Archive for September, 2006
Yes, I consider it another reason MySpace should be unblocked.
John Pederson shares that the man who took several girls hostage before killing one and commiting suicide, may have found them through MySpace.
If you want to know where Tom Hoffman stands, I think the title of his response says it all. An Axe in the Forehead of Blogging in Schools.
Unfortunately, I think he’s more on the mark than I’d like to admit. Blogging isn’t MySpace. Supervised blogging is miles away from unsupervised MySpace. And yet in the eyes of many people, there’s no real difference.
It all comes down to whether students should be able to post to the internet without somebody approving of it first. Here comes the bucket of ice water though; Students are already and will continue to do it anyway.
The funny thing is, this is nothing new. In fact, it’s a 20 year old issue. The only difference is the level of competency needed to access the information. I was posting to bulletin board systems and chatting it up on DDials in 1986. At that time, nobody really cared, namely because you had to be a hardcore geek in order to access those sites.
However, things are different today. Bands and movies are sending people to MySpace now. YouTube is launching people’s careers. Everybody has access to these sites with little or no technological hurdles to overcome.
So what happens when Beck releases his latest music video on MySpace? Do you really think students won’t be heading over there and checking it out? When a movie like Clerks II promotes that it will include in the closing credits every person who ‘befriends’ its MySpace page, do you think students won’t register so they can follow through?
There’s no discussion needed. Children are going to be on sites like MySpace (so will adults, but we won’t worry about them). The only discussion required is to determine if we’re going to do anything to educate students about interacting in a safe and appropriate manner.
There should not be a single school in the country right now that is deciding whether or not to incoroprate blogging or social networking in their school. The time for that discussion is past. If you’re going to talk about that, you should also open up the discussion about whether or not students should be able smoke on school grounds, and whether we should discourage students from doing drugs. We’re past that. It’s something that has to be done, the only question is how you go about doing it.
So let’s get practical. Let’s assume the decision has been made to dive in head first. Where should they begin?
USB rechargeable batteries
File this under ‘A little weird, but might be cool." USBCell is a AA rechargeable battery, with a twist. Just pop off the cab to reveal a USB plug inside. Plug that sucker in and it will recharge via your computers USB port.
Pretty neat, but I’m not quite sure this one is going to take off. I mean, it would be great for travelers and people who want to use rechargeable batteries but don’t always have a charger handy. But how many free USB slots do you have on your computer right now? And are they all easily reachable? And spaced out far enough so that you can charge both batteries?
Cute idea though! Tempted to buy a few just for the goofiness factor
Baby@Teach42.com – Now with Video!
Our first home video! He may not ‘do’ too much, but even seeing him yawn, laugh, kick his foot up to his head, before tucking his arms under his head and resting, is just magical considering the little guy is still inside the womb!
In his next YouTube video, he’s going to be showing what happens within the womb when my wife drinks a whole bunch of diet coke and then pops a few mentos.
Bouncing around the womb
You know you’re a rock star, so act like one!
Ok, I don’t mean to suggest that you should throw TV’s out hotel windows or ask your principal to have a bowl of M&M’s (minus the brown ones) waiting for you in the teachers lounge when you arrive at school.
What I mean is that most of you reading this blog know a heck of alot more about technology than the average teacher. Trust me, if you read blogs actively, you’re ahead of the curve. So why not act like the expert you are and share your knowledge? Most states have their EdTech conferences during January, February and March and are accepting proposals now! Planning to attend NECC? Might as well present while you’re there!
I know what some of you are thinking. “But there’s already so many people who know this stuff and are already presenting.” That’s both true and totally untrue. While I’m sure there are people presenting about blogs, there may not be anybody who has the perspective of a middle school social studies teacher. I certainly don’t. Or how to use podcasting in a Kindergarten classroom. Or ways that RSS can be used to keep track of students’ research as they do their 8th grade term paper.
See what I mean? More than likely, you’ve got a different spin on things than anybody else. And I bet there’s people that would want to hear it. So don’t be shy, get out there and be a rock star!
I posted on the DEN blog links to some of the many state conferences, but if you happen to be local, here’s the 411 on presenting in Illinois:
IL-TCE 2007, “Think Outside the Box and Wires”, March 1-2, 2007.
The proposal submission site for general sessions will be open until Oct 1st at http://www.il-tce.org/proposals Presenters are encouraged to focus their session on the followingconference strands:
* Innovative Technologies
* Leadership and Management
* Online Learning
* Standards Aligned Lessons and Projects
* Strategies, Tools and Resources
* Technology Infrastructure and SupportWe are also interested in sessions that show how to differentiate and use universal access technologies as well as library media related content.
The Bionic Teacher gets down with his inner ninja
Gotta give props to Tom. He has taken some of the most boring technology tips and made them electric. All it takes is dressing like a Ninja, throwing in some music, and then editing the heck out of it!
Taking a tip from AskANinja.com, Tom shares “How to change your computer password”, and “How to mount the servers and make shortcuts to them” and he does it Ninja Style.
Do you NEED to wear a ninja mask to get your students and teachers to pay attention to technology tips? Of course not. But it certainly makes them a whole lot more memorable!
Like a little arithmetic in your fiction?
Personally, I’m a big fan of science fiction, but if you happen to be a ‘numbers’ person, or are looking for some math oriented fiction to integrate into your “Language Arts and Algebra” class, check out MathFiction. They have listed hundreds of books that feature or have significant references to mathematics.
They’re very well organized too, with links to comic books, free online texts, novels, scripts and much more. Many of the works listed don’t have any reviews on them yet, so if you have read any of them with your students, have them add a review to the site!
DIY Walled Garden
Miguel Guhlin has got a great post listing all sorts of Web 2.0 sites and software that you can use to create your own private Walled Garden
this info is useful if you want to create a “walled garden” of safe Web 2.0 tools you can use within your school’s intranet, or even Internet, but have complete control over. So, a quick review of the tools available for those who want to “lock” things down and eliminate social networking OUTSIDE of school environment during the school day
Phree Phone Trees with Pheeder
While it seems like this is really meant to be a site for keeping up with your enormous social calendar, it seems to me that this could be a nice free service for schools to take advantage of.
Pheeder is basically a free phone tree service.
Just call Pheeder, leave a message, hang up, and seconds later all of your friends receive the message at the very same instant on their phones. Then, if they want, they can reply to your message, or forward your message on to their friends.
Pretty simple. The first thing I thought of when I read about it was an emergency/snow day service that we had bought into at my old school. I don’t remember how much we paid for the service, but it didn’t come cheap. We put in all the phone numbers from our community, and then in the case of an emergency, we called in a message which got relayed to every phone.
This site seems to do the exact same thing. Not sure how expensive it is, but if it’s free and reliable, it’s certainly an option for pushing out time sensitive information to a group of people.
Of course, you probably couldn’t rely on it as your sole method of getting that info out, but if you don’t have a phone system, it’s worth checking in to!
K12 Online Conference
Gotta love the new face of conferencing. Coming very soon, the K12 Online Conference!
As Bud the Teacher (one of the keynote speakers) shares:
Announcing the first annual “K12 Online 2006″ convention for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice. This year’s conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, Oct. 23-27 and Oct. 30- Nov. 3 with the theme “Unleashing the Potential.” A call for proposals is below.
There will be four “conference strands”– two each week. Two presentations will be published in each strand each day, Monday – Friday, so four new presentations will be available each day over the course of the two-weeks. Each presentation will be given in podcast or screencast format and released via the conference blog (URL: TBA) and archived for posterity.
Visit his site for the full 411.
Looks awesome! Darren, Will and Sheryl are organizing it. Mark your calendars now!