itlc

What is Web 2.0 all about? It’s about mastering, creating, and adapting tools in the form of software; It’s about teamwork - collaboration; It’s about communication; It’s about thinking outside the box - being creative, inventive and seeing things a grand sweep and wonderful detail - that one can manage and information to make the world, and each life in it, better. An amazing collection of tools, focusing primarily on students, is located in Josh Catone’s blog entry  Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students. A tool that is wonderful in and for itself is ‘Filamentality’. I have used primarily to make Hot Lists. Sue Summerford put together a wonderful Hot List called ‘ Web 2.0 for the Classroom Teachers’ located at http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listweb20s.html. I’m giving the raw entry as it appears in the URL to remind you to look over the humungous site that PacBell has here. Brian Benzinger, in his blog entry, Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0, Part 1  gives us an entry with tools for both teachers and students. There is some overlap between the three, but that’s really inconsequential. It is important to compile and use the various free gifts and Website and sift them out. ISTE is good at doing that for us. I have several books that do that for k-12 teachers with various foci and emphases.

This Thanksgiving break has been so productive. I’ve picked out a couple of courses to take on http://www.ed2go.com/keene; I have caught up on my work on and for Virtual High School; read all my periodicals; kept up with my blogs including the active one from ISTE. The author today wrote, recommending a ”podcast by Doug Johnson titled, ‘Classrooms and Libraries for the Net Generation.’  In just under an hour Doug speaks to the learning styles and needs of our current students. He starts his talk by stating that this generation of students does love to learn. They just do not always want to learn what their teachers are asking them to learn and in the formats presented to them. I recommend listening to his talk Doug’s NECC 2007 podcast.’ Podcasts, you say?

I’ve been reading Educator’s Podcast Guide by Bard Williams. It is really excellent as every book I’ve bought from ISTE has turned out to be. I’ve been splitting my afternoon between that book and Volume One of The Age Of Bronze by Eric Shanower. The third volume of seven proposed encompassing the works of Homer and associated tales IN ILLUSTRATED FORMAT will be out Tuesday. Each of the first two are over 200 pages with great glossaries and bibliographies.

Speaking of living in a post-literate time, I have a couple of manga format Shakespeare plays - Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. They have been flying in and out my room at light speed.

-Skip

The STaR Chart identifies and defines four school profiles ranging from the “Early Tech” school with little or no technology to the “Target Tech” school that provides a model for the integration and innovative use of education technology. This could be a tool could be of great assistance to you or your school technology team.

http://www.iste.org/starchart/

I am currently taking a Best Practices Course  for Teachers at Virtual High School - http://www.govhs.org - take a look if you want - called Web 2.0. I love studying and teaching online. I can’t wait for the U.S. to catch up with much of the rest of the world and let technology soak into the bones of this society; money, at least for access to technology, being no object, or not being the point of it AT ALL. I believe the reason we continue to fall further behind in broadband access, equiupment, etc. is that purveyors are throttling progress down, fearing that they haven’t developed a scheme to really maximize profits.

We have a small class that, except for the instructor, actually work on the same campus in a small town in Southwestern New Hampshire. The principle focus of week 2 in our course was to set up our blog and crank it up. I did everything but write about it in our course, so I’m writing now. 

I am lucky that I am an ‘empty-nester’ with an induglent and loving wife, so I can work and learn without being fussed at for being something of a workaholic. Studying and setting up the blog as an independent entity has been really fun. I have blogs on my Website but no traffic (except now, for my instructor). I have added some plugins and customized the blogs appearance.

How did you find your way to my page?

-Skip

I just received another blog post from the ISTE site om MySpace. It is timely and inspiring. It is a link to Liz Davis’ resources in Wellesley Massachusetts where she is an Instructional Technology Specialist - http://brpodcasting.wikispaces.com/ . It is informative and inspiring because she includes sample podcasts from a 1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th graders, and a teacher, as well. For those who wonder if their students are too young for technology, this site gives a wonderfully positive response. Enjoy.

I just completed a review of three Web documents dealing with Instant Messaging (IM). All three gave a balanced look at IM. The reason that their creation was necessary is because of the cautious, even reactionary, outlook on all things technological in the field of public education.

The Education Learning Initiative’s .pdf presentation, 7 Things You Should Know About IM , is a beautifully balanced, global look at IM. It is especially important in that number seven discusses the implications of IMin teaching and learning.

A blog entry, The Case for Instant Messaging , is just that. It suggests multiple methods for integrating IM into classroom life. It is very convincing for its depth and enthusiasm.

Finally, IM - Collaborative Tool or Educator’s Nightmare! , a paper written (in APA format, I might add) by a Canadian professor, is a superior piece of work. It goes into great lengths to weigh pros and cons. The author makes some wonderful, creative suggestions.

I think a school district should think about setting up a Jabber server inside its firewall. The outlaws will be too bored to use it and the newbies and conventional folks will be glad that it’s there and benefit immensely.

As with most things ‘World Wide Web-ish’, social networking is the elephant, being examined by three blindfolded people who have never seen an elephant. Social networking is both a curse and a blessing, sometimes described as both by the same person.

Nicole Verardi focuses on college students and social networking in an online article called MySpace in College Admission . This is an article focuses on the effect of imprudent posting on sites by high school students, college students, job seekers, and new graduate-employees. It gives space, as well, to some of the ways that social networking sites can compliment college admission and career seeking.

A Briefing for Educators: Online Social Networking and Youth Risk by Nancy Willard, another online article suggested by an instructor, is a no nonsense, foundational look at social networking. It folks on the dangers and pitfall and the reasons those exist. Primarily, Willard feels that teen decision-making is an oxymoron, a theory that is fast becoming fact among neurologists, as well as psychologists, and is, in part responsible for the ‘youth risk’ in the title. The other major phenomenon that raises ‘risk’ is the lack of parental attention.

An English author, Jerome Monahan, sees the glass of social networking as being half full, not half empty. In his article on line, Missed Opportunity , he sees all the hesitancy and nay-saying as blocking the potential benefits of social networking.

I am sure that teachers who teach younger students would feel my attitude to be cavalier. Nevertheless, there are many sites with proper security to allow students to ride their social networking trikes and training wheeled bikes. I believe the teens that I share classrooms with should have their Information Superhighway drivers’ licenses before they venture out on their own.

Here’s a note I received from April Jervis, a fellow member of NACOL

Online education blog available at http://adat.edublogs.org/. Open to the public for reading and posting.

Here are some tools I have gathered from my Myspace subscription to the ISTE Myspace space: 

1.  Project-Based Learning - ISTE  has a new book about project-based learning coming out in November.   Here is a list of websites about project-based learning:

·         www.edutopia.org/project-basedlearning

·         www.pbl-online.org

·         www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/TL/2003/01/project.php

·         http://reinventing pbl.blogspot.com ·         www.rmcdenver.com/userguide/pbl.htm2. One teacher uses the math jeopardy with his fifth graders and it was a hit! They used the activity along with the smartboard and it became an instant classic in the classroom. 

Welcome to itlc - the virtually space to discuss virtually anything. It includes, but is not limited to, technology.

 If you have the patience, please read my page on the meaning of ‘itlc’.

In the history of humankind, technology is the third great leap, after the phonetic alphabet and the italic typeface and cheap bookbinding. I learned this in my study of the futurist David Thornburgh. We have just touched cyber technology with one nanometer of one whorl of one finger tip. I am in awe of the destiny I see ahead of us.