The world is an exciting place, learning about it sould be as exciting…

Autre conférence ce matin avec David Warlick intitulé ; Flat World, Flat Web, Flat School.   Les notes de la session sont disponibles ici.   Voici mes notes prises ce matin….  écrites au fil de ce que j’entends……

What conversation does it set the table for? The Chinese are coming? Beware the yellow horde? Skynet will enslave your child?

Tom: You’re right. There’s nothing to talk about here. Move along.

Quelques réseaux avec qui je me sens en communauté de pratiques…

Les cyberportfolios d’Opossum Le groupe des institutions utilisant nos fermes de blogues se trouve à la fin de ce billet décrivant l’outil des cyberportfolios d’Opossum. Des conversations dans lesquelles je suis engag&ea…

Will,

It was a pleasure listening, discovering and “opening” new doors with you yesterday at Wissahickon.

Reaffirming that change is what our students’ lives (as well as our own) will be about was important. The ability to adapt to change will make us stronger but that will not happen in a vacuum. Using the tools that we used yesterday will open the doors to collaboration, knowledge and the real power in a global community.

As the session was closing yesterday, one of the teachers I work with came to me and sketched out a poetry project in which she wants to use a Poetry Blog to allow students to publish and comment on each other’s work. The conversation then turned to the eventual PodCast we create of the Classroom Poetry Cafe where the students will get to perform their work. Did I mention this was a 2nd Grade teacher?

The fun is just beginning.

Thanks,
Bob

Will, Great reply to Tom.

I’ve got to admit, however, I am nervous. Two million views of Did You Know - but I’ve still got to ask, do they know? Will, technology is so unbelievable simple to use - but how do we get people to take the first steps.

Maybe I’m just being too pessimistic.

But then again, I asked a teacher how he used technology the other day and he said that he had an LCD projector in his classroom. An LCD projector - I wonder if he uses it any differently than he used an overhead?

Andrew Pass
http://www.pass-ed.com/blogger.html

I wonder if they’ve seen it in Bloomfield Hills, MI. The district just banned MySpace. The surprising part is that their AUP also apparently covers students at home.

“”I think we’ve got a long way to go because it’s a very difficult situation to grasp in its entirety,” Lynch said. “There’s so many things going on on the Internet and there’s so much vulnerability for children.”

Those students who have existing MySpace.com accounts must delete them if they wish to continue going to school there. Students who do not delete their accounts cannot attend the school, Van Velzen said.”

I’d love to see how their enforcing this one.

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/11331017/detail.html

[...] I don’t check my blog statistics very often, but after seeing some recent numbers on downloads of some popular videos - like Karl Fisch’s “Did You Know” (2 million + views) - I looked up the stats on our “Inclusion” video - which is only available on my school’s web site (and there isn’t even a link on our web site yet - barely a web site, more like “a presence” - it just lives on that server - the only link so far is from this blog) - I was amazed to see it had passed 30,000 views and downloads. The last time I looked it was about 18,000. Our districts ed tech coordinator saw me at the Nevada State Educational Technology Conference and suggested I post it on YouTube - but I don’t really have permission to do that. [...]

Funny Enough - On Friday. I was helping set up for a Curriculum Coordinators meeting with the Curriculum and Accountability Superintendant, and I was asked to download a video to play at that meeting. One of the corrdinators wanted to show it to the group.

It was “Did You Know”, and they had asked if I had seen it before. (I had to hold back the laughs)

I have shown this great video to my 12th grade students in media class. I was expecting them to yawn after the 3rd slide and go back to their computers. To my amazement they were glued. It was not mandatory to watch since they were working independently on their own projects. It was a spur of the moment thing that I presented it to them. They have been discussing it ever since by making comments back and forth in their normal conversations. I am going to post it on our wiki for our teachers.(sidneymit.wikispaces.com)

J.D. - Just FYI, I would guess some folks in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan have seen it - since the State Superintendent of Public Instruction is apparently showing a Michigan remix of Did You Know.

Will, I feel compelled to comment :-). But as I started to comment, it kept getting longer and longer and longer and I realized that it probably needs to be a post of my own. I’m working on that, but it might still be a few days - I’ll come back and let you know when it’s done. I’m not sure I have any answers for “what’s next?” - but I have learned a few things from Did You Know? about what we shouldn’t do . . .

OK, I took a closer look:

http://www.tuttlesvc.org/2007/03/did-you-know-i-want-to-believe.html

Did anyone else actually check out any of his numbers?

I’ve shown it to HS students, parents, teachers, and tomorrow it is the second piece of my presentation. When you have something good….use it!

[...] So I am feeling bad for Karl this morning as I read through his post and see some of his second thoughts about the now much viewed - over 2 million!!! - Did You Know video. I had actually already read Will Richardson’s March 23 post Over 2 Million Views, but went back for a re-read this morning. This time I made my first - and last - trip to Tom Hoffman’s blog. Hoffman’s response reminds me of a recent incident I had, on a very minuscule scale compared to Karl’s video, when I sent out via district a link to a free comic book design website - and got a hand slap from a curriculum coach who, rather than check out the link I provided, dug through the site and found a place where students could post a “happy thought or prayer.” Sort of ended my motivation to share resources. I certainly hope that will not be the case for Karl Fisch. [...]

For what it’s worth:

Over Two Million Served

What’s Next?

Did You Know - The Sequel?

My take on the You Tube: Did you know? was:
It was edutainment. I felt some of the facts were accurate. For me it did the task of making me think. It has become a viral video (more than 2 million viewings) that hopefully stimulates educators to find new ways to enrich the learning experience for students.

I always struggle with the validity and reliability of online material. This is one more way to demonstrate to students to be wary of presented information. I did find a blog that did question the information: Challenges stats on did you know
http://www.tuttlesvc.org/2007/03/did-you-know-i-want-to-believe.html

I hope there is a sequel! It has stimulated alot of talk and thoughts.

[...] Currently causing quite a stir is the ‘did you know’ video that is literally going viral with some estimates giving it 2 million plus views since its posting by American blogger Karl Fisch on Youtube in August last year. The video is producing some spirited conversation on the blogosphere, nowhere more so than on Will Richardon’s blog. While tailored primarily it would seem for an American audience it nonetheless makes compelling viewing and is thought-provoking in its scope. Much of the tenor in this video not so new. Over the last decade there have been many predictions from a number of ‘experts’ about the trends shaping the world into which our current generation of students will enter. Australian academic, Hedley Beare, writing in 2001 in his book Creating theFuture School spells out much of the same in the book’s opening chapter which features a letter written by a five year old student, ‘Angelica’ , to her teacher informing him/her of the world in which she is growing up, a world in which ‘…I will probably be employed in an internationally owned firm, and it is likely that in my home we will speak Japanese, Korean, Spanish, English or Chinese as a second language…..’ a world in which ‘…. already Chinese and Indians will make up more than half the population of the world…’ This all has great implications for those of us charged with leading schools through these turbulent times and I believe we need to view the world through the lens of a ‘futures perspective’ as we engage in our planning, scanning the horizon for what’s out there and at the same time keeping our feet firmly planted on the ground. [...]