Teach42

Maybe it’s just the title of his blog that hooked me in, but I’m going to be participating in Steli Efti’s EduBlogger Event 07 on Saturday! Basically, every hour a new author is going to put up a post on the SuperCoolSchool blog. For the entire next hour, people can converse back and forth with the author through comments to the blog post. When the top of the hour comes around again, a new post will get put up, but if the conversation is rolling there’s no reason that it has to stop. Personally, I’m blocking off a couple of hours, so if people want to chat, we can keep it rolling.

We’ll see what happens, I’m a little nervous about having a 3:30 spot on a Saturday afternoon with the Final Four game looming, but it sounds interesting and fun, so I’m game!

It´s all about new & revolutionary education concepts & ideas – meet speakers and attendees in the comment box for great conversations.

WHEN: Saturday, 03/31/07

WHERE: Steli Efti´s Supercool Blog

WHAT: New Post and Speaker Every Half Hour
First Session: 10am – 1pm Pacific Time (GMT -7hrs)
Second Session: 2pm – 5pm Pacific Time (GMT -7hrs)

WHO:

10:00 – hj barraza on Decentralised Learning Services for Developing Countries

10:30 – Jon Bennett on Differentiation for Dummies

11:00 – Florence Meichel on New technology and knowledge accessibility

11:30 – Peter Haslam on The Need for Self-Directed Learning

12:00 – Liz Strauss on The Ergonomics of You

12:30 – Michael Beck on Long Term Memory / Human Computer Storage Techniques

- break -

02:00 – Joshua Hwang on Zen of Studying

02:30 – ToNet on Socialnetworking Phenomena & the Impact on Education

03:00 – Pat Aroune on Community of practice as a model for change in today’s schools

03:30 – Steve Dembo on Is anonymity critical to the success of the edu blogosphere?

04:00 – Steli Efti on The 7 lessons we learned at school that could possibly ruin our lifes

04:30 – Tiara Shafiq with a bonus post

05:00 – Open discussion about education…

Bring a link to leave that shares something you know about education, learning & life!

Let´s Rock´N´Roll!

Every once in a while, I check out my ‘ego-feed’ to see what links are coming in (Ok, ok, I do it several times a week) and came across the blog of Andrew Pass. He linked to the post I put up yesterday and responded with a series of ‘discussion starters’.

1. What does the word “impartiality” mean? Is there really such thing as impartiality?
2. What is/are the purposes of writing?
3. Do your students think that a business owner would rather take out an advertisement in a newspaper or on a website or have somebody write about their product in glowing terms? (For the purpose of this question, imagine that the advertisement is free of charge.

I started scrolling back and he’s done that several times over, responding to posts of Stephen Downes, the Kathy Sierra situation, and various current events.

I love the format. The fact that he isn’t just linking to other blog posts, or sharing his take on them. He’s providing suggestions for how you can take those blog posts and use them to spark discussions in the classrooms. Very cool stuff and a great way to bridge the online and offline worlds. He suggests that after discussing the issues, students respond on the original blog posts. Consider, discuss, respond in writing. Sounds like a great way to start a class period.

When I first started working for Discovery Education, I was really worried that people would shy away from the blog because they’d think of me as some kind of corporate shill. I’d like to think that it hasn’t happened. While I do link to some of the more important or significant events, largely I’ve separated work from play. So here’s one question for you, the readers.

Do you care?

Am I wasting my time worrying whether I’m posting too much Discovery stuff or not? If I provide links to webinars we’re hosting, or events that we’re doing, does that bother you at all? I’d really appreciate knowing whether I’m just making a big deal out of nothing.

To be honest, I’m really proud of what I do with Discovery and think we do some incredible things for the world of education. And since its a huge part of my life, I’d like to share more of it here without worrying about turning people off. I don’t ever want to sound like a walking advertisement for Discovery (even though I look like one sometimes), but we do happen to do some pretty exciting things that I think people should know about.

Let me know what you think!

I like to look at the world through rose colored glasses. I think the vast majority of humanity has the best of intentions and are inherently good people. Alan actually said it pretty well when he commented, “I firmly believe that the numbers of times people create meaningful, positive connections via the net far outweighs, by orders of magnitude, the horror stories of net predation that scream from tabloids, TV junk news, and every newspaper.”

However, there are a few bad apples out there. And unfortunately, the blogosphere gives them a voice just like everybody else. Well, just the same but maybe a little bit louder. You see, there are hundreds of amazing bloggers who are lost in the shuffle. They post daily, but only a relatively select few know about them and read their posts. With gazillions of blogs out there, it’s can be hard to get yourself heard above the buzz.

