Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech» ewanmcintosh

The School of Everything

Dean Shareski — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:07:42 +0000

It had to happen sooner or later. The writing has been on the wall for a while. Looks like they just are hosting it. Coming from Channel 4 in the UK. That’s where Ewan went to work. Hmmm.

Courtesy my John Pederson via my Google Shared Feed.

A Scotsman and 5 Canadians walk into a bar…..EdTech Posse 4.5

Dean Shareski — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:21:57 +0000

Leave it to Rob Wall to have his handy microphone ready for a podcast with Ewan Mcintosh. After 6 hours of work with teachers, we were ready for a break and what better place to spend a hot August afternoon that in a local Scottish tavern with our visitor. Rob, Alec Couros and I along with Cindy Seibel and Kyle Licthenwald picked Ewan’s giant brain for a few minutes prior to our evening event.

Have a listen:

A Fresh set of Eyes

Dean Shareski — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:56:35 +0000

What a privilege to spend time with a good and smart friend. Since we began planning for this day back in January, I’ve been looking forward to it. It was remarkable to see how many traveled a fair distance to attend this one day event.

The day was well crafted by Ewan that included a series of short presentation type deliveries followed by opportunity to discuss and play.

As a group, we decided these were the most important ideas from the morning:

R & D is for everyone
Building Shared Awareness
Remix the curricula
Balance between structure and flexibility, saturation and overload
Importance of rules in play

The afternoon was spent exploring gaming and the concept of gaming as a learning tool.

One participant summarized his learning this way, “One mistake I’ve made is I’ve never played with a computer”. This was a telling statement about how we view ourselves as learners.

Lots of ideas were explored and my goal was that folks left willing to continue to innovate, explore, learn and share. Not entirely new but a fresh set of eyes always helps.

Working out a New Game photo: by Ewan Mcintosh

Is your identity worth $10 a year?

Dean Shareski — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:16:53 +0000

Disclaimer: Most people who would bother to read this blog might get this and most who don’t read this won’t.

Purchasing your domain name will be, and is becoming a big deal. Even if you don’t blog or wiki or whatever. If you exist, you should be claiming your identity. Whether google is making us more stupid or not, it is almost the de facto standard for finding out about someone.

Google yourself. Do it now. What comes up? Nothing? Good stuff? Somebody with the same or similar name? If someone else is googling you, would they know the difference? For those that answered nothing, you might be safe for now. But as google becomes better and better at indexing, even the smallest digital footprint will appear. That small footprint might be a forum posting from 3 years ago. It might be a newspaper article. It might be something that really doesn’t reflect who you are.

Following the lead of Ewan and Will, I went out and looked for shareski.com and shareski.ca. shareski.com was already taken by a company that buys domains and sells them at inflated prices. Most domain registrars charge between $7 and $20 a year for a domain name. This site is asking $1300 for shareski.com. The only reason I can fathom is that my blog generates a bit of traffic. I did manage to buy shareski.ca and it now points to this site. I’m fortunate in that my name is not found much on the internet save for a few long lost relatives, it’s mostly me you’ll find on a typical name search. As stated by Robert Jones on Ewan’s post, if you’re name is John Smith, it’s not that easy to secure your name. However, it may not be that hard to establish your digital footprint. You may have to be a bit creative, find some other keywords, tags to bring with you but it can be done.

A mother on Will’s blog, stated that she purchased a domain for her young daughter. So when you google Sarah Wynne, this is what you get: a teenager taking control of her digital footprint. When any university, employer, friend or relative searches her name, they see the stuff that she intentionally posts as a reflection of her life. Smart parent, smart kid.

Kern Kelley and his high school bought all the graduates their domain name and left them with this powerful video.

So is $10 too much to claim your identity? The video demonstrates that the ridiculously easy tools that are available to create even a simple webpage can pay huge dividends. This is just another great opportunity to discuss digital citizenship and internet safety in positive terms. In the book Naked Conversations, they discuss the importance of companies to take control of the media and in fact be their own media but engaging their customers via blogs. In the same way, individuals need to be taking control of their identity and having a little understanding of google, rankings and metadata, they can.

As Stephen Downes commented,

And I have a domain for a very simple reason – I didn’t want my website address to change every time I got a new job. This was especially relevant when I had three jobs within a coupe, of years. Less so now, but it’s still good to have a personal permanent URL.

Everyone should, have one, and eventually, everyone will.

What are you waiting for?

Scotland Meets Saskatchewan

Dean Shareski — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:40:56 +0000

I’m please to announce a great upcoming event being held in Moose Jaw, SK on Monday, August 25, 2008.

Our school division will be hosting a day long event with Ewan Mcintosh. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Ewan’s work, he is outstanding advocate of social media and has been involved with Scotland’s very progressive curriculum innovations.

Here’s a some more information about the day:

Scotland meets Saskatchewan Outline

9:00-10:30
Presentation: Scotland’s story: how curriculum meets innovation
The new curriculum, developed with the profession and parents over several years, has ‘allowed’ more teachers to break with tradition and take up new technologies to facilitate children’s learning. The curricular moves share much in common with Canada’s states’ and provinces’, so what are the similarities and differences in technology, professional development and the way students learn?

11:00-12:30
Roundtable:Assessment is for learning and making the links through new technologies – share experiences from both sides of the pond.

12:30-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:00
Practical workshop:Thinking Out Of The (X)box
Scotland is leading the way in some respects of games-based learning. Experience some of the methodology and ideas in this practical workshop.

6:00-7:30
Focus on Leadership Dinner: Ewan will focus on leadership and explore Scotland’s approach and experience with leading change.

7:30-9:30
TeachMeet08 Saskatchewan
An unconference for teachers, by teachers. Share something from your classroom or professional learning in a seven-minute micro-presentation, two-minute nano-presentation or simply be an enthusiastic lurker.

To register, email me shareski.dean at prairiesouth.ca by June 22.

$75 Covers your cost for the day. If you planning to attend the evening meal, please add another $25.
Make your cheques payable to: Prairie South School Division and send them to:

Prairie School School Division
Attn: Dean Shareski
15 Thatcher Dr.
Moose Jaw, SK
S6J 1L

This is going to be an outstanding day!