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Archive for the ‘Trends’ Category

A late kick-off to the year – with a fun new tool

Friday, November 14th, 2008

Yes, it’s taken 3 months into this school year to update this blog. I have a couple posts in the hopper that I will have the best intentions of posting soon. My other hat, coordinating the IB Programme at Tri-County International Academy, has precluded some of my writing activities. At just about the time we’re [...]

Pew Internet Report on Writing, Technology, & Teens

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report last week which documents their findings on teens’ writing and technology habits. The report explores writing skills, frequency, and attitude as they relate to student’s access to technology, including cell phones, the internet, and computer availability. There were many findings that will not surprise most [...]

Student Attitudes Toward Online Safety

Friday, April 4th, 2008

National Public Radio aired a pair of very balanced stories on middle and high school students’ expectations of online privacy and attitudes toward safety this week. It’s helpful as educators to understand the changing expectations of privacy of our students. These clips provide some insight. Digital Culture: Teens Take Advantage of Online Privacy Tools (6:37) [...]

Becoming a 21st Century Literate Educator

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

One of the weaknesses of educational technology conferences, structured professional development offerings, and other traditional means of delivering educational tech training is that they often find one of two audiences: the group of people who are eager for this type of learning but need and want more, and the group of people who are sitting [...]

Cabinet-level Blogging

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

I was impressed by an NPR story featuring Secretary Mike Leavitt of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In the very hostile climate of government agencies where it seems that even the smallest offensive statement can spark an uprising and firing overnight, Leavitt is seeking a communication venue outside the norm for Washington. [...]

Vocab Lesson: Blogs

Friday, November 30th, 2007

In case I haven’t mentioned before, I am a big fan of the folks at Common Craft. I think that somewhere deep down inside, these folks missed their calling into teaching. They’re very good at simple explanations of otherwise complex topics. Common Craft has produced “Blogs in Plain English,” the latest installment in their “Plain [...]

Follow-up: A Vision of Students Today

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

The best thing about this generation of web tools is the potential for dialogue. More importantly, it’s the ability to put an idea out there, get criticized, rebut that criticism, and still get feedback from the critic. It’s not always that rosy, but when it is, it’s very good. I want to point you first [...]

Video: A Vision of Students Today

Monday, November 5th, 2007

Something to chew on. Take a look at this short film (If the clips are missing in your email or RSS reader, go direct to the tech blog and view it there). Get the Flash Player to see this content. var params = { ‘allowfullscreen’: ‘true’, ‘allowscriptaccess’: ‘always’, ‘wmode’: ‘transparent’ }; var attributes = { [...]

Vocab Lesson: RSS

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007

RSS is a term probably unfamiliar to most, both in and out the education field. You may have noticed a “subscribe by RSS” option in the lefthand column of the blog’s main page. Same idea. The folks at Common Craft have a series of “In Plain English” videos where they describe some recent web tools [...]

The World My Daughter Lives In

Friday, September 7th, 2007

Sitting in a chair earlier today with my son and daughter looking over my shoulder watching a video on YouTube of the late greats, James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti, in a concert setting with full orchestra and a packed house…. And my daughter asks, “Can they hear us?” “No,” I reply, not for once having [...]