New Class(room) War: Teacher vs. Technology – New York Times

• Quote: “All the advances schools and colleges have made to supposedly enhance
  learning — supplying students with laptops, equipping computer labs,
  creating wireless networks — have instead enabled distraction. Perhaps
  attendance records should include a new category: present but otherwise
  engaged.”

  Note: I actually met a high school principal in Ohio last week who encouraged his teachers to tell kids “Turn your phones ON!” when they come to class. Not as in start making all sorts of phone calls, but as in let’s learn how we can use our phones (since just about every student had one at his school) to extend what we’re doing in class. We can try to fight this, I suppose, as many schools are. Or, we can try to inculcate appropriate use from early on by modeling our own cell phone use to access infromation and learn throughout the curriculum. Bottom line is yep, this is a much more distract-able world. We have to somehow find strategies to teach our kids to use cell phones and computers and the like in effective ways, and we also have to bend our thinking a bit in terms of what we ask our kids to do in classrooms in the first place.
   - post by willrich

Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook – New York Times

• Quote: On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning. The strategy is aimed at one-upping Facebook, which last spring opened its service to outside developers. Since then, more than 5,000 small programs have been built to run on the Facebook site, and some have been adopted by millions of the site’s users. Most of those programs tap into connections among Facebook friends and spread themselves through those connections, as well as through a “news feed” that alerts Facebook users about what their friends are doing.

  Note: Cooperation increases competition. Opening up increases competition.

   - post by willrich

Hello, India? I Need Help With My Math – New York Times

• Quote: What the offshore consumer services industry needs, it seems, is a solid success story in some promising market. A
  leading candidate to watch, according to analysts, is TutorVista, a
  tutoring service founded two years ago by Krishnan Ganesh, a
  45-year-old Indian entrepreneur and a pioneer of offshore call centers. Concerns about the quality of K-12 education in America and the
  increased emphasis on standardized tests is driving the tutoring
  business in general. Traditional classroom tutoring services like
  Kaplan and Sylvan are doing well and offer online features. And there
  are other remote services like Growing Stars, Tutor.com and SmarThinking. Yet
  TutorVista, analysts say, is different in a number of ways. Other
  remote tutoring services generally offer hourly rates of $20 to $30
  instead of the $40 to $60 hourly charges typical of on-site tutoring.
  By contrast, TutorVista takes an all-you-can-eat approach to
  instruction. Its standard offering is $99 a month for as many 45-minute
  tutoring sessions as a student arranges.

  Note: What I’m wondering is when we’ll start outsourcing a lot of the simple grading stuff that teachers do now. You want to free up some time to learn, start sending the paper offshore.

   - post by willrich

UPDATE: Apologies for the double post below. I was playing with Diigo, which does auto Daily Links to the blog, and running to soccer practice, and, you get the idea. Anyway, I’ll leave this up since it’s generated some comments…

Weblogg-ed » What’s Your Process?  Annotated

At I.B.M., a Vacation Anytime, or Maybe None – New York Times

The Internet’s new Dr. Spock?

• Quote: The research suggests that kids who live online understand the process
  by which knowledge is produced and shared in an online environment,
  whereas those kids who come in within 10 minutes, they’re trying to get
  the answer and get off. So they’re not as critical of a corporate Web
  site, for example. That’s just one example of some fundamental
  inequalities in access to social skills and culture competencies
  between the information-haves and have-nots.

  Note: Interesting interview with Henry Jenkins, who I personally think articulates the moment very clearly. I find that access gap as it relates to literacy to be really interesting.
   - post by willrich

How Wiki Software is Changing Communication

• Quote: The United Nations, notorious for endless deliberations, is trying a
  technological quick fix. Its Global Compact Office, which promotes
  corporate responsibility, has embraced a once fringe social
  technology—the wiki—in hopes that it will help staff in 80 countries
  share information and reach consensus with less deliberation and more
  speed.

  Note: Nice quote by an IBM VP as well: “Collaborative software has become a very important part of how businesses will invent and innovate.” I think it’s going to be interesting to see how schools deal with this new collaborative drive.
   - post by willrich

Illegal Music Downloading at an All Time High

• Quote: According to the 2007 Digital Media Survey, conducted by Entertainment Media Research in conjunction with media lawyers from Olswang, illegal music downloads have reached an all time high.

  Note: What will the new model for music be?
   - post by willrich

SharedBook Releases Blog2Print Upgrade

• Quote: SharedBook, the publishing
  platform provider for online content, will release a new version of its
  Blog2Print widget today. We first covered the SharedBook Blog2Print widget here. Included in the upgraded widget is a embedded photo feature, which
  will automatically flow photographs and other images from your blog to
  the book format, alongside associated text. This means that those using
  your Blog2Print widget will now be able to gain the full context of
  your published content, from an online format to a physical printed
  format, retaining the integrity and intention of your original posts.Note: So if you have your kids blog for an extended period of time, they can be writing a real book as well, one that they can publish and sell.
   - post by willrich

PiczoMYPenguin

• Quote:
  Piczo has partnered with top publisher Penguin and six of the coolest
  bands and musicians to let you do just that. This is your chance to
  design a cover for such classics as Alice in Wonderland, Dracula,
  Animal Farm, and others.

  Note: Might be a fun class project.
   - post by willrich

Online Newspaper Audience Rising Twice As Fast As General Internet Population: Report

• Quote: Newspapers’ online audiences are rising at twice the rate of the
  general internet audience, according to research by Nielsen//NetRatings
  for the Newspaper Association of America.

  Note: And so what’s different about reading news online that we have to help our kids with?
   - post by willrich

searchCrystal

• Quote:
  It
  is a search visualization tool that enables you to compare, remix and share results from the best web, image, video, blog, tagging, news engines, Flickr images or RSS feeds.

