Searching...

In the 21st Century, searching for information is a big part of our lives. We even created a new verb for it: Googling.

Pretty much everyone performs searches, but many do not have strong skills for doing so. Here is an infographic that explains several tips and tricks for "Getting More out of Google"--drilling down more effectively to find the information you need:

http://t.co/ClLZS1Md

MacLife - FreeApp Friday

FreeAppFriday, part of the MacLife website, serves up just that-- reviews for a few free apps, usually with a theme. This week's were music related. There are also a few other posts that help Mac/iPad/iPhone users keep up with what's happening in the iOS world: http://www.maclife.com/ Happy tapping!

Embracing the Enemy

Does your school ban cell phones? Have you thought about all the ways in which cellphones could be used to support learning? Here's a fabulous Presi that shares lots of ideas--be sure to check out the additional links at the bottom of the page!

http://goo.gl/6d5Xn

History as Mystery

Who doesn't like a good mystery? Make history come alive in your classroom by using the techniques presented in this PBS TV series! Learn how to help students become engaged by learning to explore the past, separate truth from myth, and evaluate possibilities. The videos, as well as lots of supportive resources on the accompanying website:

http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/

Transforming Past Lessons for 21st Century Learners

What a fabulous blog post! None of us really wants to just throw away successful lessons just because they do not utilize instructional technology. Ten Steps to Transforming Past Lessons for 21st Century Learners provides a framework (including a planning sheet!) to help renew and revive an old lesson by infusing technology. Blogger Michael Gorman recommends that teachers first check to make sure the lesson aligns with standards, and that at least two 21st Century Technologies be incorporated--to insure that at least one is measurable.

Thought for the millenium:

WE DID IT! 268 participants, presenters, and vendors, all conveged on Southern Oregon University on Friday, April 22 for the first-ever Southern Oregon Education Technology Summit. Way to go, team!

Here are the photos:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Outrageous!

This blog post says it all about the state of America's schools--we should ALL be outraged!

Top 10 Free iPhone Apps of 2010

Personally, I'm finding myself more and more attached to my iPhone. I attribute this to "backseat" time (This is the term I have given the time kids spend in the backseat playing with digital tools while we parents wrestle with traffic driving them hither and thither).

I accumulated this "backseat time" when my husband was doing most of the driving earlier this year as we commuted back and forth on weekends between one daughter in the Bay Area and the other in Portland. Finally I had time to download weird little apps and play with them.

While not all of the apps in the post below are useful in a school setting, some are useful in terms of personal productivity (e.g. Meebo).


Probably the most useful in the list is AppMiner, which helps you find MORE apps!

Here's the list--happy tapping!

http://techchunks.com/technology/ultimate-collection-of-top-10-free-iphone-apps-of-2010/

New Copyright Ruling Provides No Benefit for K-12

What were they thinking? According to an article in eSchool News, a recent interpretation by the U.S. Copyright Office of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act affords expanded use of video clips ONLY to higher education, "because K-12 education doesn’t need access to visually high-quality clips."

With criticism of the state of U.S. education rampant, one would think that ANY advantage we can give to K-12 educators and students would be valuable.

It's important to keep in mind that today's students are the citizens, business owners, leaders, voters --and taxpayers--of tomorrow!

What have you done for the world today?

I just ran across an interesting website called We Are What We Do. This website promotes grassroots-level methods of improving life on Planet Earth--one "action" at a time. There are a list of 131 simple things people can do such as using a mug instead of a paper cup, carrying your own shopping bags instead of using plastic, and recycling--simple actions that, if everyone does them, can have a significant effect on the world.

Take a look at the list of 131 actions and ask yourself, What have I done for the world today?

Why Not Wikipedia?

A recent article in Education Week, Embracing Wikipedia, by Matthew Shapiro, reports that in 2010, a University of Washington study "found that 82 percent of students use Wikipedia in their course-related research." Yet many teachers and media specialists I have spoken with ban Wikipedia completely, citing concerns over accuracy.

What if, as the Education Week article suggests, we teach students HOW to use Wikipedia rather than just banning it? What if we use it to teach them to become critical consumers of information and to evaluate content for such issues as "authorial bias"?

