Jul
22
What will be the markers of our success?
July 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Christopher D. Sessums has asked some really insightful questions in his Reflections on the Value of Read Write Technology and the Future of Public Education.
They are:
“What do I want to see happen in our classrooms?
I wonder if other educators are not facile with Read/Write technology, will the Read/Write Web be as useful or meaningful to [...]
Jul
22
Burning Books
July 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Via Hey Jude, is this visual list of the Top 10 Banned Books of the 20th Century. It’s fascinating that these books, banned for either their political heterodoxy or moral ambiguity, are now considered classics and form the basis of many school and university reading lists.
They are:
1984 by George Orwell
The Catcher in the Rye by [...]
Jul
21
Experiencing the world
July 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Sylvia Martinez in technology enabled service learning projects writes how the effective use of technology is about “providing students with context and real life projects [that] makes learning come alive.” “This means students can go beyond “tech skills” to authentic learning and citizenship that lasts a lifetime”.
“It’s harder to argue that blogs or social [...]
Jul
19
Miro - this is cool!
July 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Via Stephen Downes, I checked out Miro, which is: “The only video player you need. Free and open-source, because open media matters…. The app lets you subscribe to RSS channels, download in the background via BitTorrent, and view most video formats in full-screen resolution.” Play video and HD, internet TV, download YouTube, and use BitTorrent.” [...]
Jul
17
Flickr Fun
July 17, 2007 | 1 Comment
Joyce Valenza, of School Library Journal, has linked to heaps of visual tools. In Part 1: Flagrant Disregard’s Flickr tools for creating book covers and movie posters, Spell with Flickr, Graffiti Creator and comic strip generator ToonDoo.
My favourite by far is the Hockneyizer, where you can create a unique photo collage in the style of [...]
Jul
15
Society from scratch
July 15, 2007 | 11 Comments
The following is attributed to Warren Buffet, who when prompted by a question regarding the obligations of the wealthy to society, posed the following scenario: “Let’s say that it was 24 hours before you were born, and a genie appeared and said, ‘What I’m going to do is let you set the rules of the [...]
Jul
15
Relevance and learning by doing
July 15, 2007 | 6 Comments
As I go about planning next term, which begins in a week, I’ve been thinking about how to create experiences that make learning more relevant to students, that make connections between the literature we study and the world we live in. I have also been thinking about the difference between cognitive learning (e.g. [...]
Jul
13
Making more music…
July 13, 2007 | 2 Comments
This is brilliant - Music and Life, a production by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, was created using recordings from libertarian Alan Watts.
If we apply the metaphor to education, this short film encapsulates how we undermine the joys (the singing and dancing) of learning with our obsession with the finishing point (high stakes [...]
Jul
10
Schools of the future???
July 10, 2007 | 2 Comments
Via Graham Attwell’s The Wales Wide Web, is a report from the Independent newspaper, School’s Out Forever. Knowsley Council in Merseyside “is taking the dramatic step of closing all of its eleven existing secondary schools by 2009. As part of a £150m government-backed rebuilding programme, they will reopen as seven state-of-the-art, round-the-clock, learning centres with [...]
Jul
9
Being the change you want to see
July 9, 2007 | 1 Comment
In a previous post, Lighting Fires, Not Filling Buckets, I wrote about my Year 10 class which created some imaginative digital protest texts. The task was fairly open-ended and I was really pleased with the work these students produced. I have uploaded some of these to a protest wiki. If you get a chance, check [...]
Jul
7
Dissenting Voices
July 7, 2007 | 23 Comments
Dean Shareski has written an interesting post, The Honeymoon’s Over, which struck a chord with me because a lot of the criticism of the edublogosphere is that it is a full of repetitive, derivative posts (you could certainly include a number of mine in that) that recycle conversations and preach to the converted. He writes:
[...]
Jul
7
I should never be able to fulfill what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer – to hand you after an hour’s discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever …. [W]hen a subject is highly controversial … one [...]
Jul
5
xtimeline - could it make timelines interesting?
July 5, 2007 | Leave a Comment
History is one of my passions in life, but I’ve never found timelines very interesting activities. This could all change with xtimeline, which helps you create a timeline on any subject and multiple users can add information and still images to an ongoing project. You can set up privacy settings to moderate who can contribute, [...]
Jul
5
WikiMindMap
July 5, 2007 | Leave a Comment
WikiMindMap produces a mindmap view of Wikipedia content. According to the developers, it “is a tool to browse easily and efficiently in Wiki content, inspired by the mindmap technique. Wiki pages in large public wikis, such as wikipedia, have become rich and complex documents. Thus, it is not allways straight [...]
Jul
5
Poverty and Teenage Affluenza
July 5, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Via Chris’s betchablog, this is a powerful five-minute video by World Vision on the realities of poverty.
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