  Note: Try searching for “iPhone” in mashup mode…
   - post by willrich

Social Media And University: How New Technologies Are Used In Academia – Robin Good’s Latest News  Annotated

• Quote: The results are conclusive. Social media has arrived in college admissions. The ivory tower is innovating even faster than the elite Inc. 500. And the game has changed forever.

  Note: Interesting look at how colleges are beginning to use social media in admissions, 20% of whom now graze social networking sites to find out information about potential candidates.
   - post by willrich

With Tools on Web, Amateurs Reshape Mapmaking – New York Times  Annotated

• Quote: With the help of simple tools introduced by Internet companies
  recently, millions of people are trying their hand at cartography,
  drawing on digital maps and annotating them with text, images, sound
  and videos. In the process, they are reshaping the world of
  mapmaking and collectively creating a new kind of atlas that is likely
  to be both richer and messier than any other.

  Note: Doesn’t that last part sum just about all of this up? Richer and messier…that’s the Read/Write Web.
   - post by willrich

Happy Blogiversary – WSJ.com

• Quote: “And there you have blogs. The universe of blogs is a universe of rumors, and the tribe likes it that way. Blogs are an advance guard to the rear. For example, only a primitive would believe a word of Wikipedia
  (which, though not strictly a blog, shares the characteristics of the
  genre). The entry under my name says that in 2003 “major news media”
  broadcast reports of my death and that I telephoned Larry King and
  said, “I ain’t dead yet, give me a little more time and no doubt it
  will become true.” –Tom Wolfe

  Note: Some interesting observations from a variety of folk on what effect blogs have had. Guess I’m primitive…
   - post by willrich

Seattle Public Schools builds social-learning site for its tech-savvy teens

• Quote: The L3RN tool has amazing potential for students, teachers and
  schools, said Ramona Pierson, who heads the district’s department of
  education technology and oversaw the creation of L3RN.Schools can create “channels” where they can showcase their best
  student work, such as class projects and school newspapers, she said.
  Teachers at schools at opposite ends of the city could develop lessons
  together. The district could begin offering online classes, or post
  videos of teacher-training sessions or School Board meetings.

  Note: Very cool. This sounds like a school that is beginning to understand the pedagogies of connecting and publishing, though it’s unclear how widespread the use is in the curriculum.
   - post by willrich

Chart: Who Participates And What People Are Doing Online

• Chart that indicates the level of participation in Read/Write Web tools.
   - post by willrich

Blogger’s Ejection May Mean Suit for N.C.A.A. – New York Times

• Quote: In a statement sent via e-mail, the N.C.A.A. said: “Reporters covering our championships may blog about the atmosphere, crowd and other details during a game but may not mention anything about game action. Any reference to game action in a blog or other type of coverage could result in revocation of credentials.”

  Note: My question is what if I went to a game with my computer sucking down some free wifi goodness and blogged pitch by pitch…would I get thrown out to? Probably no one would care…but…could the newspaper suck down my RSS feed? Oh the complexities. This is the fun stuff, to me, watching the messiness.  

   - post by willrich

Technology and education | Mandarin 2.0 | Economist.com

• Quote: It is early evening in Berkeley, California, and Chrissy Schwinn, a sinophile environmentalist, walks ten feet from her kitchen to her home office for her Chinese lesson. She has already listened to that day’s dialogue, which arrived as a free podcast, on her iPod. She has also printed out the day’s Chinese characters, which arrived along with the podcast. Now her computer’s Skype software—which makes possible free phone calls via the internet—rings and “Vera”, sitting in Shanghai where it is late morning, says Ni hao to begin the lesson. One might call it “language-learning 2.0,” says Ken Carroll…
  
  Note: So I’m thinking this is a great example of what we can do if we want to do it. If, of course, we have access.

   - post by willrich

New Presidential Debate Site? Obviously, YouTube – New York Times

• Quote: The quadrennial ritual of presidential debates has long followed a tried and true format.

  A guy in a suit asks mostly predictable questions of other suits. The voter is a fixture in the audience, motionless until he or she gets to address the candidate, briefly and respectfully. Everything is choreographed.

  Now imagine a kid in jeans and a T-shirt asking a question, less reverentially, more pointedly and using powerful visual images to underscore the point. Maybe he or she will ask about the war in Iraq — and show clips from a soldier’s funeral. Or a mushroom cloud. If global warming is the issue, the videographer might photoshop himself or herself onto a melting glacier. The question might come in the form of a rap song or through spliced images of a candidate’s contradictory statements.

  The presidential debates are about to enter the world of YouTube, the anything-goes home-video-sharing Web site that puts the power in the hands of the camera holder. YouTube, which is owned by Google, and CNN are co-sponsoring a debate among the eight Democratic presidential candidates on July 23 in South Carolina, an event that could define the next phase of what has already been called the YouTube election, a visual realm beyond Web sites and blogs.

  Note: And with the first primary coming at MySpace on Jan. 1 and 2, can we safely say that politics may never be the same?
   - post by willrich

Psychology Today: Trashing Teens

• Quote: Teens in America are in touch with their peers on average 65 hours a week, compared to about four hours a week in preindustrial cultures. In this country, teens learn virtually everything they know from other teens, who are in turn highly influenced by certain aggressive industries. This makes no sense. Teens should be learning from the people they are about to become. When young people exit the education system and are dumped into the real world, which is not the world of Britney Spears, they have no idea what’s going on and have to spend considerable time figuring it out.

  Note: Via George Siemens. Thought provoking piece that’s worth a read in the context of some of the other discussions we’ve been having.

   - post by willrich