April 2007 Blog Posts (185)

Teacher Leaders -- Connectivist Activism

Howdy,

I've never met most of you, but I need your help.

I'm attending a phone conference on Thursday with the director of Stand for Children, a national organization dedicated to advocacy for children. He has been asked to write an article for a future issue of Ed. Leadership. The issue will be focused on teachers… Continue

Added by Jeremiah Patterson on April 22, 2007 at 6:46pm — 6 Comments

New College 2.0 Ning Network

I have just created College 2.0. a Ning social network to discuss Online Learning, CMS, PLE, Web2.0 and Open Learrning for Highered. We
welcome University students, faculty, alumni, and administrators to
join the College 2.0 network

Added by Eduardo Peirano on April 22, 2007 at 3:30pm — No Comments

Visit me in SL!

I’ve been exploring Second Life with teachers and I’ll tell you it is a very interesting world. I am Kevinski66 there. Add me as a friend when you arrive and we can explore together! Go here: http://secondlife.com/ to start your journey!

Added by Kevin on April 22, 2007 at 3:28pm — No Comments

Better Catch Up!

If you have not listened to/read Thomas Friedman's book "The World is Flat", better hurry! The next "great" book you need is "Wikinomics"

by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. Wow! I find it very empowering

to listen to these books as a change agent in Education....well, in any

economic role!

Tom Peters talks about "disruptive technologies" in… Continue

Added by Karla Murray on April 22, 2007 at 1:24pm — No Comments

To blog or not to blog...

that is the question. Why read blogs? Why write a blog? (cross posted from my school blog)

We are living in an amazing time in history. Speech is truly becoming free. People everywhere are saying what they want to say and

publishing their ideas for people around the world to read. Web 2.0 has

given a voice to millions of people and also given us the ability… Continue

Added by Elizabeth Davis on April 22, 2007 at 6:51am — 6 Comments

Options for publishing student work

This is my first post to Classroom 2.0, and I am amazed. I never made friends so fast! :)

I actually have a current question that I thought someone in this network might have an answer for. We have so many options today for what technology to use in our teaching that often it can be overwhelming (and there is always the sense that out there is something better). Miguel Guilin and I have been talking about the metaphor of the "Walled… Continue

Added by Lennie Irvin on April 22, 2007 at 6:36am — 3 Comments

Before School2.0... you need Classroom 2.0... and you need Teacher2.0

Here is a tool I created for a professional development session I ran for the first time today:

Start Your Own Blog

A practical session that will introduce you to blogging.

You will see how others use their blogs and you will get a chance to create your own blog.

You will also learn just how easy it is to create links, add pictures and even movies to your blog.

Also, you will learn a bit about web2.0 and very easy to use tools that…

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Added by David Truss on April 22, 2007 at 12:31am — 1 Comment

What Do I Know?

Larry Sanger's essay about Citizedium and new ways of acquiring knowledge is interesting; not because he stumps for his new online encyclopedia, but because he discusses the evolution of authoritative knowledge. I try my best to discuss the way information is disseminated with my students, but they have a really ~~hard time~~ bad attitude sometimes. And… Continue

Added by Rhonda Crim-Tumelson on April 21, 2007 at 6:00pm — No Comments

Data Driven Decision Making??

"If we recognize that change and uncertainly are basic principles, we

can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the

understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic." - Hazel

Henderson, The Politics of the Solar Age

The hubbub in the headlines of a Western Kansas community this week could be found in the BOE news of 04.19.07 at the Hays Daily.

Did the… Continue

Added by Karla Murray on April 21, 2007 at 4:08pm — No Comments

So As Not To Duplicate

I keep several blogs going. My primary blog is a reflective practice which I consider to be "my blog page." A second blog I keep is one for our Media Center. As part of my role as a librarian for middle school students, I read and provide reviews on some of the books I think our students might enjoy reading. I also do booktalks with my colleague and students. Beginning next school year (probably beginning in July) I will be writing a blog about online tech tools and how I would use them in… Continue

Added by Ric Murry on April 21, 2007 at 2:27pm — No Comments

Time, Space, and a Whole New Mind

I love this space...the whole existence of Web 2.0! For me, it was heartwarming to come to this space this morning and see the pictures of my very good friends whom I work with on a daily basis and especially those who have moved on to other districts :) How cool is it to "hang out" with all the new "connections" I'm creating both in person and virtually? To quote… Continue

