Education Blogs

For those of you that contacted us about problems submitting by the June 30 deadline, we’ve extended the submission deadline until Friday, July 4th at midnight Mountain Daylight Time. Even if you emailed in an abstract and extended abstract, we still need you to submit your proposal via the website. We’ve re-enabled proposal submission; you’ll [...]

I don't get to read very many novels. The nature of my work means that there is always a massive pile of nonfiction for me to plow through and when I have time to relax, I tend to consume other...

It’s in your pocket: teaching spectacularly with cell phones. Great speech by Hall Davidson from Discovery Education Network about using mobile phones in education, the kind of talk many teachers and administrators need to hear. The first thing Hall said was to take out and turn on our cell phones There is a large potential [...]

When I’m giving a talk that doesn’t have a firm time limit, I like to end it with an Ask Me Anything™ segment, which I briefly described before: That’s where I brilliantly field all questions I can answer, and make up incredibly convincing answers for any I can’t. (In the past, I’ve been asked about computer [...]

And among all of the NECC action, there is also a new Carnival of the Mobilists at London Calling: Another huge week in Mobile – Nokia acquires Symbian, Virgin buys Helio and I still haven’t got a Nokia E71 (my hints to Nokia are clearly not obvious enough…). You’ll just have to head over to London Calling [...]

  SIGHC held its first forum at NECC this year. We had presenters from both the US and the UK. Even though I had to moderate the event, I was able to listen in on Tony Vincent as well as David Whyley and Jill Purcell from the UK. Tony Vincent’s breakouts focused on web apps (and netbooks [...]

  Notes from David Thornburg’s presentation early Monday morning. Nothing too revolutionary here, but a fairly interesting talk nonetheless. Given the changes in technology, our question has changed from “given current classroom practices, how should technology change?” to “given current technology, how should classroom practice change?” When looking at it from a global perspective, we need access [...]

If you have an idea, project, paper, or any other form of activity (believe me, we’re open to nontraditional!) you’ve been considering submitting to the Open Education Conference 2008, today is the day! Head over to http://cosl.usu.edu/events/opened2008/call-for-papers and submit today! We’re looking forward to another awesome conference this year. As Brian Lamb recently gushed: The conference [...]

James Surowiecki spoke in front of a packed house last night. Here are my, somewhat incomplete, notes from his speech, as I was fighting with my wireless connection during the presentation: James Surowiecki keynote. Author of The wisdom of crowds Under the right conditions, groups of people can be very intelligent collectively. Collective intelligence improves a group’s ability [...]

I have friends who get excited about the latest Japanese anime and manga. I have other friends who are avidly following Asian drama from Korean, Japan, and China. And Of course, I have many friends who are convinced that BritComs...

Michael Carter just sent me an email with a link to a YouTube video entitled Andy van Dam in "Dancing with the Professors." Andy was my undergraduate advisor, my mentor, and is a dear friend. I was one of his TAs and absolutely loved seeing him do goofy things in...

Inexplicably, my e-mail address seems to have wound up on the distribution lists of a number of PR people, who are now sending me press releases announcing new hardware and software a few days before the news officially hit the wire. There are lots of problems with this setup. Notably: Since I didn’t ask for these releases, [...]

Last Week, I spent some time going around the GAMBIT lab with game designer Warren Spector (System Shock, Thief, Deus Ex, now working for Disney) to talk with the teams who will be developing this summer's games. You may recall...

I’m finally getting a chance to go through some of the data collected from the study of my EC&I 831 graduate course. I absolutely love this passage from former student, Cindy Seibel, who describes her learning experience in the course.

To me this course was a personal journey loosely coupled in a community. I liken it to an island-hopping cruise ship. When we were on the ship on Tuesdays and Wednesdays there was an array of activities for us to participate in. Then we would stop at an island, get off and go on a personal investigation. We could sit on the beach and reflect, or go off an investigate something that had been triggered for us on the last ship’s activity. Our reflections and learnings were captured in our blogs and we would seek out each other through those expressions. Others outside the course would also participate in the same way, joining us randomly on the island or the ship. Then we would get back on the ship on Tuesday for a new buffet. So could we have done that with a closed LMS? I don’t think so. The public blogs were absolutely key to this experience. The open wiki was important as it forced us to “put ourselves out there”. That was an important part of the experience. We learned that there is a network out there if we choose to participate. The tools are almost secondary. Connecting to the network was key.

I love the cruise ship analogy. As well, I want to pay close attention to Cindy’s description of a “personal journey loosely coupled in a community.” It is an important distinction.

I will be leaving to Greece shortly to attend ICICTE in Corfu. The following is an early draft of a paper I wrote for the conference that outlines some of the processes and early feedback I received regarding a graduate course I recently taught, EC&I 831.

Open, Connected, Social – Implications for Educational Design – Upload a Document to Scribd Read this document on Scribd: Open, Connected, Social – Implications for Educational Design

Comments are welcome and encouraged. Keep in mind that this is an early draft and there are likely many errors. It was a paper written a while ago BEFORE I had much of the new data in (which I am working through right now). I have only shared it at this point as I enjoy making my writing processes as transparent as my teaching.

Dan Meyer announced a short while back that he would be producing a series of 10 vodcasts this season. After watching the first two, I am very impressed. Check out the latest vodcast below:

dy/av : 002 : the next-gen lecturer from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.

For the last decade, I have been pushing the use of video for teacher reflection. Dan demonstrates this beautifully while simultaneously demonstrating the potential of visual media for math instruction. I look forward to the subsequent vodcasts.

G'day Mates. The following op-ed piece, which I co-authored with John Hartley, appeared yesterday morning in the Sydney Morning Herald. The text is a mash up of two pieces -- one by me, one by Hartley -- which will appear...

From the Wall Street Journal:

J.C. Penney Co. execs are blaming the company’s ad agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, for a fake ad that debuted at Cannes and is now on YouTube in which the retailer appears to be endorsing teen sex. The purported ad shows two teenagers in their own bedrooms stripping down to their underwear and then timing themselves as they race to put on their clothes. All this is done in preparation for the boy and girl to hang out in her basement while her mother is upstairs. The video, called “Speed Dressing,” ends with the teens heading down to the basement as the words “Today’s the day to get away with it” flash on the screen, echoing Penney’s use of the phrase “Today’s the day to…” in a series of ads it launched last year. Penney’s logo and “Every Day Matters” slogan then appear on the screen.

I finally upgraded to Wordpress 2.51. The transition was NOT flawless, in fact it brought the site down. Luckily D’arcy was there to save me! Thanks again Darcy.

Excuse the new theme, I’m in transition as I figure out the new look for this space.

And so it goes. After some great play in the group stage, the Dutch just couldn’t get it going in the quarterfinal against Russia on Saturday. While I’m deeply disappointed in the fact that they lost, I think the team gave the fans (including me), some great games early on and lots to cheer about. [...]