July 23, 2010
Nice opportunity for anyone not in the neighborhood of Goshen, Indiana next week:
Wimba will provide a live webcast of Martin Dougiamas’ keynote address, Moodle 2.0, on Tuesday, July 27, 9:00am – 10:00am Eastern Daylight Time.
July 21, 2010
“The rubber hits the road in the classroom; that’s where the learning happens,” said Wahlstrom. “Leadership is important because it sets the conditions and the expectations in the school that there will be excellent instruction and there will be a culture of ongoing learning for the educators and for the students in the school.”
If you’d prefer to read the entire report, here it is.
June 24, 2010
“Just avoid holding it in that way.”
Or, buy case to keep your salty hands away from the antenna.
Just about every cell phone in current production has the antenna located at the bottom. This insures that the radiating portion of the antenna is furthest from the head. Apple was not the first to locate the antenna on the bottom, and certainly won’t be the last. The problem is that humans have their hands below their ears, so the most natural position for the hand is covering the antenna. This can’t be a good design decision, can it? How can we be stuck with this conundrum? It’s the FCC’s fault.
I’m one of the unlucky fellas experiencing cellular connectivity problems when holding my iPhone in my left hand. Apparently, my fleshy, salty meat hand covers the cell antenna and that can result in lost calls. I lost a call to my mother three seconds after putting the phone in my left hand today.
Whether these issues are related to a malfunction or exceptionally fleshy, salty meat hands is still up for debate. Regardless, it’s a major issue. I could a.) develop a new way of holding my phone, or b.) return my phone and ask for a new one. In the end, I think I’ll wait and see how this pans out over the next couple weeks.
June 17, 2010
I can’t think of a more straight-forward, learner-centered definition of teaching than this one by Bill Page:
“Teaching is taking credit for some one else’s learning. If a kid learned something, and I caused that learning, I would say, “I taught him. Teaching is relationship between teacher and learner. The learner gets the benefit of the learning, while the teacher gets credit for the teaching.”
The thing I like most about this is that is simply deconstructs the notion of the “sage on the stage” style of teaching that we’re all too accustomed to in academia. If kids aren’t learning, you’re not teaching. Period.
June 15, 2010
New York State Democratic assemblyman Felix Ortiz — who sponsored New York State’s landmark 2001 “hands-free” cell-phone law and legislation banning text messaging — tells Intel that the iPhone 4′s much-touted “Facetime” video-calling feature should be banned from the roadways.
Perhaps someone should tell him that FaceTime is only available via Wi-Fi.
I had the opportunity a couple weeks ago to visit the New Tech High School in Bloomington, Indiana. I don’t know if it was the high school itself or the eight hours of shop talk on the drive there and back, but I returned to work genuinely inspired. That hasn’t happened in a long time.
New Tech is a proprietary model of high school that mixes project-based learning, collaborative culture, and 21st century technologies to engage kids in authentic learning. They do this quite well. All learning takes place as part of larger, practical projects. The culture of the school is explicitly open, free, and collaborative. There were more computers in the school than people. And, the kids I met were undoubtedly engaged.
Bloomington New Tech occupies an unassuming former retail store that they completely gutted and renovated for the school. It’s a two story rectangular building with classrooms that are internally windowed and wrapped around a central staircase with large skylight above. Since the school model starts with a single group of freshmen, the original renovation only required finishing about half the school. Each year, as the school adds a new group of freshmen, they’ll finish a couple new rooms to scale.
New Tech is a small school model; they recommend having no more than 500 student. Bloomington is a district with 3000 high school students spread across two large high schools. Their first year, they brought in 75 freshmen. This year, because of recruiting and marketing problems, they only brought in 57 students. Next year, they have over 115 eighth graders signed up to attend their school.
Our group was met in the parking lot by a few students who happily greeted us and lead us to our meeting room. There was a surprising confidence and comfort in the way they talked to us that we observed in every student we met. These kids didn’t look any different from any student in any school, but they certainly acted different. Something about the way this school does business profoundly affects their students.
