After a week of dealing with the mundane, it’s time to get out of muggle-space and begin looking at some magic. This article provides a nice kickoff.

Exotic Tools.
Exotic is probably not a good choice of term. Maybe we should call these advanced, or specialized, tools. The reality is that the numbers of tools available in online environments has mushroomed in the last five years.

As I was re-reading this, I was surprised that it was still largely relevant. In a knowledge domain where things are moving so fast, not much has changed here.

What about you? Exotic tools?

Posted in Technology | 2 Comments »

A couple people have disagreed with me on Powerpoint. This post outlines my basic problem with it:

Why PowerPoint is Evil.
OK. Perhaps not evil. But this is why I’ve taken PowerPoint out of my toolbox for teaching. It boils down to the reality that I can use other tools that provide me with equivalent — if not better — results.

Btw, this post was used in an 8th grade technology class to offer an alternative perspective on the use of this particular tool. I even did a guest spot in TappedIn with the group so they could ask me questions. It was a great learning experience and I think the kids got something out of it, too.

Posted in Education, Technology | 8 Comments »

Here’s my original toolbox post.

My Basic Toolbox.
In the interest of getting the discussion going about what should be in the teacher’s toolbox to teach at a distance, here’s my list of the basic tools necessary for TEACHING online. Note that I don’t think every class needs to use all of these, but I think a teacher needs to know this stuff as a minimum in order to teach online.

I don’t know that I’d change much. There’s some questions at the end if you’re looking for something to write about.

Posted in Education, Technology | No Comments »

There’s a lot of interesting podcasting and these five podcasts were the finalists for the 2008 Parsec Awards this year. If you’re interested in seeing what podcasting can do for learning, try learning about gaming from one of these.

Nominees for best Gaming Podcasts in the 2008 Parsec Awards

• Brilliant Gameologists
• CoH Podcast < — Recommended –<<
• Family Night
• The Game Kennel Winner
• Out of Character
• WoW Radio : Octale and Hordak vs The World

I’ve cross posted this for both my 685 and 688 sections because the gaming is of interest in 688 while the technology as a tool is important to 685′s discussion on “exotic tools” coming next week.

Game on!

Posted in 688, Games, Resources, Technology | 6 Comments »

While most people don’t know (or even need to know) how this stuff works, I think it’s important to at least have a rudimentary understanding of how our tools function.

Blog Archive » Email.
Historically, email is one of the oldest applications on the internet. The ability to route messages asynchronously based on an address has been with us since the earliest days. Email is a classic example of a kind of technology that has become an almost universal model of content management — the “client-server architecture” model.

Many of you have made comments about how technology is great but it always breaks. When you know how it works, you can take effective action to fix it when it doesn’t.

Posted in Technology | 3 Comments »

The week on basic tools is winding down but it’s not over yet. This post from 2006 is, amazingly, still current.

Personal Learning Environments.
As we talk about tools and as we think about the issues many of you face in rural and poor communities, remember that tools alone — no matter how good — are useless. Your stove will not cook dinner by itself. Your computer will not learn anything. A personal learning environment may be no more complex than a spiral binder and a library card. As you construct your basic tool box lists, don’t overlook simple tools because they don’t require electricity.

Personal learning environments (now sometimes called Personal Learning Networks) are still a hot topic in the Edublogosphere. There are some questions at the end you might consider as you’re trying to find things to write about.

Posted in Education, Technology | 2 Comments »

For those who are looking for “something a little different” from the feeds I’ve given to the class as a whole, let me recommend “Abject Learning” – another great Canadian blog.

When considering how changes in media might affect how education is delivered, I’ve been known to indulge in heaping helpings of hyperbolic speculation spiced with apocalyptic flavours. I can’t help myself, when I observe something like the meltdown of a cultural industry, my mind immediately begins toward similar scenarios in my own profession. Isn’t it possible that new media might spawn similar challenges to how education is funded and delivered? Are there equivalent threats to what Craigslist has meant to newspaper revenues out there?
Abject Learning: So it is, so shall it ever be….

In light of the conversations we’ve been having around here over the last couple of days, it’s good to remember that it’s not just teachers in the U.S. thinking this stuff.

Posted in culture, Education, Technology | 2 Comments »

Jacqulyne had this interesting post and a link to an LA Times article – Something to go along with the chat.

The article is an interesting overview and cuts back into the systemic view that we were talking about on Monday night.