Added by Karla Murray on April 21, 2007 at 9:30am — No Comments

Approach

This week a colleague of mine taught a one hour class on Movie Maker and Photostory to the teachers in my district. I found her approach interesting and effective, so I thought I'd share it. She had the teachers bring in pictures. Most of them brought in personal stuff (grandkids, family vacations, etc). Then she taught them how to use the program. She never mentioned how the programs might be used in the classroom, and led the discussion so that the teachers were talking more about how they'd… Continue

Added by tcoffey on April 21, 2007 at 8:27am — 1 Comment

Feds to eliminate tech funding?

Cross-posted at The Blog of Ms. Mercer

Okay, now that I have your attention, I’ll point you to this post http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2007/04/20/margaret-spellings-is-under-fire/ from guest blogger Scott McLeod on Wes Fryer’s “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” (not faster than the average 6 month old if Spellings has her way, I guess).

Scott lists all…

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Added by Alice Mercer on April 21, 2007 at 7:46am — No Comments

I'm going to be famous!

Okay - I have to admit to the real reason I'm so excited about Web 2.0. I want to be famous. Okay, maybe only among a couple hundrend school teachers - but it's a start. Today I got an e-mail from Steve Hargadon asking me to podcast a quote from my blog entry for a keynote he is giving. How cool is that.

When I was in college I wanted to be an actress. I gave up that dream, but now I have a… Continue

Added by Elizabeth Davis on April 20, 2007 at 10:13pm — 3 Comments

Looking for international connections

I am looking to find teachers that are interested in collaborating with primary school classrooms through the use of a blog or a wiki. We study continents in our First Grades and I'd love to communicate with a classroom on a different continent to share photos, classroom events, and our culture.

Added by Sue Collins on April 20, 2007 at 1:09pm — No Comments

Current project

I don't teach that much anymore so I have no idea ábout the extent to which I would use Web 2.0 tools if I had a full timetable. At the moment I have a very small class of colleagues wanting to upgrade their English. We started with a lot of oral work with them recording various job related exercises such as what would our answering machine message be in English. Then we changed gear and started putting more emphasis on written work.

I have been very fortunate in that I was talking…

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Added by Anne Fox on April 20, 2007 at 7:05am — 3 Comments

OpenLearn wins top prize at IMS Global Learning Consortium's Learning Impact Awards

Hi,

I just wanted to share the great news that OpenLearn has won the IMS Global Learning Consortiums' top prize this year!!

Full press release below:

Vancouver, British Columbia – 19 April 2007…

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Added by Stuart Brown on April 20, 2007 at 1:24am — 1 Comment

Dinking around

Well I got the Puppy Linux working on my old Aptiva AMD 2 machine. It works great. I was really impressed how fast it works. I need to take it home over the weekend and try it on the internet (don't have network access at school for personal machines). Moodle seems to be doing well. A few teachers are digging in but not as eagerly as I'd like. One of the instructional coaches is doing great at loading her site with all kinds of links to state standards stuff. I hoped she would.

Added by Clifton Dancy on April 19, 2007 at 12:24pm — 1 Comment

Wrong Number

Warning, what you are about to read is nothing but my own ramblings about being an administrator.

I want to write. I feel I need to get some of this out but I’m not sure even how to begin and when I look at the suffering in other places I know it is insignificant. Yet, even with that knowledge, I feel

really lousy because of my mistake.

My mistake involved me dialing a wrong number and leaving a message for

a parent to call me about an incident with their child. I…

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Added by Kelly Christopherson on April 19, 2007 at 9:12am — 2 Comments

Test Sites, Real Sites

INITIALLY I JOINED NING just to test it for demo and training purposes. My real blog is at ClappingTrees. I also have an elearning portal is at NETCoach Asia and a wiki called Asia Social Media Directory (ASMD). The ASMD lists (and thus increases readership for) all bloggers and social network "activists" in Asia.

At first, I thought I couldn't link to… Continue

Added by clappingtree on April 19, 2007 at 6:40am — No Comments