England considers scrapping SATs

• Quote: The General Teaching Council for England has proposed scrapping national tests for seven, 11 and 14-year-old pupils because it says the stress caused by over-testing school children is poisoning attitudes towards education…A study submitted by the GTC to the House of Commons’ education select committee states that the current assessment regime in England “needs to be changed”. It claims that teachers are being forced to “drill” pupils to pass tests, rather than concentrate on giving them a broad education.

  Note: I’ll still never forget the teacher in Florida telling me she was forced to read from a script to make sure her students had the best chance of doing well of the test. The UK is way ahead of us in this thinking.

   - post by willrich

ABC News: Person of the Week: Ana Slavin and Nick Anderson

• Quote: While some teens might use the Internet to catch up with their friends, Nick Anderson and Ana Slavin took a look at social networking Web sites and realized they were teeming with potenital young donors for a charitable cause. The Massachusetts teens decided to raise funds for the plight in Darfur and challenged other teens across the country to pitch in through Facebook and MySpace.

  Note: I’m seeing more and more examples like this…could it be the news tide is turning a bit?

   - post by willrich

Snapshots That Do More Than Bore Friends – New York Times

• Quote: Geotagging photos brings a whole new level of context to the image,
  said Andy Williams, general manager of SmugMug.com, a photo-sharing
  site. “After all,” he said, “pictures are flat.” But the real reason
  geotagging is getting so popular, he added, are the bragging rights
  involved. “We want people to know the cool places we’ve been,” he said.
  “And this is a cool way to show off.”

  Note: Nice article describing the near future of geotagging photos and the cool ways people are starting to use them.
   - post by willrich

‘omg my mom joined facebook!!’ – New York Times

• Quote: “Facebook is all about being a reflection of real-world relationships,” she said. “The same thing you’re experiencing with your daughter online is a reflection of how you’re not a part of her social network in real life.”

  Note: I really loved this essay…my whole goal as a parent is having my kids friend me when they get their own social newtwork sites. ;0)

   - post by willrich

Obama’s `Youth Mojo’ Sparks Student Activism, Fueling Campaign

• Quote: Obama’s strategy is visible on the Internet, where at least
  325,000 young people have signed on to his biggest support
  network on Facebook.com.

  Note: The article also notes that 75% of college students have Facebook sites. And what percentage of their teachers, I wonder…
   - post by willrich

Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Avatars consume as much electricity as Brazilians

• Quote: Walsh notes that on average there are between 10,000 and 15,000
  avatars in Second Life at any given time, a number that’s growing
  rapidly. He wonders: “How much power do 15,000 human beings consume
  daily compared to 15,000 avatars?” Hmm. That’s an interesting question. So let’s do the math.

  Note: This from last December, and the result is that our avatars in SL consume about as much electricity as the average Brazilian. A virtual footprint, I guess?
   - post by willrich

Brave New Mouse

• Quote: “I’m not sure this is legal.” Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media at Disney
  (NYSE:DIS) -ABC Television Group, is showing off his team’s latest
  creation. An online sneak peek of the Lost finale, perhaps? Behind-the-picket-fence footage of Desperate Housewives on a cell phone? No, something even more revealing: Behold the staff wiki…

  …The wiki isn’t an act of defiance directed at the Big Mouse, and it
  isn’t a goof. Rather, it’s a nifty tool for a fast-growing 150- person
  virtual department. The digital-media crew is spread across the
  company’s television units–ABC, ABC News, Disney Channel, ABC Family,
  and a handful of its other cable channels. The members work in three
  cities, five buildings in L.A. alone, and four locations in this
  particular high-rise on West Alameda, about a mile from ABC
  headquarters. The Web site allows team members to review new social-
  networking applications, compare vendors, and share their latest
  projects.

  “If HR tells us we can’t do this,” Cheng says, “we’ll apologize later.”

  Note: Nice article from Fast Company on the way Disney is taking on Web 2.0 Some amazing thinking going on, whether you have serious issues with the company (as I do) or not. Thinking that we’re not doing much of in schools, btw.
   - post by willrich

How Nebraska Leaves No Child Behind | TIME

• Quote: Most state education officials grumble that the pressure-packed annual
  tests and rigid adequate yearly progress (AYP) targets engendered by
  the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law are flawed means of
  measuring student proficiency, raising academic standards, holding
  schools accountable and fostering learning. But since the penalty for
  defying the law is loss of federal funds, most treat NCLB’s
  prescriptives like bitter medicine they can’t afford to spit out. All,
  that is, except the iconoclasts who run the public schools in Nebraska.

  Note: I wonder what property values are like in Lincoln?
   - post by willrich

ContraCostaTimes.com – Internet safer than it seems

• Quote: “Fearful parents may conjure up images of trench-coated predators trolling the Web, but the virtual world their teens actually inhabit is more like the soda shop of yesteryear or the mall — a place to hang with friends.”

  Note: Nice to see more and more of these types of stories out there…this is still how a lot of hearts and minds will be won.

   - post by willrich

Flixn.com | Video Everywhere Annotated

• Quote: Flixn puts video everywhere. Our users can record instantly from their webcam and post their recordings on blogs, in messages or comments, and even send video emails.Note: Pretty easy Flash video provided you have a webcam. Have I mentioned that I love my MacBook?

  – post by willrich

Video Blogging Heaven

• Quote: Pure Digital Technologies has modified its low-cost Flip Video camcorder for all those impatient exhibitionists out there, adding one-button instant uploading to video-sharing Web sites. The Flip is a simple camcorder, requiring only four buttons to operate. And it is low-priced, at $120 for a 512-megabyte memory with 30 minutes of recording time, or $150 for twice that much. Don’t expect cinematic color or clarity; videos are of Web-acceptable quality that will not stand up to big-screen viewing.

