potential of cheating….I would hope that good teachers are not spending most of their time having kids answer questions that require rote answers. Learning needs to go deeper than that.

Why are we asking kids to learn the provincial capitals when Google gives you that answer in less than 1 second? I’m not saying knowledge isn’t important but the emphasis on assessing and evaluating students shouldn’t be here. It should be on a higher order thinking and performance that cannot be shared by a simple text message.

My ideal world has each student with a laptop, cellphone, ipod and whatever they need.

How ’bout you go to work tomorrow without these tools?

If you read the majority of the 52 comments you’ll see parents, teachers and students opinions clearly support the ban. In fact, I can’t find one advocating the use of cellphones in the classroom. I was a bit shocked by this and marveled at how the conversation could only speak of the use of cellphones under the traditional educational environment.  The possibility of a reformed educational system is a best just talk and at worst not even in the radar.  As my own school division contemplates budget cuts, I worry about the efforts to maintain status quo as being something to strive for. Yikes!

The possibility that student would voluntarily bring to class a computing device, be it a cellphone, laptop, ipod or handheld that could be leveraged for learning is just not being seen largely because it really involves a shift of power and control. We’re not close to being ready for that.  I know you already knew that, but I was just brought back to reality again.

[tags]cellphones, ban, Toronto, CBC, shareski[/tags]

1. 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.
2. Virginia shooting on Wikipedia. It already has over 500 edits.

[tags]onetoone,OLPC,garystager,willrichardson,tomhoffman,wikipedia,virginiashooting[/tags]

Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks recently sent out a memo admitting mistakes he has made in the directing his company.

…I have provided you with a list of some of the underlying issues that I believe we need to solve, let me say at the outset that we have all been part of these decisions. I take full responsibility myself, but we desperately need to look into the mirror and realize it’s time to get back to the core and make the changes necessary to evoke the heritage, the tradition, and the passion that we all have for the true Starbucks experience. While the current state of affairs for the most part is self induced, that has lead to competitors of all kinds, small and large coffee companies, fast food operators, and mom and pops, to position themselves in a way that creates awareness, trial and loyalty of people who previously have been Starbucks customers. This must be eradicated.

You can read the specifics in the memo itself but it struck me that he was able to identify specific decisions that he felt good about at the time but later saw they weren’t the right ones.

Looking back I’ve made a pile of mistakes and hopefully learned from them but I don’t often document them. If there’s one overiding mistake I make but hopefully less than I used to is my tendency to walk too fast. I do that even with my kids, I constantly have to slow down. (Isn’t there a song about that?) My tendency is to jump quickly from one idea to the next without recognizing the need to process. I did document it here. This certainly isn’t the only mistake and while it’s not very specific, it’s helpful to others and to our own learning to document and examine our mistakes.

I’ve never seen a school or school district or government come out and admit their mistakes. Seems odd that in an age of transparency, or at least a shift towards more transparency that educators are reluctant to admit mistakes. Maybe it isn’t so odd but shouldn’t we see someone out there bold enough to admit to their errors? Can someone point me to some? Can you be so bold as to post your own errors?

[tags]starbucks,schwier,mistakes,educationalreform,[/tags]

Fuzzy and his lawyers don’t seem to grasp how wikipedia works. The comments made against him have been removed but like many wikipedia articles may return. Wikipedia does a great job of identifying pages that are controversial, have been vandalized, or aren’t very good. If everyone sued every malicious item posted on wikipedia or the internet for that matter…..well you complete that sentence.

Fuzzy you just can’t do that. Maybe you should do what Tiger did back in ’97….forgive. Or better yet, go change the article yourself.

Update: I see USAToday has referenced my post as well as included links to the official legal documents.

I picked up a copy of the local paper to see my son on the cover…Full name, clearly identified. Did he give permission to have the photograph published? No. Newspapers have a policy that they must print full names of anyone photographed. They’ve been doing it for years.

