THERE IS NOTHING WRONG HERE

I listened to two very interesting podcast today from Edtech Talk (they all seem to be interesting). Edtech Talk is part of the World Bridges Network, a collection of educational podcasts anyone can take part in, check their calendar for the latest daily podcast.

TTT#98

The first podcast is “Teachers Teaching Teachers # 98 - Learning to be unschooly” The conversation included teachers and students from around the world and its subject was triggered by a post on Youth Twitter by a South Korean student named Soojin. The term schooliness was coined by Clay Burell in his blog. The podcast discussion focused on how to use the Read/Write web to engage students in authentic learning and not as a fancy worksheet.

From elgg to DrupalThe second podcast, Teachers Teaching Teachers #99 - From elgg to Drupal, was very timely because I have been having a discussion with our executive director and curriculum director about developing a CMS. I have used Moodle for a couple of years, but it was installed on our ISP, which we no longer use. I have looked at Joomla, Drupal, and elgg, but don’t know much about any of them. Bill Fitzgerald from DrupalEd was in on the conversation and his advice for anyone wanting to implement a CMS is to write in one or two sentences the goal of the CMS. Dave Cormier advised to write a very detailed description of what several students would do in the course of a day using the technology. Dave is the teacher who helped developed “A partnership project helping Prince Edward Island students bring the past to life using tools of the future.” A Living Archives uses Drupal.

The good thing is that there are many quality choices for a school based CMS.

Exposing students to Big Ideas is a great way to get them excited about the world and hopefully school. Even special ed students can get excited by Big Ideas. I showed this TED Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote hacks to the students in the PREP math classes and they wanted to get a Wii remote and try it themselves. The fact that they felt they could get the free software and instructions and make their own interactive white board is encouraging. We have Smart Boards in our school and we have them use them, so they are very familiar with how interactive white boards function. We ran out of time this year to hack a Wii, but I plan to work with the students to do it next school year

I have finally started listening to Wikinomics (download from Audible). As much as I enjoy listening to the book on the ride to work and home, I miss being able to highlight and make notes in the margins. I do bookmark with my Zen Micro so that I can go back and make notes later. I should have read it a year ago and I would now have a better idea of the changes happening in front of our eyes. The industrial revolution took hundreds of years to develop and make significant changes in peoples lives. The digital revolution is happening in one life time and most people are not aware of it. It is still rare that when I mention wiki to someone they know what I am talking about. I keep assuming that I am the one who has missed the boat and other professionals are blogging and podcasting. Listening to the book I am more convinced that the education system is a relic of the 18th century and just by a force of nature it will change. The choices are that we make the changes conscience and as smooth as possible or unconscience with disruptive changes.

Speaking of podcasting it is time I had my own if I am to teach other how to create and us podcasts. We did create classroom podcasts last year at Glenbrook Middle School, but those are gone now. I want to podcast some blog entries like Wes Fryer and do some interview.

Having the cluster map has maked posting to the blog much more interesting, now I know someone somewhere has at least looked at the blog. They may have been searching for windhorse (a Buddhist term) and this popped up, what a disappointment.