I am in Chapel Hill, working with educators from the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools, and I am telling them my Podcastercon story. In summary, I presented a session at January’s Podcastercon about podcasting and education. As soon as the 90 minute session was over, I checked my aggregator and there were already […]

Vicki David, the Cool Cat Teacher, wrote a great post yesterday about cyber cheating and teaching honesty to our students.
Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Candid Cheating with the Camera Phone?:
We’re paying for kill switches, security cameras, aplagiarismism checkers (turnitin.com) to keep students honest! How about kids just being honest?

Here is an edited version of my comment […]

I woke up early this morning with a bit of Jekyll and Hyde going on in my head. Part of me is outraged at the reckless abuse of one of the cornerstones (THE CORNERSTONE) of democracy, public education, by witless politicians who are desperate to find traction in an increasingly slippery world. I […]

Conversations continue about schools that block access to the blogosphere. I ran across an interesting comment last night, in my end of the day aggregator scan. It was in a blog post by Wesley Fryer (Censored for Relevance - April 11, 2006), that he said, “Are we living in the United States here, […]

I debated one or two additional interjections to include in the title of this blog entry, because I’m getting pretty… well, you get the picture.
I spent at least a couple of hours yesterday trying to figure out a way for one of my Class Blogmeister teachers to receive e-mail notifications of student posted […]

Brett Moller posted a comment on my entry about blocking comments. His comment got to be so lengthy, and so good, that he has posted it to his blog, 21st Century Educator. If he hadn’t I would have elevated it to a blog on my site (with his permission, of course).
Take a look. […]

This fall, I took a job as an assistant professor at a university that is very serious about welcoming diversity. To that end, I’ve attended seminars addressing topics on racism, sexism, and so on, but this information (while useful) is, unfortunately, too general to be of much use in the particular problems I’m having in the classroom. However, thankfully I know I can count on all my wonderful friends and distinguished colleagues here at Knews to help me through these troubling times–please, take a moment to help me address my dilemma.

Another plug, but I couldn’t resist after reading Matt Barton’s review of the Steven Johnson book a couple posts down. I’d like to alert Kairos readers to a thread recently begun at if:book — the blog of the institute for the future of the book — where we have mounted a multi-post, ongoing critique of EBIGFY, in which Johnson himself is participating. We were moved to do this after witnessing the near-universal acclaim the book has received since publication. We’ve already come across numerous instances of it being assigned as essential reading for new media and design classes, in some cases by teachers who haven’t even read it. It seemed time for a more rigorous discussion…

Ars Technica is running a story about a new Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents. Prepared by Reporters without Borders, the handbook contains a variety of articles on topics relevant to bloggers trying to get their voices heard, particularly those working and living in places with strong censorship. The articles discuss strategies for being picked up by search engines as well as means of circumventing censorship. There are also personal narratives from bloggers who have been prosecuted by their governments for their dissident blogs.