Our schools meanwhile try desperately to protect students from any chance of identification online. Is it worth the effort? After the recent incident in Quebec, the popularization of youtube combined with the advent of cellphones as video and still cameras, the ease of internet publishing, I’d say we should spend our energies elsewhere. Let’s face it, we all live in a fish bowl.

The fact that newspapers have a degree of credibility that we trust somehow makes us not challenge their breech of privacy. While a local ice rink is a public facility, schools are not, but our paper, like every other paper publishes student photos taken in schools. We don’t care. We all like the publicity. As long as it’s good. We’ve heard for years that any publicity is good publicity.
Like I mentioned in an earlier post about privacy, “this is the reality of our world and we need to get our heads around it.” Scott McNealy of SunMicrosystems claimed,”Privacy is dead”. If this is true it should change what we teach our kids. During my breakfast with Stephen Downes, I remember him saying that nothing he says is off the record. He said his life’s an open book. I know not everyone is comfortable with that but that attitude makes life on the web less stressful than one trying to protect their identity.

We can’t control what others will do with our information and unless we want to spend time fighting legal battles, I think we need to give up the idea that we can protect kids. We can’t.

[tags]privacy,moosejaw,timesherald,downes[/tags]

These are the future, my friends. They’re here and living among us. They’re not very interested in us, and I’m not sure I blame them. The best we can hope for is that one day they may keep us as pets.

This article via David Warlick via Ewan is dealing more with the irrelevance of today’s newspapers but substitute the word newspaper for school and editor to teacher and it’s pretty telling.

They buy music from the iTunes store – but continue to download tracks illicitly as well. They use BitTorrent to get US editions of Lost. They think ‘Google’ is a synonym for ‘research’ and regard it as quite normal to maintain and read blogs (55 million as of last night), use Skype to talk to their mates and upload photos to Flickr. Some even write entries on Wikipedia. And they know how to use iMovie or Adobe Premiere to edit videos and upload them to YouTube.

Now look round the average British newsroom (staff room). How many hacks have a Flickr account or a MySpace profile? How many sub-editors (teachers) have ever uploaded a video to YouTube? How many editors (teachers) have used BitTorrent? (How many know what BitTorrent is?)

Looks like Prensky material. We’ve got a long way to go. It’s noteworthy that the business world, the traditional newspaper is realizing that they are missing a critical demographic. But for them, it’s only one demographic. For us, it’s our only demographic.

Read the full story

The group found many video games require players to master skills in demand by today’s employers.

And here I thought employers were interested in students who could understood dangling particples and quadratic equations.

“This is not an, ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ message,” he told CBC Thursday. “It’s, ‘Hey, something’s working here.’”

“Common sense tells us that a medium so basic to the lives of these
‘millennials’ has potential beyond the living room,” Lowenstein said.
“We would be crazy not to seek ways to exploit interactive games to
teach our children.”

But won’t they just be playing “shoot ‘em up games”?

Sawyer cited the simulated worlds of games such as the Civilization
series and Age of Empires as examples of rich, multi-textured games
that require a cognitive style of play versus eye-hand style play of
most sports and action games.

And the most telling statement:

The most significant obstacle to video game learning, he said, is
the parent who doesn’t participate in the “media literacy” of their
children’s interests and often doesn’t see the benefits the games offer.

“They have to be more engaged, or they risk their children tuning the good things out,” he said

“Are we ignoring the culture of our youth?” And yes Dustin, you should have blogged this.

technorati tags:videogames

I tried to emphasize the aspect of freedom and controversy that exists in blogging and how important it is to build authentic community. (I’m not sure I made this point well but I thought about it). To my surprise, I opened up my Bloglines account to find two rather steamy postings from fellow Canadians.