As Shapiro states in the article, when many of us went to school, our research revolved around the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, which had limited citations, the sources of which may or may not have been available in our print-based libraries. In 2010, our students are constantly inundated by information from multiple sources both print and digital, many only moments away from being live, including 24-hour news networks, blogs, ezines, YouTube, Twitter, and MMS messages that include images and video, as well as text.

Is it our job as teachers to hold back the tide, or to help our students develop the skills necessary to navigate the information technologies of their futures?

Teach Your Children Well

How do we prepare our children for a future that doesn't yet exist? Scott McLeod's presentation to the NEA in December gives some answers.

Howie DiBlasi, in a response to Will Richardson's blog post, "What to do with the Web," states, "PD is the lifeline to reform and change."

Amen.

Overwhelmed Opportunity

In a response to Andy V's blog post, Jeff Utecht uses the term "overwhelmed opportunity" to describe our inability to know how to use every digital tool that exists. I think this is a great metaphor for the condition of our Digital Natives, and IMO one of the reasons that they often struggle through their last few years of school. Not just the technology part, but the whole overwhelming issue of being constantly bombarded with mega-media's version of life, with perfect teeth, perfect relationships, and perfect endings at the end of every 30-minute show--contrasted with the violence and gore of video games--contrasted with the often less-than-perfect reality of their own families and lives.

How can we help them make sense of it all?

Missing the point...

From Wired magazine: "How the iPhone could reboot education":

"The traditional classroom, where an instructor assigns a textbook, is heading toward obsolescence. Why listen to a single source talk about a printed textbook that will inevitably be outdated in a few years? That setting seems stale and hopelessly limited when pitted against the internet, which opens a portal to a live stream of information provided by billions of minds.“About five years ago my students stopped taking notes,” Rankin said. “I asked, ‘Why are you not taking notes?’ And they said, ‘Why would we take notes on that?…. I can go to Wikipedia or go to Google, and I can get all the information I need.”

I can't decide if this makes me want to laugh or cry...schools are SO far behind...we endlessly debate the value, the research, the outcomes...and the students just tune us out and keep on living in their parallel universe...I sat next to an educator at the ITSC conference who studiously took notes on his dead tree notepad...no laptop or cellphone in sight...totally missing the point...How many of our schools resemble this remark?

6 words

We shared new ways of teaching

A Lesson for Educators

Slashdot, the website that highlights "news for nerds", reports on the experiences of San Jose State University student Kyle Brady, who, after completing his assignments in computer programming, published the code he wrote online. His professor attempted to force him to delete the posts, citing the school's academic integrity policy. Kyle claimed that he posted his work in the spirit of sharing knowledge as well as part of a digital portfolio for future employers.

Thankfully, the University ultimately ruled that posting the work was acceptable and did not violate either copyright or the school's academic integrity policy.

The lesson is this, as stated by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing: "Profs...fall into the lazy trap of wanting to assign rotework that can be endlessly recycled as work for new students, a model that fails when the students treat their work as useful in and of itself and therefore worthy of making public for their peers and other interested parties who find them through search results, links, etc. But the convenience of profs must be secondary to the pedagogical value of the university experience...Students work harder when the work is meaningful, when it has value other than as a yardstick for measuring their comprehension."

An important lesson for all of us in education.

Thought for the Day:

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

Alvin Toffler,
American futurist

Wisdom in Digital Form

Marc Prensky, famous for his depiction of people as Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, has come up with a new term, Digital Wisdom, to describe the results of living in the Digital Era on the human brain. Prensky believes that both cognition and wisdom will evolve as a result. According to Prensky, “Technology alone will not replace intuition, good judgment, problem-solving abilities, and a clear moral compass. But in an unimaginably complex future, the digitally unenhanced person, however wise, will not be able to access the tools of wisdom that will be available to even the least wise digitally enhanced human.” There are obvious implications for education, specifically, to stop asking students to memorize arcane facts that they can look up on Google. Prensky’s entire article can be found on the Innovate website: http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=705&action=article