Webblogg-ed

So, I’m tired. In the last 21 days I’ve traveled about 8,000 miles, near as I can figure, and given 11 presentations, four of them on “opening days” in front of a total of about 3,000 teachers in about a half dozen states and provinces. It’s a fun time when people are rested and ready [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Back to School", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/back-to-school/" });

Moments like the Sarah Palin for VP pick are moments to sit back and take measure of what a complex landscape we’re living under when it comes to what to believe, Googleability, and the whole concept of “citizen journalism.” The stupidity from both sides has been amazing (the “she has foreign policy experience because she’s [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Citizen Journalists and Wikipedia Editors", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/citize-journalists/" });

So lately I’ve been talking and thinking more and more about this idea of a “performance standard” that reads something like “Students create, grow and navigate online personal learning networks in safe, effective and ethical ways” and what that would mean in a NETS type framework. For instance, students: locate, identify and evaluate potential mentors or [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Assessing Network Building", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/assessing-network-building/" });

Some stories are so bizarre that you have to wonder if they’re true, but this one (via Ewan’s Delicious bookmarks) about a policeman in Cheyenne, Wyoming who was brought in to “teach” kids about MySpace is beyond the pale: “Officer Gay chose it as an opportunity to take Shaylah’s pictures and her MySpace and use it [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Let’s Just Scare the #$%& Out of Them, Ok?", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/lets-just-scare-the-out-of-them-ok/" });

Ever since last month when delicious FINALLY did an upgrade, I’ve been digging into it pretty heavily and really liking the result. That’s not to say that there is anything especially new here; there isn’t aside from the 1000 character description upgrade which, to me anyway, is a big deal. But for some reason it’s [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "More Deliciouser and Readerable", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/more-deliciouser-and-readerable/" });

Yesterday, Sheryl and I began what we hope will be a successful process to change teaching in New Jersey on a statewide level. This fall, we’ll be running a Powerful Learning Practice cohort in the state in conjunction with Kean University that will include folks from every level of the education construct, from the assistant [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Getting the Right People on the Bus", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/getting-the-right-people-on-the-bus/" });

If this article in Innovate (registration required) didn’t keep hammering the “N-Gen” meme and all the requisite star-struck statistics and high-fallutin description so hard it would have been a lot more fun to read.  But the bottom line thesis is still important for all educators to consider: Much in the same way that Rudolph Flesch’s 1955 [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "“Why Johnny’s Professor Can’t Read”", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/why-johnnys-professor-cant-read/" });

So this is definitely worth an hour of your time if you haven’t already invested it. (I seem to be about four days late to stuff any more…go figure.) Michael Wesch of Kansas State and the “Machine is Us” fame gave an overview of the cultural significance of You Tube to the LOC, and suffice [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Michael Wesch’s Presentation to Library of Congress", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/michael-weschs-presentation-to-library-of-congress/" });

I hadn’t planned on getting my writing life in order today, but then I somehow happened on this post by Michele Martin on using Delicious to create an online portfolio. Since I have a couple of articles due out this fall (and a couple of new books in the works), I decided a good place [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "A Delicious Digital Footprint", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/a-delicious-digital-footprint/" });

Ok…so I really am searching for words as to how cool Piclens is. And I know; I shouldn’t get so buzzed by the tools. But I’m giving myself an exception here just because I’ve been fooling around with this thing for about an hour since I downloaded it and it’s like mesmerizingly fun…and useful. It’s a [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "PicLens…Whoa!", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/piclenswhoa/" });

Lately, in order to make a point about how the way we use the Web is changing, I’ve been saying in my presentations something along the likes of “you know, if you took this computer (pointing to my still somewhat shiny MacBookPro) and threw it in the river, it really wouldn’t mess up my life [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Is My Head (and My Life) in the Clouds?", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/is-my-head-and-my-life-in-the-clouds/" });

For all of its amazing potential for good, here is a sobering reminder of what else the Web is good for, namely preying on people and causing horrible havoc. Today the Internet is much more than esoteric discussion forums. It is a mass medium for defining who we are to ourselves and to others. Teenagers groom [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "The Web as a “Vicious Group Hunt”", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/the-web-as-a-vicious-group-hunt/" });

For those who may want to catch the archive, here is my interview yesterday with Indiana University professor Curtis Bonk as we chatted for about an hour about a variety of topics including the effects of technologies in Third World countries, the barriers to change in K-12 schools, and what the future might hold for [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Curtis Bonk Interview", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/curtis-bonk-interview/" });

New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks writes about the pretty dire state of education in this country in his piece “The Biggest Issue” which ran yesterday, and it cites some interesting research about the relationship between education and technology. Namely, not so great things happen when the pace of educational progress slips behind that [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Dealing With the “Skills Slowdown”", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/dealing-with-the-skills-slowdown/" });

Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 2 pm EST I’ll be continuing my thread of interviews with authors with Curtis Bonk, professor of e-learning at Indiana University. Curtis has just finished a comprehensive companion to Thomas Friedman’s work that looks at the world through an education slant. His blog has been recounting some of his travels around the [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "The World is Flat for Education–Curtis Bonk Interview", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/the-world-is-flat-for-education-curtis-bonk-interview/" });

Just an observation here, but three times in the last week I have been speaking to different educators who in passing have made the point that we do a good job of teaching kids that .org sites are more trustworthy than .com sites but that in general, we really don’t have a solid grasp of [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "WeGottaStopThis.org", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/wegottastopthisorg/" });

So the unending debate over whether or not reading on the Internet is “really” reading gets played out  once again in this New York Times piece titled “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?” It’s the story of a “typical” family where the kids are online some six hours a day reading and writing at [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Kids Prefer Reading Online…", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/kids-prefer-reading-online/" });

Been taking a bit of break in these parts of late, still reading and watching a lot, writing a fair share of offline stuff, and plowing through a lot of trashy beach novels which, I’ve decided, are my antidote to over connectedness. (It’s also a great way to spend 4.5 hours on the tarmac while [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Controlled Connectedness", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/controlled-connectedness/" });

Just testing you can guess what… Sure wish I had smaller thumbs! SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "iPhoneblog", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/iphoneblog/" });

I’ve liked Twitter since I first started playing with it last year, but there are some things that are really starting to annoy me about these 140-character “conversations” that we’re carrying on there, server issues notwithstanding. Whether it’s some people getting a little snippy from time to time and then other people making a way-too-huge-a-deal about [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "What I Hate About Twitter", url: "http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/what-i-hate-about-twitter/" });