Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Youtube announced they hope to put every music video ever online.  Read the full story.

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 

We all know how critical it is for us to demonstrate to students the importance of truth and accuracy in blogging and in more importantly in life. It’s been both humbling and powerful to watch Will deal with the issue of not using primary sources as well as not citing sources. Will was very forthright in his errors and even thanked those who called him out.
Darren recently discovered the truth about the South African wiki project that many of us, including me have been touting.

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.

College students and the environments in which they live and play are changing, so it makes sense that the orientation sessions for new college freshmen are also different in some locations. According to the CNN article “College students warned about Internet postings” from August 2nd:

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.

Many of you may have heard of the fellow from Montreal who has been trying to trade a red paperclip for a house. This week he will accomplish his goal.
Will Richardson mentioned this at one of his sessions at NECC. I’m assuming he used it to illustrate the power of the internet to express and explore ideas and make connections. This experiment reminds me of two other recent web ventures. One is the million dollar homepage and the other is the guy who sold all his stuff on ebay. These rather obsure ideas illustrate the possibilities of the web. The ideas behind these innovative projects need to be examined by teachers and their students. Are these “new stories“? Perhaps have students do some research and reflection on why these ideas work.

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.

Wes, just sent me this link and it’s one of the few balanced views from the media on myspace.

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.

CNN.com - A lesson in finance: Teachers sell their original work online - Jun 28, 2006

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

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CNN.com - MySpace generation going online for yearbooks - Jun 26, 2006

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

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This NY Time article explains why wikipedia has chosen to protect some 82 articles and semi-protect another 179. Essentially in response to constant vandalism and disputes. I like they way they handle things and have stated these articles will not always stay protected.

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.