'technology' Category
Salvaging What’s Good
This is my attempt to make sense of what “school 2.0″ might mean, using a couple of education reform classics I just finished reading. For what it’s worth, I hate speculating about the future, and am more comfortable building with whatever I’m given to work with, if I can see any use.
I found Neil Postman’s [...]Resistant, Clueless, Indifferent, or Just Defensive?
Responding to a distributed blues riff on teacher resistance to systemic change (Will Richardson, Artichoke, Chris Sessums, and Terry Elliot - here and here again). I have a quick story.
We were working on a mission statement for our school. At the end of what had been a drawn-out process in which an experienced mission [...]Small Projects Loosely Joined
I hijacked David Weinberger’s book title for this post, which is inspired by Grace Lee Boggs’s appearance on Bill Moyer’s Journal [transcript] yesterday. Boggs was introduced as a woman who, at the age of 91, “has been a part of almost every major movement in the United States in the last 75 years, including: Labor, [...]
Democracy 2.0
Will Richardson’s post about Web 2.0 as “Cultural and Intellectual Catastrophe” referenced Andrew Keen’s critique of “radical democratizers” who threaten the “intellectual life of our society.” Will wonders “…what systemic impact we can have by pushing at the education door.”
Keen sounds off about web technologies, but he’s really talking about preserving the status quo, and [...]Classroom Blogging Backstory
The other day Mark Ahlness posted about his students spending silent reading periods reading blogs that my fourth graders wrote this year. It may interest people to hear a little bit about the production of those Pokemon blog posts and how my students used Wikipedia, especially since Doug Johnson posted a spirited and correct [...]
Taking Notes for Real Writing
The arrival of the laptop (Apple iBook) and the wireless network at our school this year has triggered some new thinking (for me, mostly) in my classroom. My students’ writing on the internet has run in waves, with one kid picking up an idea that pretty soon half a dozen are working on.
I showed [...]No Test Prep Program Left Behind
Stephen Downes and Wesley Fryer both took aim at a news article that appeared today, Study eyes effect of tech on classroom. Wesley talked about the need for good teaching before any technology, including paper and pencils, can make a big difference. And I agree. Stephen hailed the power of technology in and of [...]
Raven on the Wing
The totem pole in our schoolyard has a story about the panther telling the raven about love, kindness, and respect. According to the story, the raven flies in ever-widening circles from the school, to the town, and beyond, eventually out to the universe. The raven goes around spreading the message about love, kindness, and respect…until [...]
About those laptops…
Tom and Miguel have been hashing out some of the problems with putting laptops in school.
Since we’ve been getting a supply of laptops together in the building where I work, I’d say that between the sharing between classrooms, and the charging up, and the DON’T DROP THOSE THINGS problems, which is related to the [...]Made It This Far
It’s been a push to get through the last couple of weeks with my wits intact. I walked into the school this morning after dropping my 8th grader off at before-school volleyball practice…by the time I arrived there was a crowd of little kids in the hallway waiting for breakfast. Some of them laying down [...]