First Stephen Downes must have a bad morning as he wrote about the K12 Online Conference. Not that you have to always be nice but I had a hard time understanding his post. I like Stephen and generally enjoy his short but poignant postings. I know he’s had issues with the likes of David Warlick and that’s fine. I’ve enjoyed how he and David have engaged in some discussion about the disagreements but this posting lacked any depth or explanation and simply came across as mean spirited. I sort of get that he’s suggesting there’s some ego at play or perhaps he sees someone gaining financially because of it but I don’t see that. Also, he talks about reading blogs as a better way to gain this information. I agree, I’m not sure I’ll gain much from this conference but I think it’s more for those needing an introduction to some new stuff. I played only a small part in this conference but know that those building it were doing so only to provide a great opportunity to learn. Unless I missed something?

Then I read about MP Garth Turner getting punted out of the Conservative party for apparently breaching rules of confidentiality on his blog. I’m not sure what exactly it was and neither does Mr. Turner. I certainly hope it’s not for that. Like his politics or not, it’s evident after reading his blog that he is doing his best to be transparent and present an opportunity for everyone to have a voice. Of the 282 comments posted, I liked this one:

Shame on the PC party. You have allowed all voices, negative and positive on your blog. You are honest and open, something your party leader obviously doesn’t appreciate. While I am non-partisan, I have often read your blog and found it to be refreshing, interesting, informative.

So, for some, these examples will move them farther away from wanting to blog, for me it’s gets me more excited. Maybe that’s not normal.

It isnt’ like you can’t challenge others views or writings. That’s part of what makes blogging interesting. I don’t consider myself too controversial, although some may disagree with me. Tom Hoffman’s recent challenge to Wes Fryer, David Warlick, Will Richardson, and Vicki Davis, while not my style, does raise reasonable questions and offers good discussion. He’s not personal, he simply disagrees with what they say. Maybe one day he’ll tell me where I’ve strayed in my thinking.

Let’s encourage each other to be forthright in our comments and discussions and stop hiding behind pseudonyms for the soul purpose of unleashing personal attacks. You’re giving us a bad name!

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?

technorati tags:wikipedia, weinberger

Blogged with Flock

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.

technorati tags:assessment

Blogged with Flock

Nostalgia is setting in as I recall the early days of MTV and watching my college roomate sitting in front of the TV for hours watching this new thing called music videos.

source 

But the truth is not only hard, it’s time consuming. I’m staying at a good friend’s house and he asked me to watch a documentary he downloaded called “Loose Change“. I had never heard of it but I’m assuming many of my American friends have. Basically it’s a conspiracy theory about 9/11 pointing to the possibility that the US was actually behind the terrorists acts. Very compelling and raises some interesting questions.

After watching, I immediately headed to wikipedia to see what else it had to say. As I figured, it offered not only a summary but criticisms and links to other sources. I don’t plan on delving to deeply into this but was pleased to know there were many places to look for truth. I could see this being a powerful lesson for students to engage in and research. David Warlick’s been advocating this type of use for wikipedia and has always believed this is how we need to deal with the information.

It’s one thing to read something and be confronted with an idea to be believed or not, but when it’s presented in video format, it’s even more compelling and easier to believe. That’s why we want our students to be adept at using this medium. They need to understand how to use images, sounds and mix them together to tell powerful stories; stories that are meant to express ideas and persuade an audience. Having some experience in creating these messages will serve them well when viewing them.
Being able to determine truth ican be very difficult and requires time and effort. This type of research would be all but impossible without tools like wikipedia. Wikipedia provides a much more unbias view that commercial sites or personal sites offer. The fact it points away from itself and lists 41 references and over 30 external links makes me feel fairly confident I’m going to be in for a good workout should I choose to pursue the truth. We know that students often are uninterested in the rigors of research but I’m sure that when it comes to issues that matter most, truth is worth pursuing.
If you haven’t watched this video, you should. Not because you’ll agree or disagree but because you’ll be curious to find the truth.

I love the warning at the beginning of the video encouraging the distribution and viewing. Very FLOSS.

From large public schools such as Western Kentucky to smaller private ones like Birmingham-Southern and Smith, colleges around the country have revamped their orientation talks to students and parents to include online behavior. Others, Susquehanna University and Washington University in St. Louis among them, have new role-playing skits on the topic that students will watch and then break into smaller groups to discuss.

