Learn - Ideas

On Redefining Education

Mon, 07 May 2007 01:17:40 -0400

I've been thinking lately about the problem with schools (actually, I've been thinking about that since at least the 6th grade). I'm still trying to refine the argument, but I think it comes down to the fact that there is no so much information in the world that is ever-rapidly being produced that old ideas of learning "the basics" just don't make sense anymore. It used to be that you could learn how to design bridges, heal the sick, or, maybe build cars (probably using very few skills that you learned in school) and be set. Now, however, the job that you'll be doing in five or ten years, especially if you are a high school senior, probably doesn't exist.

Idea: Give Teachers Assistants

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:42:28 -0500

Note: I have no idea what I'm talking about. I've been out of the classroom for over a decade and do not really study professional development.

It's seemed to me for a long time that one problem with teaching as a profession is that unlike most professions, the jobs of a novice teacher and the jobs of a veteran teacher are almost exactly the same. You go in your room, close the door, and teach, coming out only to go to the bathroom and maybe listen to your more poisonous colleagues gripe in the teacher lounge. In most other professions when you start you do sort-of ramp up to being a full-fledged participant. My (again nascent) understanding of becoming a lawyer is that when you start, you're not typically given your own cases to try in front of a judge yourself. Instead you work with a mentor who does the heavy lifting while you learn the ropes. By the time you go to court by yourself, you've been a number of times already, know the judge, and how things work. If you're good and work hard, you eventually become a partner in the firm, fully vested in its success and the training of new lawyers. (To me the analogy of tenure for a college professor and becoming partner for a lawyer is apt, but it does not at all seem analogous to my understanding of tenure in K-12 public schools.)

No More HTML Training!

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 12:53:36 -0500

Synopsis: A student took two sets of classes to learn to create web pages. The results were, uh, disappointing. The same student used Tripod and GooglePages to create web pages. The results were rather impressive. Let's stop mistreating teachers by suggesting that they should know anything about web design.

How the Tech Guys Blew It

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 13:58:57 -0400

A continual question that we who think that computers can and will make a big difference---and improvement---in how people teach and learn in schools have to consider is why have we not seen these big gains? As Cuban and others point out, we have networked virtually every classroom in the country and have more computers what do we have to show for it? Where's the revolution? This piece proposes several answers to that question and some ways to jump-start the revolution.

Stone Aged Computing

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 10:54:02 -0400

In some talk somewhere I heard John Bransford use a "stone age" metaphor in some talk. I can't quite remember the context, but the idea (that I remember) was that it's often helpful to come up with the simplest possible way to do something. Here I argue that what we need are not more sophisticated computers and applications, but more ubiquitous access to computers and applications.

Need Sys-admin/PHP coder

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 12:55:57 -0500

I'm looking for a student, grad or undergrad, who can do Linux system administration and code/debug PHP/MYSQL. If you're capabable and interested, please contact me in my office (Claxton 443) or by email.

Sysadmin chores that I need in the short term:

get software suspend working on two laptops
get Samba working with LDAP so Ed students can use it

Web/Programming chores in the short term:

Make an old PHP3 script work (it worked last year)
Make changes to Webliographer, a bookmark-sharing app I wrote 10 years ago.
Do some tweaking of Drupal (that runs this site)

I can pay you for 10 hours/week. I'm also working with someone at OIT who needs someone with similar skills who can offer another 10 hours and a tuition waiver.

Crash Course In Learning Theory

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 12:06:38 -0500

From Couros---Crash Course In Learning Theory - The "Creating Passionate Users" blog has produced an excellent post on various learning theories. The content is situated for the development of a learning blog, and is well-written. The piece he's talking about is from Creating Passionate Users (which I'll be adding to my feed list. I don't have time to fully grock this now, but it'll probably be discussed in IT 669 Real Soon Now.

Check out Sakia & LAMS

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:18:45 -0400

Sakai purports to be "the world’s leading open source Collaboration and Learning Environment." I've tried a time or two to install it and make it do something useful, but have failed. I'm not sure why. I'd be interested in someone I know checking it out.

It's recently been integrated with LAMS, whatever that is. It ostensibly "creates digital lesson plans that can be run online with students, as well as shared among teachers." That sounds good too.

SurfYourWork.com yields undergrad $1.25 million

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 16:19:48 -0400
This eSchool News story is about a student who developed SurfYourWork.com, a web site that sounds a little like an eportfolio site. From what I can tell it's mostly a way for people to keep their info on the web. It might be interesting to look at this site and how it compares to other portfolio sites or volspace or whatever.

Install Davfs on Student

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 13:52:35 -0400

Install Davfs2 on student and make it so that folks can log in and have their home directory live on volspace.

Create a UTK-compliant Moodle Theme

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:52:36 -0400

That's it. That's my idea. See Moodle Themes Howto for hints.

20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 12:28:33 -0400

The Journal has a list of 20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have. It's not a bad list, except I'd say "course management system skills" rather than listing WebCT and Blackboard. If you've read anything here, you know that I'm a fan of Moodle and think it irresponsible to teach teachers to use expensive proprietary tools when there are Open Source Software alternatives that, in the case of Moodle, are easier to use.

It also talks about the "Deep Web." I ain't never heard of the deep web. It seems to be accessing database-based stuff via the web. It's not clear to me that this is fundamentally different from just using the web, at least if the databases are well-designed.

I also take issue with the notion that people need to know how to design web pages. I think that blogging software proves that Normal People don't want to learn about designing web sites and don't need to.

Puppy Linux

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 10:37:04 -0400

Couros has a link about Puppy Linux. It looks like with a few minutes one can download a CD, boot it, and then install this mini-distribution on a USB drive. It runs most everything from RAM disk, so it's pretty fast. This looks like a potentially useful way to have a computer on a USB drive so that wherever you go you have all of your files and settings with you.

A cool project would be to do something like outfit a classroom of students with these to see how their use of computers changed and whether they do stuff like, you know, actually edit and revise work that they create.

It's really small, so there's no OpenOffice, but it has Abiword, mozilla, and gnumeric. It looks pretty cool. One downside is that it wants to wipe away all the files on your USB drive to do the USB install (not necessary if you're willing to boot off a CD).

Wink--Free Tutorial and Presentation Software

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 10:03:23 -0400

Wink is a free (but not Open Source) package that lets you create Flash tutorials. Runs on Windows and Linux. Could be a cool tool to use for some kind of project.

Black Squirrel Content Management System

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 12:26:58 -0400

Black Squirrel is another Open Source content management system. An intersting project would be to use it to re-create the ITHES web site.