Blog Juice for Educational Technology

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy is pleased to announce that it will again recognize outstanding webtexts with awards to be presented at Computers and Writing 2006 in Lubbock, Texas.

Please see the full text of this announcement for criteria.

For the past several years, many scholars have been making a significant contribution to the knowledge in rhetoric and composition via their weblogs. Academic bloggers are conversing about topics such as professional issues in the discipline, best teaching practices, electronic discourse, and cultural criticism of digital space. Weblogs
are also making a significant contribution to the public intellectual commons. Because weblogs do not have the same gatekeeping checks as traditional scholarly publications, they have heretofore not been considered scholarly work and thus are not often recognized for the contribution they make to our discipline(s).

Technology Solutions That Work (TSW) Database from Metiri Group is a subscription-based collection of research that provides an indepth, unbiased analysis of education technologies. The database also provides a range of technology-based learning strategies along with a summary of all of the Metiri studies conducted to date. Several States have…

Randy Ziegenfuss is the Instructional Technology Specialist for Emmaus High School, Eyer Middle School and Lower Macungie Middle School in Pennsylvania. I have been reading his blog, Instructional Technology, for a while. I enjoy his well-written posts and his “takes” on technology.
Recently he referred his readers to a post many of […]

With any educational endeavor on the Internet, there requires a certain level of supervision from the teacher leading the students. Whether it be shielding our students from pornographic images to offensive language, never before has the need to supervise and monitor students and websites been greatest. As Web 2.0 (blogs, flikr, social bookmarking, wikis) plays […]

Increasingly, students across the country are deciding that their immediate participation is required in the hot political issue of the moment. And that participation requires and empowers them to walk out of class, to the nearest march or demonstration, they believe, sometimes with faculty leading the way. Schools seem powerless or afraid to do anything about it. The liability concerns here alone would seem to make this an important issue for school boards to confront in a serious way.

For instance: Johnny walks out of class to march in today’s demonstration. On his way, he is struck by a car. In fact, that particular scenario was precisely in the minds of some school officials in California this week. Legal Clips summmarizes the L.A. Times: “City of Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton notes that about 500 students walked out onto the busy Harbor Freeway as part of the protest. ‘That’s not free speech, that’s insanity,’ says the chief.”

The discussion around these issues too often seems stuck in confusion mode. Or denial mode. Principals and school district leaders often seem paralyzed. What should school policy look like in this area? And who has the courage to enforce it? Students walked out of class in Northern Virginia every day this week objecting to a U.S. House of Representatives bill on immigration reform. More are planned for today. An example of the confusion, from today’s Washington Post here:

“Some Fairfax students said they had heard students with unexcused absences could face suspension or, for organizers, expulsion. Fairfax schools spokesman Paul Regnier said it was too early to know what the punishments would be.”

Students in Iowa, Tucson, and Houston marched as well. One school district in Texas is promising discipline for students who walked out of school this week to march.

Legal Clips links to this letter (pdf) to parents from Long Beach Unified School District from this week. It is an intriguing read, to say the least. What do you think?

UPDATE: A student at a demonstration today in Northern Virginia was stabbed, the Washington Post reports.

If voucher advocates in Florida want voters to approve a constitutional amendment to circumvent the Supreme Court decision that struck down the state’s flagship voucher program, they not only will be battling history, they’ll be fighting against public opinion, based on the results of a new poll by the St. Petersburg Times.

The poll finds that 61 percent of Floridians oppose the state’s flagship voucher program, while just 35 percent support it. The opposition crosses political and racial lines–just as it did with Michigan and California voters during the last major voucher referenda. The St. Petersburg Times poll found 52 percent of Republicans oppose the voucher plan, 67 percent of Democrats oppose it and 68 percent of Independents do as well. Sixty percent of white and Hispanic Floridians oppose the voucher plan, while 65 percent of African-Americans oppose it.

Meantime, the state Legislature continues moving forward a constitutional amendment, though its fate in the Senate is far from determined.

Secretary Spellings released a statement praising the U.S. House of Representatives for passing HR 609, the College Access and Opportunity Act of 2006, and the companion McMorris American Competitiveness Amendment.

Learn about the science behind the structures we see every day. Explore basic engineering concepts in interactive labs. Read historical overviews about bridges, skyscrapers, dams, and tunnels. Look through a database of engineering marvels. (National Endowment for the Humanities)

Now, it’s not out yet but a mobile phone that enables you to make free Internet calls to anyone who has Skype. It says it will be available the first quarter of 2006 but no mention of price. You have to be within a Wifi network but I like the idea of walking around not […]

Via the Digital Medievalist Community mailing list:

The Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London, is very pleased to announce the availability of a studentship for its PhD in Digital Humanities, to commence October 2006. Applications must be received by 7 April, so almost immediate action is required. If you know someone who might be interested, please see that he or she receives a copy of this message as soon as possible.

Application is a two-stage process, as follows:

1. Candidates must first commence application to the PhD in Digital Humanities. This may be done online. See

Nick Carbone published this link on techrhet just yesterday:

http://credibilitycommons.org

I noticed a new posting this morning, explaining the site’s purpose:

The Credibility Commons is an experimental environment enabling individuals the opportunity to try out different approaches to improving access to credible information on the World Wide Web. Tools will be provided to researchers as well as the public, allowing them to try out search strategies, collections and other approaches to improving access to credible information. The Commons can be viewed as a collaborative space in which to share ideas, data sets, results and innovations. This project is sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation who is deeply invested in improving access to credible information on the World Wide Web.