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ISTE 

What do you think of the books that are published by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)? Bearing in mind that I am an unpublished author (I’m bearing it in mind, so you needn’t.), I will keep my snootiness to a minimum - those who can’t write publish reviews instead.

BOOKS

On the whole, and I have a shelf of them, I am pleased that I have bought the books. Some have pleased more than others. The newest book - English Language Arts Units for Grades 9–12 by Dr. Christopher Shamburg is actually, I trust, in the mail. But I have some thoughts about three of the most recent ones that I would like to share. 

Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools  by Gwen Solomon and Lynne Schrum is a book that one would imagine would be great if it were serialized, because of the speed at which the WWW evolves. I have been planning a one semester intro to Web design and I am going to use the Appendices to expand the concept of a Web presence and associated tools for these high school students. The tenth chapter has twelve wonderful tutorials for educators. The first nine chapters discuss the tools of the moment and some really rich discussion about the Web and education. Chapter 6, ‘Leadership and New Tools’ is worth the price of the book, as far as I’m concerned. Many of us have had something to say about the tyranny of top down management. What we say probably differs by where we are in the Great Chain of Being. The authors espouse, quite convincingly, that school and district administrators are the difference-makers in the 21st century paradigm.

John Hendron’s book, RSS for Educators, caught me off guard. The title is so pedestrian that I sighed when I ordered it. It is, however, a wonderful book, written by a person with the soul of an artist. After a wonderful introduction, he breaks his considerations into three sections:

• School applications: blogs, wikis, podcasts, and VoIP and synchronous communication;
• Core software applications: Audacity, GarageBand, blogging, news aggregators;
• Classroom Apps: blogging, wikis, podcasts, newsfeeds, advnaced RSS.

He has two excellent appendices - resources and a glossary. 

Since Michigan made passing an online class a graduation requirements and statewide online schools are sprouting like mushrooms after a rainy week, public school administrators and teachers need to considering the importance and efficacy of partivipating in online education. Cathy Cavanaugh and Robert Blomeyer have edited What Works in K-12 Online Learning. Susan Patrick, President and CEO of NACOL writes the forward. The book has eleven chapters from educational philosophy to online phs ed. I am so pleased that ISTE brought this out in a timely manner.

China Miéville is an English writer of both fiction and nonfiction. He’s a graduate of the London School of Economics, and, by the look of the titles in the nonfiction writing, probably a Marxist. His fiction is my focus for this short blurb.

 I saw his latest fiction ‘reviewed’ in Wired. I liked the review so I bought it and before I was a day into started ordering what turned out, for the most, a backlist of his other novels and short story collection. His newset book is Un Lun Dun, a through-the-looking-glass sci fi adventure, with a political subtext for precocious junior readers or adults who may navitate to it via the Harry Potter River. Zanna finds the entrance to this world quite improbably in her neighborhood and finds a place that is not just London’s mirror twin, but the whole world. I persuaded only one of my students to read it in my ‘Rhetoric of Sci Fi’ course, but she wholeheartedly loved it.

Some of his other work is bleak near future, catastrophic worlding and some really strange, over the edge sci fi. Some of the places he takes you have more than rough edges. Frankly, one of the novels had an ending which I found really silly the first time I read it, but it grew on me. These works include Looking for Jake: Stories, King Rat, Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council. The last was the only one I had to really stretch to embrace.

ALPS - ” Active Learning Practice for Schools is an electronic community dedicated to the improvement and advancement of educational instruction and practice. Our mission is to create an on-line collaborative environment between teachers and administrators from around the world with educational researchers, professors, and curriculum designers at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and Project Zero. The ALPS site is as wide as it is deep. Each of the three regions within the ALPS site has it own resources for cultivating active learning practice in schools. But rest assured the ALPS site is unified in its educational philosophy and vision: that students must be active, engaged, and thoughtful participants in their own education. Each region offers a wealth of pedagogical terrain to explore.”
Addendum:
One of colleagues from Canada featured it on her Active Learning Blog Carnival http://activelearningcarnival.blogspot.com/ in April.

I spent several interesting hours in Facebook. The pace is amazing.

Have you tried Pandora.com? It is a pure webcast based in Oakland California. You establish personal radio stations based on song and/or artist choices. The songs after you choose an artist based on ‘The Music Genome Project’ - each song chosen based on 200 characteristics. It is free because there are no songs on demand. My wife and I found it compelling.

I spent some time using Twitter this weekend, as well. There’s a Twitter-like applet on Facebook that’s fun. I added Twitter there and here, too. I think it’s probably going be a passing fancy.

I have been a teacher for six years. It’s my third career. I just finished an MS in Education with an emphasis in ‘Integrating Technology in the Classroom’ . I have noticed a trend this year as I have been trawling for work in my new field.  There is a blooming of opportunities. I wonder if this is the next generation of technology in education. I might guess that for all the dollars spent on technology, there has been very little penetration and perpetuation.