Blog Juice for Educational Technology

On the plane out to San Diego I got the chance to watch Sir Ken Robinson’s great presentation at the TED conference (Technology Entertainment and Design). It’s a pretty powerful call to “radically rethink our view on intelligence” and “rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children” to move toward a much […]

This is cross-posted on my blog, techsophist.net, but I thought those of you interested in literacy and media choices would be interested. I found this story via TV Squad. A three-year-old St. Paul, Minnesota boy got the birthday party of his dreams recently. No, it wasn’t themed around the Teletubbies, Barney, Sesame Street, or my personal favorite from the past, Bananas in Pyjamas–this three-year-old wanted a Jim Lehrer News Hour themed party–and he got it. The full story with photos of the decorated cake and custom party hats tells how he has been watching the Newshour from day one, with this interesting result.

It just goes to show you–have Jim Lehrer on every day at dinnertime and your toddler too will be in the know and calling Mr. Lehrer “Jimmy Jimmy BoBo” instead of begging for extra time watching Major Astro and the animated Star Trek series–no wait–that was my childhood.

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Chris Lehmann was interviewed yesterday on what appears to be the NEW EdTechTalk, sub-titled, 21st Century Learning Webcast — anchored now by Alex Ragone and Arvind Grover.
Principal of the soon to open, and certainly to be “something new,” high school, the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Lehmann answered some pointed questions, such as, “What’s an […]

(I’m in Wes Freyer mode today, huh?)
I just happened to pick up Expecting the Unexpected by one of my favorite teachers Donald Murray this morning, flipped to a page, and read this:
“It isn’t easy, however, to get students to teach themselves. It took me years to learn how not to teach, how to keep from […]

(So this is my first post using the Flock browser blog posting interface. After an hour of using it, I’m loving the browser…we’ll see how this goes.)
Kathy Sierra writes about the “Mosh Pit as Innovation Model” and I’m wondering about a “Mosh Pit as Classroom Model.” I mean, check out the Old vs. New chart […]

School’s out for most of us. Educators across the northern hemisphere are relaxing for the first time in months, looking forward to a month or a little more of R&R, sitting by the pool in sunglasses, or taking a vacation or a fact-finding tour of Paris, London, Tokyo, or some other exotic locale that […]

I listened to an incredible podcast the other day. It was Part 3 of Dean Shareski’s Telling the new Story series, an interview with award-winning Canadian educator, Clarence Fisher. I was glued to my headphones for the entire interview, listening to stories from a unique professional who gets the new information environment and […]

I have had the opportunity, twice in the last several weeks, to talk about the new story of 21st century education in workshop settings. Because these experiences were conversations rather than presentations and because, in both instances, the audiences were self-selected tech-savvy and forward thinking professional educators, I had a unique chance to reflect […]

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 […]

General Orders No.11, WASHINGTON, D.C., May 5, 1868:
The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the […]

The other day, I wrote a rather heavy-handed entry, implying that with the increasing transparency of our classroom walls, there is no need for curriculum. This could have caused some confusion, not only because we all define curriculum in different ways, but also because the impression may have been read that with such rich […]

The other day, I wrote a rather heavy-handed entry, implying that with the increasing transparency of our classroom walls, there is no need for curriculum. This could have caused some confusion, not only because we all define curriculum in different ways, but also because the impression may have been read that with such rich […]

Maine blogger, teacher, and web explorer, Cheryl Oates, brought to my attention this morning a new web 2 application, Gliffy. You sign up for free (pro version on the way) then draw or assemble flow charts, floor plans, and other graphical communications — and do so in collaboration. You can publish your projects […]