Ideas and thoughts from an EdTech

How many feeds is too many? 50? 100? 200? I've got 250. To be fair, probably half of them aren't very active and so they really don't create much work or time to read. But I do have a number of feeds that rarely offer anything of value. My most useless feeds are:

1. Boing Boing....very popular but total fluff. They usually have 20 or so posts per day and maybe I've found 5 posts mildly interesting. Not necessary but amusing. Can 39,392 subscribers be wrong? Change that to 39,391.
   
2. Tech Bargains.... nice if you spend alot online or are an American but for me I think I've only taken advantage of one offer.
3. NY Times Op-Ed...since they've moved to a pay model for most of the columns it's a waste. I originally subscribed because of Thomas Friedman but he's not free anymore
4. CBBC Newsround....I started a folder called Kids Feeds which was intended to find RSS feeds for kids. This is one I thought might be suitable but I'm not sure anymore. Still looking for a good kids news source. I'm still waiting for yahooligans to offer a feed.
5. "Classroom Blogging" news feed. I have this coming in from Google and Yahoo. In general I'm not happy with most news feeds. They tend to repeat too many stories from various sources and also the same story seems to reappear about 58 times before it dies.

Okay those are my top 5 worst feeds. I'm going to go and remove the subscriptions. I'm still frustrated by the number or times the same post gets republished. I know I've done it a few times after correcting or updating a feed but it seems that it happens more than it should from my other feeds. Maybe there's a technical issue I'm missing here.

Anyway, maybe I should weed more often. Now I'm down to 245.

I think Google Maps and Google Earth should be incorporated into virtually every classroom on a daily basis. Rarely does a day go by in my routine where I don't do a quick look up of a location or directions.

But here's what I'd love a classroom to do:
Take this link filled with Google Earth/Map hacks and tools and sort them and categorize them. There are so many incredible applications. As a fan of 24, here's a neat little application that plots the various locations of each episode. Not only that but most of the applications provide photos and links to additional information.


As Clarence wrote,

One thing I have seen this year is the kids grow and respond to certain tools. Some kids have turned in to great prolific bloggers. Other prefer our wiki. Some kids have made great use of their Bloglines accounts while others have hardly touched them. Now we are moving on to Skype. I have been discussing it with the kids in my class and now at least half a dozen of them have set up Skype accounts. I have learned this year valuable lessons about exposing kids to tools, teaching them how to sue them safely and ethically, and then allowing them to use those which suit their purposes best. While I expect them to be able to use any of the tools, I need to allow them choices and responsibility in their communication channels.

So there's the challenge. Get your kids to dig into these tools and their value and post the findings.

This is a bit of a guilt post.

Darren just Skyped me about talking to some teachers on Monday as he's doing another one of his great sessions on the tools of Web 2.0 (at least I think that's what he's doing). He asked me to talk about folks that I've been helping and the impact it's had on their students.

I have a little folder in my aggregrator called PS 210 bloggers. These are all the teachers that I've worked with in starting a weblog. There area about 50 or so bloggers in there. Of those, perhaps 15 have maintained there blog. Most use it as a classroom announcement/information site which I've always encouraged but also tried to promote the more reflective/connective aspect. That's been tougher. I'd say I only have 2 really reflective bloggers. Here's where I really feel guilty, none of them at this point have introduced blogging to their students. I have worked with a few classes and got them started but not very successfully.

So when Darren calls me on Monday (I'm sure Darren, you'll read this before then) and asks about the impact with students, I'll have to confess it's been minimal. The teachers who use them as classroom portals/sites are happy but it's been slow in moving beyond that.

So in light of that, I dug around my clippings in Bloglines and found 3 posts from the past that may encourage teachers to start student weblogs.

• Grade 8 student reflection
• Grade 8 teacher perspective
• Kid's quotes on blogging

Now if any Prairie South teachers are interested, I'd love to work with you and your students in discovering the power of blogging.

Confession is over.

I don't want to be these guys...

Curriculum Actualization is a term used in our province to indicate the completion of implementation of a curriculum.

Miguel has been having some great discussion about curriculum and its worth a read.

I spend a lot of time reading and writing about the way things ought to be in terms of creating an authentic, relevant classroom. Bob Sprankle, if you aren't aware is a grade 3-4 teacher in Maine. He's been podcasting for some time now and if you visit his classroom site, you'll get a sense of what he and his students are doing.

I listened to his podcast last week where he talks about his students investigation of a false accusation on wikipedia. That in itself is powerful stuff. David Warlick did a session last week and used their podcast as an example of K-12 podcasting. During the session, he had participants comment on what they heard. One person questioned the validity of the students work and wondered if Bob Sprankle had done the writing for them.

In the most recent podcast by Bob Sprankle, he records a classroom discussion where students respond to the accusation that perhaps they aren't doing the writing. Listen to their response.
I like this exchange, when Bob plays devil's advocate and says:

"How would you even know a word like 'false accuation'."
"I read books"

I love how Bob let's the kids hammer out their ideas and simply offers leading questions. This is great teaching and even greater learning.

Miguel said,

So, although we may perceive that students are developing skills more efficiently as they "wikify" knowledge, we could still achieve the same results with other approaches.

Really? What other approaches could match this learning?

If you can find a better or comparable example of authentic learning that doesn't incorporate technology, I'd like to know.

Due to the busyness of starting a brand new school division, my time to fully absorb and analyze my feeds, has been diminished.

So instead, I check the "Keep New" box and wait until I've fully considered the post. In some cases I even read the post but haven't had enough time to wrap my head around them all.

So I thought I'd show you the articles that I'm thinking about. If you've written, written about or thought about these topics, please consider leaving a comment.

So in no particular order....

More Loose Change
Discussion about assessment and educational change. I just completed a presentation on assessment and I continue to struggle with presenting assessment ideas beyond the first impressions of standardized testing. David Warlick warns that one day students might say:

"No!". "I'm not going to take your tests any more.“ I'’m not going to read your ancient textbooks any more. I'’m not going to listen to your boring lectures, fiddle with your ridiculous worksheets, or worry over your irrelevant grades any more."

I addressed this somewhat in my last podcast on WYWWYW.

Merit Pay
Miguel's post on a Houston school district offering incentive to teacher's who have improved test scores. My first reaction is YIKES! Once again it seems to me that policy makers resort to the lowest common denominator in order to easily meaure something. Wesley Fryer's recent podcast mentions "sucking the joy" out of learning with testing.

Student Laptops as a Menance
Recently I've become a strong advocate for one 2 one computing. I'm hoping to pilot some projects in my new division. This article addresses how one study questions the effectiveness of laptops since they cause so many distractions. Wesley counters the arguement with asking the question of pedagogy. Laptops without a change in traditional teaching and learning won't make a difference. Laptops for students are for classrooms where students are empowered learners and teachers are smart enough to get out of the way much of the time.

Questions about Coffee and Education
I like this:

What drives us to pay $2 - $4 for a cup of coffee?

Is there something wrong with Folgers?

Here’s a secret. At the successful shops, coffee isn’t their business. Experience. Conversation. Networking. Quality. Story. Meaning. Design. Play. Service. Wireless. Comfort.

What does this mean for education? What can we learn?

These are a few of the things rattling around my brain.

Today's podcast comes from my van travelling through southern Saskatchewan. I talk about WYWWYW (What you want, when you want) and how it changes in the way we receive audio and video and may impact education, specifically in my new school division Prairie South




Google Earth File of Prairie South Schools (choose save link as if you're using Firefox)





More photos are found here:

This concludes the longest breakfast ever....cheque please.

Show notes are found here.