College students are not the only ones who need this sort of practical orientation to Internet safety and safe digital social networking (DSN.) All students who are using the Internet need to be having these types of discussions with adults, and the conversations must go beyond a lame, digital immigrant plea of “don’t use those websites.”

Of course students are going to keep using digital social networking websites. The updated English WikiPedia list of social networking websites is an eye-opener: It claims (with citations) 40 million users on Xanga, 22 million users on Bebo, over 7 million users on Facebook, and almost 100 million users on MySpace. Plus many, many more. Amazing. And those numbers are most likely only going to continue to grow.

One of the big messages teens and others need to understand and start to live out regards the importance of not giving out TOO MUCH information online, since most social networking websites are globally accessible to anyone: including both potential and actual friends, enemies, criminals and predators. As this CNN article points out, however, the issues at hand are not only focused on Internet safety: They also regard the “permanent record” which people who are “writing the web” are creating about themselves that will likely be referenced by future employers, educational institutions, potential boyfriends/girlfriends, and others.

Saint Andrew’s School in California is offering the following tips for parents, to make DSN sites like MySpace safer for their children:

• Become a member. It’s quick, easy, free and will give you access to more material on the site.
• Do a “Friend Finder” search for your child or his or her friends. Make sure to use their first and last names.
• A person’s MySpace profile page won’t always tell you the person’s full or real name, as many users only list their first name or go under a pseudonym. If you do a “Friend Finder” search using someone’s first and last name, you can usually pull up their profile if they are members.
• Searches by such criteria as the name of the school a student attends, e-mail address and ZIP code also are possible.
• Go through your child’s profile with him or her and identify and remove any items that provide specific information that would allow someone to assume his or her identity or be able to identify where the child can be found at any particular time.
• Have your child set his or her profile to “private” to prevent strangers from accessing it.
• Check out the safety tips from WiredSafety and The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children listed below. Both sites offer ways to keep our children safe while they explore the online world.

Whether you’re about to start the fall school term in the northern hemisphere or you’re in the middle of winter term in the southern hemisphere, consider sharing similar suggestions with the parents of the students you teach.

On a personal note, the house he will be getting is in Kipling, Saskatchewan which is about 100 miles from my house. Before gaining permanent employment in Moose Jaw, 18 years ago, I interviewed for a job in Kipling.

The writer quickly identifies the hype around myspace:

Folks, we are in the midst of a mass hysteria. The media has found the latest way to drive readers and ratings: the good ol’ fashioned gumbo stew of children and teens, sexuality, murder and death, new technology, and fear. Lots and lots of fear. Fear that freaks out parents and those in authority and leads to bad decisions made in the name of security.

He continues on the make the comparison between pre-internet phone harrassment and wonders about why we never banned phones.

He then describes an exchange he had as a young teacher during a parent-teacher interview:

I’m reminded of another story from my days as an English teacher years ago. It was parent-teacher conferences, and I was meeting with the parents of Sandy, a 9th grade girl who was quite smart but never did a lick of homework. I was a youth of 23, still green, while Sandy’s parents were in their 40s. The conversation went something like this (and this is the absolute truth, I promise):

Sandy’s Dad: We just can’t figure out why Sandy’s grades aren’t any good.

Me: She doesn’t do her homework.

Dad: Ah. Um … how do we get her to do her homework?

Me: Do you have a dining room table?

Sandy’s Mom (proudly): Oh yes!

Me: What does Sandy do after dinner?

Dad: She goes to her room.

Me: Well, how about after dinner, you have Sandy sit at the dining room table and do her homework instead?

Mom (leaning over to Dad): Write that down!

(Dad takes out a slip of paper from his pocket and a pen and – I swear to you – wrote down “Do homework at dining room table.”)

Dad: What else?

Me: How about one of you get up every half hour or so and ask her what she’s working on and then check it?

Mom (excitedly leaning over to Dad): Write that down!

