Year: 2008

Get. Off. Paper.

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We keep finding ourselves using less and less paper in our lives, yet schools and workshops are still overflowing with it. If our students’ futures won’t be paper-based, we need to start doing as much as we can to get off paper now.

Filter Fun

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We’ve been running into school Internet filters more than usual lately, and the problem seems to be getting worse instead of better. When teachers and even administrators can’t reach basic tools like Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, or Wikipedia, it not only leaves students unprepared for the unfiltered world they actually live in, it also undermines the professionalism of educators. The only way students and teachers will ever really master the Web is by being allowed to use it.

Kids Prefer Reading Online…

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So the unending debate over whether or not reading on the Internet is “really” reading gets played out  once again in this New York Times piece titled “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?” It’s the story of a “typical” family where the kids are online some six hours a day reading and writing at FanFiction.net among … Read more

What We Hate About Twitter

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We’ve liked Twitter since we first started playing with it last year, but there are some things that are really starting to annoy us about these 140-character “conversations” that we’re carrying on there, server issues notwithstanding.

I’ll Be in the Hallway

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Reflecting on unconference-style gatherings at BloggerCon and EduBloggerCon, and questioning whether we’re really moving beyond tools and vendors toward deeper conversations about how learning, networks, teaching, and schools are changing.

Blogging Ethics

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Reflections on Jeff Jarvis’s take on blogging ethics, the power of linking and quoting, and how these practices shape journalism, teaching, and expectations for non-fiction writing.

Required Reading on Reading

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Nick Carr has a highly thought provoking piece in the Atlantic this month titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” that raises some challenging questions about what the Web is doing to our reading skills and to our intellects. As with many of these types of pieces, it’s really hard not to read this through the … Read more

What, No Footprint?

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We’ve been wondering how long it will take until having a positive digital footprint becomes an expectation rather than an exception—and we’re already reserving domains so our kids can shape the story people find when they’re Googled.

Not “The Dumbest Generation”

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Reflecting on Mark Bauerline’s book The Dumbest Generation, we argue that today’s young people are not “dumb” because of their technology use; rather, it is adults’ responsibility to model and guide meaningful learning with digital tools.