Generation We October 31, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Opinion.add a comment
Thanks to Dr. Alec Couros for the link to “Generation We: The Movement Begins…”
There are some sobering statistics listed and the video is well worth taking the time to watch. One point I disagree with is that Generation We is technologically brilliant. While they are frequent users, producers, and consumers of technology, most people, including GenWe, are not very adept. They learn something cool that meets their needs, they share it and it spreads, but rarely to individuals (myself included) do something revolutionary and brilliant with those technology tools. As teachers, we need to help our students move up the critical thinking food chain so that they can tap the potential of the current wave of technology innovation.
YouTube – Generation WE : The Movement Begins…
Where Am I 2.0? October 26, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Link Collections, Tools.add a comment
I don’t know if you have ever experienced this or not, but from time to time I hear about a cool new tool and when I sign up I find I’ve already set up an account. I don’t know if there is a cool French term that captures this experience or not, but since déjà vous is already taken, how about a similar déjà tu? Any way, if you aren’t sure if you’ve been somewhere before, thanks to a TechCrunch article - Is Your Username Taken? Usernamecheck Will Tell You - there is a tool that checks a large number of popular Web 2.0 tools to see if your username is already registered. You can use this to see if you might have already created an account, and it is also another way to see a sample of what other tools are out there. I was surprised by one or two of the places where I didn’t realize I had an account. Check to see where your user name is registered!
Where is Your Username registered
Careful Where You Click October 21, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Safety.add a comment
One part of Internet safety is keeping your own system infection free. This isn’t as simple as it may seem. According to Sophos, Adobe is potentially spreading a virus around through their web server. Have you visited Adobe recently?
Sophos discovers serious threat for vloggers on Adobe website
.中国 October 18, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, History, Opinion.add a comment
That’s modern Chinese for China. Learn it. You’ll need it in the future. Why? Because starting some time in 2009, that domain name will be ready for use. Think about it for a moment. About the same time that China becomes the number 1 English speaking country, the domain name for China comes into use. If information is the current coin of the realm, and China is already one of the biggest sources of Internet users, how long before the rest of the world will need to learn Chinese in order to keep up? Or will local languages become just another wall that technology tears down?
Coming in 2009: Yourname@somewhere.中国
It’s In The Text October 16, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Opinion.add a comment
Thanks to a tweet from Jeff Utecht to an article about moving from text books to ubiquitous connectivity. The article discusses the transition from text book based thinking in the classroom to 1:1 student connectivity. The article outlines some of the conditions surrounding the use of text books.
- Students and parent expect textbooks
- “There is no correlation between textbook purchase and the grade achieved” (Carpenter et al., 2006).
- “That students could pass through the…..(Textbook) curriculum without attaining a “working” understanding of the materials presented.”
I’m all in favor of getting more technology into the hands of students, but if the previous text book teaching remains, there won’t be much change in the outcomes of the three items above with technology replacing the term textbook. This review of the benefits of Web 2.0 in the classroom suggest that even for technology using teachers, their teaching isn’t changing.
The majority of teachers questioned had never used Web 2.0 applications in lessons, despite being frequent users of technology in their personal and professional lives.
http://www.leadertalk.org/2008/10/moving-from-ubi.html
Seeing Is Believing October 10, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Tools.add a comment
The idea that we are preparing our students for jobs that don’t exist yet is often repeated. For an example of a job that is solving a problem we didn’t know existed, the Nova mini series, scienceNOW, recently featured Hany Farid, a Dartmouth professor who is credited with starting the field of digital forensics. The episode linked below is a great 13 minute video of how tools are developed to assist us in our need to differentiate between the authentic and the touched-up when it comes to digital images. From what I can tell, jobs in the future are going to need a lot of Math!
NOVA | scienceNOW | Profile: Hany Farid | PBS
Interesting coincidence, there is a current commotion about the SAT scores of a vice presidential candidate, and whether the scores published are real or fakes. Looks like digital forensic scientists will have a lot of work if they can get someone to pay them for it.
ASSIGNMENT DESK: Sarah Palin’s High-School Grades?
Cyber-Bullied Don’t Snitch October 3, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Data, Safety.add a comment
The New York Times has an article about a cyber-bullying study. Turns out most kids who are on the receiving end don’t tell anyone.
Research indicates that as many as 75 percent of teens have been bullied online, but only one in 10 have reported the problem to parents or other adults, a new study shows.
It would be interesting to see if these numbers differ from the experience of those who are bullied in the physical world, but no comparison was mentioned in the article. Popular reasons for not telling an adult ranged included needing to “learn to deal with it”, worrying that Internet access would be cut off, and fear of getting into trouble with parents. Again, it would have been interesting to see how this correlates or not to the physical world experience.
Parents Often Unaware of Cyber-Bullying – Well Blog – NYTimes.com
Letters to the Next President October 1, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, History, Tools.add a comment
Thanks to a tweet from Bud the Teacher, here is a site that is collecting letters to the next president. Several cool things about this, in addition to the opportunity to have the voices of your students sent on to the next presidnet, you also get a mashup of locations of letters being submitted, and a word cloud of top subjects people are writing about. Keep in mind, these are real people writing about real issues, so you should check this and understand what you will see before you introduce it to your class.