When I asked a student wearing a baseball cap what the school’s dress code policy was with regards to hats, he said there wasn’t one. The teachers just expect that students dress and act appropriately for the work they are doing. If they are presenting their project, they dress professionally. If they are going to be working with their peers on computers all day, hats and shorts are not a problem.
The school has a similar policy for technology. I saw a cell phone next to nearly every student. The students I talked to pointed to a sign on the wall that said “Tech on,” meaning that all tech was OK. If the teacher needs students’ attention, she flips the sign over to “Tech off” and students are expected to pay attention.
There are no bells or lights or traditional passing periods. Students have their own schedules and know where they need to be. Every teacher gives a daily work ethic grade. If a student is late for class, this portion of their grade will suffer.
The school grants students colored cards that correspond to privileges in the school. Students come in with a standard set of privileges that can be expanded or taken away depending on their behavior. Different colored cards correspond to a different set of privileges. For example, the top “blue” card might allow you greater freedom in the classroom and halls. Have to go see another teacher? Go – you’ve earned that right. If you abuse your privileges, they’ll be taken away. For example, the lowest “red” card might remove a student’s parking permit or freedom to leave class without permission.
There are no traditional rules in a New Tech high school. Instead, teachers and students share the responsibility of maintaining a healthy climate through shared trust, respect and responsibility. This collaborative spirit is far more than just an ideal or a plaque that is screwed to the wall. Throughout our visit, we were surprised to see students being students while still getting their work done.
It’s important to note that this school wasn’t perfect; we witnessed plenty of students not doing their work. In one of the classrooms, the board member on our team asked two boys searching the internet for the size of a car trunk if they were working on a math project. “No,” they said. They were just trying to figure out how large a speaker box they could fit in one boy’s car.
Project based learning does present students with more time to work independently. Part of the school model is to leave that time as free as possible so students can make mistakes and suffer the natural consequences. If you spend two weeks in the middle of your project calculating the dimensions of your trunk, your grade and reputation will suffer.
Overall, the visit gave me a positive impression of the model. The nice thing about it is that schools can jump into reform quickly and easily. The support that the New Tech Network provides seems to be great. Expensive. But, worthwhile. The teachers we talked to said that they’ve worked harder than they ever have in their lives, but that they would never go back.
May 14, 2010
President Obama convinces New York Times reporter Sheryl Stolberg to demo a small hovercraft
May 7, 2010
The current version of Moodle 2.0 is getting to the point where we are feeling comfortable inviting experienced Moodle users to try it out and start giving us more detailed feedback.
My newest Formfactor theme and Canvas “family” theme are both part of this release and look pretty good on the surface, but admittedly still need a lot of work in the modules. Your early testing will be greatly appreciated.
Also, if you’re going to be doing any 2.0 testing over the next ten weeks, get used to CVS and update often.
May 4, 2010
Unlike in elementary education, high school reforms are more often concerned with which courses schools should offer and to whom, rather than with the way the courses should be taught. Yet despite the change in course content, Chicago students were no more engaged in learning than they were before the new policy—most completed the new curriculum with grades of C’s and D’s. At a minimum, this suggests that teaching courses with high-level content to students without a record of high-level performance will require substantial changes in instruction.
Lesson learned: States, districts, schools, and teachers at the high school level should focus their attention on improving instruction and increasing the depth of the work that students are completing. Reform focused solely on curriculum misses the mark.
The deeper I delve into my work with Moodle 2.0 themes, the more impressed I am by its flexibility. Moodle 2.0 has a Base theme that includes only the most basic styles and layout. It’s designed as a starting point for all themes. However, as I realized over the weekend while working on my first 2.0 theme, this new Base theme is so basic that there is a lot of work between it and something I’d call finished.