(Dad writes down “Check homework every 30 min’s.”)

This astonished me. Here I was, only 23 and childless, and I was telling adults how to parent their teen! At that point I realized the awful truth: lots of people just don’t know how to raise their kids.

If you aren’t already, you should be bookmarking these type of responses because if you’re not already, you will be discussing these issues with policy makers.

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”?

technorati tags:opensource, creativecommons

Blogged with Flock

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?

technorati tags:myspace, students, yearbooks, remix

Blogged with Flock

Seems a bit like taking the ball away from kids at recess when they’re not playing nice. Sometimes you have to do it.

List of protected pages.

Many of you may be aware of the tragic case of misidentification of the Taylor University students. In case you missed it:

The casket was closed for Whitney Cerak’s funeral more than a month ago. Her mother, Colleen, declined to look at the body, battered as it was in a collision between a van and a tractor-trailer.

“They wanted to remember her the way she was,” said Cerak’s grandfather, Emil Frank.

Meanwhile, the family of Laura VanRyn, another victim of the crash, kept vigil by a hospital bed.

The severely injured young woman was in a coma for a time, but the family’s blog detailed the many small stps she made toward recovery: feeding herself applesauce, playing Connect Four with a therapist.

But as her condition improved, Laura VanRyn’s family realized they had the wrong woman, and Colleen Cerak realized she had not buried her daughter.

The family of VanRyn, 22, disclosed the mix-up Wednesday on their blog. “Our hearts are aching as we have learned that the young woman we have been taking care of over the past five weeks has not been our dear Laura,” but instead a fellow university student of hers, Whitney Cerak, they wrote.

The shock was equal but joyous for the family of Cerak, whose funeral drew 1,400 in her hometown of Gaylord, Mich. “I still can’t get over it. It’s like a fairy tale,” Frank said.

The VanRyn’s began a blog to keep interested parties up to date with Laura’s progress. When the realization of mistaken identity was evident, they continued to blog and invited Whitney’s family to join them. This obviously speaks to their faith but also proves that the power of social networking to provide insight and understanding cannot be underestimated. In trying times, many often retreat and seek to remove themselves from the public. The Ceraks and VanRyns have chose to allow us to peak inside their pain and open themselves to the world. This reminds me of Dwayne Harms who last year while dying of cancer chronicled his journey and offered hope and understanding of his horrible disease.

While we may take our blogs seriously and benefit from social networking, these stories illustrate that our need and ability to share with the world can be more powerful than most of us can imagine. In a day when the media and fearful educators work to dismiss social networking as nothing more than a predator’s playground or teenage hangouts, let’s be sure to illustrate it has the potential to bring people together in meaningful, life changing ways.

6,9,12,17,33,43,47,51,74,78,95,98

PC World’s 100 Best Products of the Year

I will just say this … the lies, distortions and mean spiritedness of some – was not worth my time or worthy of this district … good night and good luck.

So what’s the lesson here? You can read some of the comments and see what many others think but I worry that this is the exact reason many in leadership positions avoid blogging. They fear this type of response. I wonder that if a survey was done with all who read his blog, not necessarily those who comment would reveal that those who displayed mean spiritedness were not only the minority but were identified by most as extremeist and not making meaningful contributions to the conversation.

Is this the same reaction we have when students experience harrassment online? Pull the plug. I’m not judging this particular decision since I probably don’t have all the facts but I am concerned that we deal with bullies and loud mouths but shutting down.

I’m not aware of any other superintedent blogger. I’m hoping to help our superintendents to become involved in these types of experiences and conversations. I just hope this type of result doesn’t discourages them.

Update: Just finished a great conversation with Rob and Rick and will post our thoughts on the subject.

Read the story. via Rick Schwier

Mexico has already signed up for 300,000. Why is it that Mexico, China, India, Egypt, Brazil, Thailand, Nigeria and Argentina have all made committments to get the technology in the hands of children.

Maybe one day our country will be wealthy enough to afford this for our kids.