THERE IS NOTHING WRONG HERE

Well I did it, sent in my proposal for a workshop at the M.A.S.S Technology Conference. I have been telling everyone that will listen about Wikinomics and Here Comes Everybody and that these are two books educators need to read. So when the RFP for the conference showed up in my email I decided to go for it. I have had my own doubts about who am I to bring this to a superintendents convention, I am just a teacher. But, in the spirit of wikinomics anyone can contribute to the knowledge of the many.

I decided to use the power of the wikinomics concept to help me write the proposal and posted it on the edubloggescon.com wiki and asked for feedback, no one responded. It is mid-summer and many educators are taking time to relax and recharge for the next school year. I will keep the wiki page up and ask for feedback from educators who have read either book.

I just got (9/10) an email about the superintendents tech conference and I did not get chosen to present. Looking over the list of presenters it should be a conference worth going to, too bad I can’t. I plan to keep developing this topic because it is important that educators understand the “perfect storm” of changes that are happening due to technological changes that make it easier to share, peer create, and act globally.

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.