I’m fast on a keyboard and familiar with Moodle’s selectors, and I’d estimate I logged over eight hours to get my new Boxxie theme only 80% complete. Working with the Base theme requires testing every page, block, and module from every role, setting, and browser. It’s a daunting task to say the least.
Therefore, with the help of Urs, I’m going to create a new theme family.
I’m going to create a new structural theme that uses Base as a parent. I’m then going to create all of my new themes as a child of that structural theme, cutting down the time it takes to create a theme to something much more reasonable.
Think of it this way: If coding a Moodle theme were building a house, Base is the foundation – the concrete that’s poured so your house doesn’t sink into the ground. My new structural theme is thus the frame of the house that’s built on top of that foundation to provide a place to hang your drywall, cupboards, and shelves. A child theme of this new structure is the house paint, shutters, and family pictures that you add at the end to make everything feel like it’s yours.
Thoughts?
I had the interesting opportunity last week to guest lecture a journalism course at Michigan State University, my alma mater. A primary theme throughout the presentation was entrepreneurship: the idea that success comes easily when you throw yourself wholly into what it is your passionate about.
Well, tonight I stumbled upon a video from TEDx Edmonton, which took place back in March. Here is Cameron Herold, entrepreneur and self-acclaimed business coach, advocating for more entrepreneurial education in schools.
Well worth the 20 minutes you’ll spend watching this.
March 22, 2010
James Fallows on the recently passed U.S. healthcare reform bill:
“We’ll talk about the many things that will prove to be wrong with the bill … For now, the significance of the vote is moving the United States FROM a system in which people can assume they will have health coverage IF they are old enough (Medicare), poor enough (Medicaid), fortunate enough (working for an employer that offers coverage, or able themselves to bear expenses), or in some other way specially positioned (veterans; elected officials)… TOWARD a system in which people can assume they will have health-care coverage. Period.
March 13, 2010
That’s right. If your iPad loses it’s charge, send it in with $99 and Apple will send you a whole new (or refurbished) unit.
For those curious, I ordered a 32 GB Wi-Fi model without accessories.
March 12, 2010
An informative single serving webpage from yours truly.
February 27, 2010
Tomaz Lasic has moved into a full-time position at Moodle HQ as an “Educational Researcher.” Part of his role, he says, is to look for new and better ways to make Moodle work for educators as a simple and effortless tool. Man, I hope he’s successful.
In writing about his vision for usable technology in the classroom, he mentions existing technologies that changed teaching and learning that are now considered boring: pencils, paper, white boards, overheads, etc. While I think commonplace is a more appropriate word for his meaning, his provocation makes you think.
Moodle is still looked at as a complex, shiny tool by most teachers. It’s powerful, sure. But, with all its bells and whistles, it’s not very intuitive for the beginner or veteran teacher. If Moodle is ever going to grow into a widely used tool for teaching and learning, it has to be simplified into something so intuitive and so commonplace that it’s used without the slightest bit of fanfare.
Let’s stop fetishising tech, work out what it’s good for and then use it do get where we want with the people we teach, work with.
February 23, 2010
It’s amazing how much of this sport I’ve watched this Olympic season without really knowing much about it. Quick and easy infographic.
February 17, 2010
School officials suspended her for three days, saying she had been “cyberbullying” the teacher[.]
February 15, 2010
Here’s why:
Throughout 2009, I recorded several dozen statistics about a) the pop culture I consumed, b) the people I talked to, c) the beer I drank, d) the places I visited, e) the vehicles I took to those places, and f) the amount of sleep I enjoyed each day. Those statistics spread across several thousand cells of a spreadsheet, which I then condensed and animated into [a] 2.5-minute video clip … [t]hat process took about a month, all told, which isn’t a ratio I’m proud of, even if I’m happy with the result.
I’ve linked to the Vimeo source of the video. You may also want to check out the post on his blog or another post where he explains how he made the video.
I'm an educator, web designer, husband, and father. I believe in lifelong learning, and like stuff that's cool. Read more.