When you post something like the things people were posting on Kathy Sierra’s blog and on other blogs about her, not only do you get heard, but you get attention. Some people have a real dark side to them, and the relative anonymity of blogging (not having to say things directly to a person’s face) gives them the opportunity to say things they would never ordinarily voice. And to do it loudly and publicly.

It’s criminal (literally) what she had to endure, and I totally understand why she would choose to take a leave of absence from the blogosphere.

Just because you have the right to say something, doesn’t make it the right thing to do. I hope you will all join me in supporting Kathy and in wishing her a speedy return.

Ever hear of IMSafer? I just learned about it. I’m not a big fan of filters and snooping software, because I think most kids will just think of it as a challenge. But I do kind of like the spirit of this one.

Basically it monitors all IM’s from your children’s accounts and alerts you to any dangerous situations they might be getting themselves into. How does it do that? Basically it hunts for keywords in English, slang, l33t speak, and IM abbreviations. If it finds something that could be an issue, you’ll get an email with that portion of the conversation. You can then determine for yourself whether its something to be concerned about or not. It does not, I repeat DOES NOT give you a full transcript of everything your son or daughter says. Only the red flags.

I think that will be much more palettable to rebellious students than thinking that their parents are sneaking behind their backs and spying on them.

Pretty cool. Definitely one to keep bookmarked for parents that want to take an active role in keeping their children safe, without taking actions that might betray their trust.

Will Richardson announced today a new blog engine that he was hired to provide input for. It’s called 21 Classes, which I can only assume is an homage to Teach42, recognizing that they’re only half as cool as me

Anyway, based on my initial trial, this looks to be the first blog engine since Dave’s Classroom Blogmeister to actual be designed with the classroom environment in mind.

The free version is supported by Google Ads, which is decidedly not-so-education-friendly. Additionally, you only get 2mb per student, up to 50. Otherwise, it’s 9 bucks a month, which isn’t too horrible, but not great either.

I did play around with it some and I do have to admit that I’m impressed with the engine itself. I love the fact that you can pre-register students or open it up to them. No email addresses are required, which is a huge plus. The editor is decent, but nothing special. Pretty run of the mill. No ability to create categories on the fly though, which can be a pain (not that I use them anyway). Lots of options, and as I said, you definitely know that this is for a classroom environment. You can arrange students into groups, create sets of authors, and tweak quite a few settings including policies and terms of use statements.

Themes are pretty limited, and it doesn’t seem as though you can do much editing of them. However, they do allow you to customzize the major thematic elements, header, footer and sidebar. So even though you don’t have complete control, you can still do things like add in widgets.

As a student, you have a surprising amount of control over your blogs settings, so they can really tweak it to their own individual style, with the teacher maintaining overarching control. Pretty impressive!

While I’m not 100% certain of the pricing model yet, I do have to admit that this is probably the most well developed blog engine for educators. If you try it out with your students, let me know what you think!

Via my wife, Jessica.

Have you backed up your data lately? You will after you read this!

Perhaps you know that sinking feeling when a single keystroke accidentally destroys hours of work. Now imagine wiping out a disk drive containing information for an account worth $38 billion.
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That’s what happened to a computer technician reformatting a disk drive at the Alaska Department of Revenue. While doing routine maintenance work, the technician accidentally deleted applicant information for an oil-funded account — one of Alaska residents’ biggest perks — and mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well.

There was still hope, until the department discovered its third line of defense, backup tapes, were unreadable.

“Oops”

Now go back up your stuff.

A week or two ago, Alan posted something that really resonated with me about how we tend to focus so much on the stranger-danger side of the internet that you don’t hear about the positive side of networking with ‘strangers’.

There is so much fear flying about internet behavior. Yes, there are real predators, and naive kids you get exploited. It is not chicken feed, not trivial.

On the other hand, I firmly believe that the numbers of times people create meaningful, positive connections via the net far outweighs, by orders of magnitude, the horror stories of net predation that scream from tabloids, TV junk news, and every newspaper. Yet good stories are not news.

Yesterday, Dave Ferguson added a fantastic analogy to the conversation.

the best internet-meeting analogy I’ve heard is that there are X million people online (pick a number that fits your interest, like English speakers or people in France)… and just like a city with X million people, there are places where it’s not too smart to go, and people whom it’s not too smart to choose to meet.

And, like that city of X million, there are all kinds of people you benefit from meeting, and even greater numbers of people who wish you no harm whatsoever.

To sacrifice the opportunities that we have to network and collaborate due to a few people who have bad intentions would just be a shame. There’s so much good stuff out there, so many positive uses, I hate hearing that somebody wants to block things or shut them down because of a few bad apples.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we don’t need to keep our children safe. But I think we ought to be teaching them to be safe, rather then removing them from any questionable situation. One is a life skill, the other is a bubble.