  Note: Definitely something to think about for movideoblogging types.

   - post by willrich

Amazon to Sell Music Without Copy Protection

• Quote: The move could be another step toward the demise of the copy-protection
  systems that have frustrated some online music buyers and created
  confusion about compatibility between digital players and downloaded
  songs. Critics charge that the software has slowed the public embrace
  of legal digital downloads while failing to stop illicit copying, at a
  time when the music industry is desperate for ways to make up for
  declining CD sales.

  Note: Another example of how the models are shifting and changing under the pressure of the ways we are using the technologies.
   - post by willrich

Which Wiki is Right for You?

• Quote: As we create a more collaborative 2.0 school library environment, wikis provide an opportunity for students, teachers, parents, administrators, and community members to actively create new information for others.

  Note: Nice review of the leading wiki alternatives for educators from School Library Journal.
  
   - post by willrich

Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? : The Knowledge Tree

• Quote: Today’s teenagers are being socialised into a society complicated by shifts in the public and private. New social technologies have altered the underlying architecture of social interaction and information distribution. They are embracing this change, albeit often with the clumsy candour of an elephant in a china shop. Meanwhile, most adults are panicking. They do not understand the shifts that are taking place and, regardless, they don’t like what they’re seeing.
  This leaves educators in a peculiar bind. More conservative educators view social technologies as a product of the devil, bound to do nothing but corrupt and destroy today’s youth. Utterly confused, the vast majority of educators are playing ostrich, burying their heads in the sand and hoping that the moral panics and chaos that surround the social technologies will just disappear. Slowly, a third group of educators are emerging – those who believe that it is essential to understand and embrace the new social technologies so as to guide youth through the murky waters that they present. This path is tricky because it requires educators to let go of their pre-existing assumptions about how the world works. Furthermore, as youth are far more adept at navigating the technologies through which these changes are taking place, educators must learn from their students in order to help them work through the challenges that they face.

  Note: This 7-page essay by danah boyd is a pretty good primer for those just coming to the “public and private is changing” conversation specifically as it relates to youth and to educators. I can’t tell you the looks I get when I suggest we embrace and teach social networking…
  
   - post by willrich

Flickr Tools on Flickrbits » The definitive collection of Flickr tools, plugins and API applications

• Note: An extensive list of flickr plugins and tools, everything from games to browser plugins to mobile phone applications to whatever else you might want.
   - post by willrich

PoducateMe Guide | PoducateMe

• Note: Incredibly extensive resource on podcasting by Micha Ovadia that is free in digital form and also available in a .pdf for purchase. It’s got a pretty good section on podcasting in education, though mostly seen through a higher ed lens. Still, gives you some ideas.
   - post by willrich

Online sites-online sites for children – New York Times

• Quote: My daughter lives in two worlds. In one, she is the same small person I
  have always known, the one who chews on the end of her braid when she
  reads. But in the other, her imagination runs wild as she plays online
  at the kids’ social network sites where she and many of her friends
  recently persuaded their parents to open accounts for them.

  Note: Social networking for younger kids can be difficult for parents to understand…
   - post by willrich

Some Schools Drop Laptop Programs – New York Times

• Quote: The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did)…So the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse.

  Note: There are so many potential reasons for this, but the basic reason is because learning with technology is simply not a systemic part of the K-12 curriculum. It’s not a part of the way we do business. Instead, it’s something we try to make work at certain times for certain purposes. And even then, we don’t fully understand the implications and potentials of the tools. Not surprising…is it?

   - post by willrich

One Picture, 1,000 Tags – New York Times

• Quote: Now, after spending millions of dollars and years of effort on their virtual homes — which draw many more visitors than their physical ones — museums are rethinking their online collections. They are experimenting with one of the hottest Web 2.0 trends: tagging, the basis for popular sites like Flickr.com. In social tagging, users of a service provide the tags, or labels, that describe the content (of photos, Web links, art), thus creating a user-generated taxonomy, or folksonomy, as it’s called.

  Note: I really can’t wait until David Weinberger’s new book comes out…

   - post by willrich

LeaderTalk: Using A Web 2.0 Credo to Help Frame Administrative Actions

• Quote: Our Campus Web 2.0 Credo

      * Believing that all Web 2.0 educational endeavors are populist not elitist in nature,  equal and full access to technology for learning will be a guaranteed right of all students on this campus.
      * Every student is entitled to an education that includes on-going opportunities for involvement with and participation in web-based learning communities.
      * Computer Literacy will be considered of equal value to all other forms of literacy.
      * Student self-expression, initiative, intuition, and exploration within the Web 2.0 environment are to be promoted with as few outside rules and as little authoritarian supervision as practical for an educational environment.
  (From Texas principal Greg Farr)

  Note: I find that a pretty progressive take on how we might start leading with these technologies. The entire post is interesting in the way that Greg struggles with the best way to get all of his staff invested in the uses of Web 2.0 technologies. The only phrase that niggles at me is “computer literacy” as, obviously, it’s not so much about the computer as it is about the information the computer connects us to.
  
   - post by willrich

Innovate – Schools, Children, and Digital Technology: Building Better Relationships for a Better Tomorrow

• Quote: A significant implication of this has been that teens have, in many respects, rewritten the rules of socialization. Whereas teenagers in the past would focus primarily on their physical appearance and behavior, many of them are now more preoccupied with creating digital profiles and learning how to present themselves online in order to be validated by peers.
  
  Note: An article that looks at the complexities that social tools create for schools and the ways in which districts are dealing with them (mostly ineffectively.) Free registration required.

   - post by willrich