New Feature - following a tweet

With blatant disregard for time management (this took for-ev-er) and my previous stand against the inherent narcissism of tweeting, my blog is now following Craig Ferguson's tweet. (Just to prove it could be done.) And next time I have a couple hours to engage in utter frustration I probably won't do it again. Yet, I wonder what Cher is tweeting today?

National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education

Mobile campus – standardization needed?

Focusing on the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, vendors and advocates consider the future of the mobile sector. In areas such as India, mobile phones are becoming an affordable and preferable platform for distance ed. They don’t have the phone poles and wires so the wireless infrastructure has exceeded what we have here in New Mexico. They often have excellent coverage in the middle of a jungle. So, in a true use what you have and make it work mentality, teaching is occurring on mobile phones.

Open Notebook Science

Dr. Jean-Claude Bradley serves as an example of an increasing number of scientists who are conducting their work online, where it can be viewed and reviewed by their peers and the public. They have utilized online applications to share ongoing experiments in real time and share the evolving data, laboratory notes and correspondence with all viewers. This takes collaboration and transparency to a whole new level.

Coming Soon: Blogs United

NITLE has integrated their three blogs Techne, Liberal Education Today, and Perspectives into what they are calling “one unified metablog.” The proposed benefits from this change include uniting all communication and interchange of ideas in one location. By sharing the space with professionals from different areas of expertise will share ideas and collaboration will be enhanced. Resources can also be shared. Will it become too large and cumbersome? Time will tell.

Podcast from Sea Change Radio

This episode is about sustainable schools and green options in education. Perfect for my environmental sustainability class. http://podcast.com/episode/50963391/120696/

e-learning 2.0 - how Web technologies are shaping education

The ReadWriteWeb… the first thing I’ve read in days that doesn’t sound like something coined by someone who’s had way too much coffee. It’s great. ClearConciseRelevant. As a teacher and parent I can state categorically that children are egocentric creatures. Sure, their intrigue with all things “shiny” will drawn them into VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments). But I think tools that allow them to create their own materials…Blogs, Wikis, and something called Manila etc… will captivate and motivate.

Teachers at a grammar school in Scotland take their students on an annual trip to Paris and Normandy and the kids publish a travel blog using TypePad. (Makes me wonder if they get the weekly lecture about using the copier too much. Maybe using technology will be cost effective and we can get those trips to Paris scheduled.) This image is of teachers’tv, which appears to be the go to place to see innovative applications for web 2.0 in education.

The author then addresses concerns that educators are “in danger of being undermined by the recently proposed Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA). This legislation attempts to address the moral panic over sites like MySpace and the perceived ‘dangers’ they pose to children.” Yes, the quotes around dangers are his. Yes, I understand the legislation uses a backhoe when a scalpel would have been more appropriate. Steve, as a parent and grandparent, if the school assigns students to use public sites like MySpace and, as a result, one student is harmed, would that be an acceptable cost? Look at the realities. A crime ring sprang up to hit celebrities who had tweeted they were away from home. Maybe they don’t get Dateline in the UK and he hasn’t seen all the online child predators stopping by for ice tea and handcuffs. It’s a valid danger and a concern educators need to share. Maybe web 2.0 is the perfect platform for educating children and putting the child predators where they belong. Seriously, it would be an opportunity to be proactive and make web 2.0 in the classroom part of the solution.

I’m off to watch a conference on Moodle that’s occurring this weekend in Austrailia and to make an avatar for second life. Now that’s a sentence I never thought I’d write and a far cry from usual Saturday. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, after inserting an image in your blog haven’t you done enough for one day?

Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning?

How important are blogs? Do I need Feedstar, Waypath and Daypop to search for the content in blogs? And is blogpulse truly “blogosphereic”? I had hoped that Technorati would be reigning in all these trends, but no, it’s more of the same. PubSub allows us “to literally search the future, lets students and faculty follow a search over time, perhaps across a span of weeks in a semester.” I have read too much for one day. Too many Webtastic trends for one brain that doesn’t appear to be compatibly wired. TBC

E-Leaning in the Digital Age by John Seely Brown

This is largely an exploration of Social-Constructivist Learning Theory. My concern, as a long time teacher, is the egalitarian nature of the web. Are young learners differentiating between the thoughts of Nelson Mandela and those of a rap artist or their BFF? All information is not created equal. My hope is that the technological revolution of learning will create dynamic learning experiences that are more educational than anything I could create within the four walls of a classroom. The 2010 Horizon report suggests future virtual learning environments where students could stroll down the streets of ancient Athens and chat with Socrates. Another study claims students are wired up 7 hours a day and I suspect not very much of it is educational. I’m concerned that students are currently being drawn toward the dominant medium of knowledge, not the peaks.

I have a degree in psych and it causes a specific concern in this matter. We are unconsciously drawn to the familiar. Thousands of years ago, as our brains were evolving, this was a good thing. If we ate the same nuts and berries over and over we were less likely to ingest something new and poisonous. A teacher must prod students into the unfamiliar, often by placing it in the context of things with which they are already comfortable. American students currently have a very distorted perception of their knowledge as revealed in studies. They think they’re smarter than they are…smarter than their counterparts in other countries and they aren’t. Does the web foster complacency and mediocrity? The world online is flat. Wisdom is not.

Lov'n Pata Pata

Perhaps you’ve noticed the Honda ads with the captivating music. They have out maneuvered those of us who have mastered the automatic brain tune out at the first sign of a commercial. Every time the ad ran I would turn up the volume and repeat, parrot-like, “I LOVE this song.” Now that I’m looking for excuses to peck my way around Web 2.0 this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Turns out I’m not the first person impressed by this song. This is Pata Pata by Miriam Makeba. Harry Belafonte discovered her in the early ‘60’s. She performed with Paul Simon’s Graceland tour. (I LOVED it) She’s been nominated for Grammies and performed at the Lincoln center. I’m just saying I could have noticed this talent a long time ago.

OK, there is more talent out there than any one person could have time to appreciate. It’s nothing an evening spent on Google and YouTube can’t fix.
You can listen to Pata Pata by clicking in the right column. Move the furniture back and enjoy.