Blogs
I am sitting home, looking at schedules, and reading on-line. What exactly? Well, since Hanna’s got me in, Hanna’s where we start:
- The National Hurricane Center (in my blog roll) updates the progress of Hanna, and Ike, and the remnants of Josephine every few hours. I like the Forecast Discussions (they seem strange, but you get used to them) and the Wind Speed projections (tables with numbers, my sort of stuff), but the animated graphics archives (I like the 5-day projections) are really cool.
- Breaking the rules. An upstate NY math teacher - f(t) - uses a cell phone in class? Nope. She makes her kids use theirs. Pretty cool, though I don’t think I have the guts to try it myself.
- Got stuff out of the garden before Hanna soaked it? Pissed Off Teacher did. Just a pretty picture.
- What’s the chance that Palin will be president? Well, if McCain loses, zero (this time). But if McCain wins… over at God Plays Dice Isabel Michael reports on the calculated odds.
- My local newspaper has a blog. Ok, it’ll get better.
- Gotham Schools has a story on something else that has gone wrong with the opening of the New York City school year: overloaded registration centers.
- And they also cover something near and dear: math and olives. It would be easy to be all “isn’t this wonderful” but Kelly is right to ask some hard questions about math education in Morocco.
What a privilege to spend time with a good and smart friend. Since we began planning for this day back in January, I’ve been looking forward to it. It was remarkable to see how many traveled a fair distance to attend this one day event.
The day was well crafted by Ewan that included a series of short presentation type deliveries followed by opportunity to discuss and play.
As a group, we decided these were the most important ideas from the morning:
- R & D is for everyone
- Building Shared Awareness
- Remix the curricula
- Balance between structure and flexibility, saturation and overload
- Importance of rules in play
The afternoon was spent exploring gaming and the concept of gaming as a learning tool.
One participant summarized his learning this way, “One mistake I’ve made is I’ve never played with a computer”. This was a telling statement about how we view ourselves as learners.
Lots of ideas were explored and my goal was that folks left willing to continue to innovate, explore, learn and share. Not entirely new but a fresh set of eyes always helps.
Working out a New Game photo: by Ewan Mcintosh
Clarence shares this article via my Shared Feed in Google Reader and it spoke to me on many levels.
Here’s a parent who, although obviously tech and internet saavy hadn’t realized the power of the internet for his own kids:
I’ve written about my kids literally hundreds of times and published dozens of photos of them. But, I’ve always drawn the line at showing their faces. Every picture I’ve posted is a shot from the back, a photo with the face turned away, a costume disguise, you name it- I’ve become a master of the private, public persona. So I have to admit, that when I saw the YouTube video and Tasha waltzing up to the camera, I was a little aghast.
But although he was “aghast” at first quickly changed his view.
But then a light bulb went off. She was excited that the video was going online and that sense of enthusiasm was evident in each of the kids as they made their presentation.
He goes on to write about how the author of the book connects with the student.
Where it gets more interesting, is that the author of the book discovered the YouTube video and wrote about it on his blog. In fact, he wrote: “My favorite is the girl who liked Fox because he’s part of the dog family and is cute.”
Reminds me of someone and someone else
Then he “touches ‘em all” with this quote:
Anything that gets kids excited about learning is something that I will stand behind. But it takes a teacher who gets how the technology can be leveraged to make this work.
And another home run with this one:
Seeing Tasha and her friends on the computer screen, it dawned on me that I’ve been participating in an online ecosystem, but with one foot still planted firmly in a largely imaginary safety zone. I think I’ve become the technological equivalent of the parent who won’t let their kids play unsupervised in the fenced back yard at an age when they themselves used to be allowed to wander six blocks to the park as long as they promised to be home before dark.
Not only should we be leveraging our students as evidence and support for online connection and engagement but finding more parents who will support and speak out. Whether we like it or not, we have a marketing issue on our hands and satisfied customers are valuable resources.
Image: Brilliant Minds, Brilliant Hardware: Bonding Moment
http://flickr.com/photos/courosa/413146410/in/set-723361
Technorati Tags: clarencefisher, karlfisch, davidjakes, aleccouros, internetsafety
