Here goes my first attempt at blogging during a presentation. A good friend is unable to attend the MassCUE conference so I am taking notes for her but thought I could share them with everyone, why not it is just a few extra clicks. Notes on the opening Keynote by Deneen Fraizer Bowen. This is a piece of performance art with a message. Deneen Fraizer Bowen arrived as Dr. Priscilla Normal, acting to replace the radical Deneen. She is a…
Continuing with my thoughts from the previous post…. There has been a radical shift in the information landscape in the past decade yet this shift is not mirrored in most schools. The shift has occurred and continues to occur in business where many feel the need to be “cutting edgeâ€, to be competitive. But, in the bureaucracy that is education very little fundamental change has occurred. In fact schools today are not much different then schools of the past two…
In my district we are working on a new technology vision statement. We are using a wiki to help us continue our discussion and work on this project. I posted something to the wiki in response to a comment about the rather complex statement. I wanted to share and expand on that thought here. These thoughts also reflect some of the discussions in a course I am currently teaching where some our concerned we are loosing the human contact that…
I work with some terrific teachers and am currently working closely with about 20 teachers doing various long term PD classes. They are very much like most of the teachers I work with every day. They see all the new tools, they see the possibilities of the tools, they see how it could impact their students learning. They get it. But they are overwhelmed by it all, the many options, the need to teach the state mandated curriculum, 21st century…
My son, age 9, is a gamer. He spends time each day on the computer playing games (Club Penguin, WebKidz and World of War Craft), quite a range. He also is a Nano user and downloads music from iTunes. He lives in a wireless house, all of our computers can move around the house. On day he had to come to school with me. He set up the laptop while I did a few things. I came back and he…
Most of my past experience as a classroom teacher (middle school) has shown me that instant messaging in the classroom was “evil”. I would take my kids to the computer lab to work on a project, do some research, etc… Most of my time was spent watching kids try to hide AIM in the task bar. They would talk to each other while they were waiting for the ancient machines to do anything. I never knew how to respond. When…
My daughter, a middle schooler, has been blissfully unaware of IM in any format. I have not allowed her to participate in IM or things such as My Space – I have been able to avoid this as she is “underage”. She is literal. If the user agreement says you must be 13, she would never think to lie, she will just say I can’t wait till I am 13 and move on to something else. Well time has caught…