Take this idea:

We need a new, results-driven mind-set at the Department of Education that will drive pure educational innovation and “scale up” proven experiments and novel ideas that work. The federal government stands in a unique position to meet these needs.

That is actually what the Dept of Education was formed to do — collect educational statistics and promote a national agenda in educational research.

We also talked about the difficulty of trying to change one part of a system without accounting for all the factors that influence it:

Other innovators also have taken a fresh look at the crucial question of how to attract, prepare and keep teachers and leaders in the toughest schools.

Getting teachers in inner city schools is tough but if all we do is find new ways to throw people into the meat grinder, then we’re not changing the system, we’re perpetuating it.

And this idea of research and accountability:

Too many innovators spend too much time and energy raising money to stay afloat and expand. Adequate incentives, coupled with rigorous accountability, would remedy this. We should include two complementary programs, a “Grow What Works” fund and a fund to provide research and development money for promising early stage initiatives.

Having developed an educational tool myself, I can assure you that trying to find money to keep innovation research going and to even do the outcomes research is almost impossible. One of the problems is how the current administration defines “rigorous evidence” and its reliance on a “clinical trial” model of research experimentation. While the model may work for testing medical research, there are serious flaws when that same model is used as a primary source in education.

And this paragraph underscores my point about the key leverage point in the system being at the state level:

Beyond new funding, the federal government must use its influence over state and local policy to sweep away regulations that hamper innovative thinking, such as caps on the number of public charter schools allowed and excessive restrictions on how teachers are trained and credentialed. In addition, it can use the power of the purse to direct competitive funds to states that embrace urgent innovation. States control 70% of public education funding; a push for state support of entrepreneurial education efforts could have a huge effect.

Caps on charter schools are an interesting political tool. What they do is keep the number of options for students down and help to keep kids in the public school system. It’s important to remember that the evidence on charters is that they do not perform any better (or any worse) than the public schools but the perception in the public is that they do. More, when faced with a school that is clearly not meeting their child’s needs, a parent is perfectly justified in trying something else — a kind of “well *this* isn’t working, maybe *that* will” notion.

And don’t get me started on the excessive restrictions on teacher certification. It’s insane that you can’t walk into the licensing bureau of any state and at least take the test for licensure. As it stands now, every state in the union requires a recommendation for licensure from a college or university – usually one from the same state. This helps keep the threshold to entry high without actually safeguarding the process of assuring quality teachers in the schools.

Last, this paragraph on a national curriculum:

Finally, two efforts already underway must get a strong push from the next administration. One is the move toward a common set of standards for what students should be expected to know and be able to do: Every American child deserves to be educated to the same high standard, and innovators everywhere require a common target. Then, to make shared standards work, a national data infrastructure must be built to assess educational progress.

While I really like this idea in general, the details of it make me cringe. In a country that can’t even agree on what’s science and what’s religion, who’s going to pick the curriculum? What should every student be expected to know? Who gets to decide that? And that “assess educational progress” is exactly what NCLB is supposed to be doing, but is failing at. I don’t care how many “blue ribbon schools” Sec Spellings announces, the NCLB is a game – a very nasty, high stakes game with dreadful consequences.

Thanks, Jacqulyne – Nice find and some excellent food for thought in our week about basic tools.

Posted in Education | 3 Comments »

I didn’t get too far down the rabbit hole but this is an interesting looking online game and I suspect there’s a fair amount of history buried here.

In the summer of 1897 two ocean going steamers landed on the west coast of the United States. One ship, The Excelsior, landed in San Francisco and three days later The Portland landed in Seattle. Down the gangplank of these two ships went a rag-tag group of men and women carrying sacks of gold. Some walked down the docks with $5,000 worth of gold while others had over $100,000 worth.
Klondike – Rush for Gold.

The answer to my big question will have to wait until I can play it. “Is it fun?”

Posted in 688 | No Comments »

A Wired article hit my ‘gator – this one has some pretty interesting implications for out evaluation of what’s “educational” about a game.

Games Without Frontiers: How Videogames Blind Us With Science.
But they were pretty good at figuring out how to defeat the bosses. One day she found out why. A group of them were building Excel spreadsheets into which they'd dump all the information they'd gathered about how each boss behaved: What potions affected it, what attacks it would use, with what damage, and when. Then they'd develop a mathematical model to explain how the boss worked — and to predict how to beat it.

Go read the whole thing. It’s amazing.

Posted in 688 | 3 Comments »