NMC Feed Aggregator

Ken Mayhew, fellow and tutor in economics at Pembroke College, Oxford University

The CEO of the Consortium for School Networking and a Professor Emeritus at Western Michigan University discuss a new initiative designed to assess how school leaders are affecting the use of Web 2.0 applications in schools.

---

By James Bosco and Keith Krueger

It comes as little surprise to even casual observers that digital media is central to the life of most American youth.  IM’ing, gaming, virtual worlds, and social networking are only a few of the ways that digital media play an increasingly larger role in the lives of kids. Yet, these resources which are key elements in what Henry Jenkins has termed as “participatory culture,” are seen by many educators more often as liabilities than assets in the school environment. 

The negative orientation of many school leaders toward Web 2.0 applications is particularly pernicious since many of these applications hold considerable opportunity for improved learning, particularly the ability to foster collaboration, creativity and critical thinking - skills that are particularly critical now and in the future.  It would be a sad irony if the increased knowledge and capability which has been developed about digital media and learning - much of which has come as a result of MacArthur sponsored projects—would remain on the other side of the classroom door.

The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) with support from the MacArthur Foundation, has begun an initiative to close the gap by focusing on leadership and policies that enable/inhibit adoption of these new digital tools in education.  We will gather detailed information to assess the current perspectives, policies, and practices of school leaders which impact on Web 2.0 applications particularly within the context of participatory culture within schools.  The nature of information and analyses which we accomplish will be specifically germane to the formation and implementation of an action plan to promote school policies and practices to close the gap.

Eric Hopfer wrote, “In times of change, learners inherit the Earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” We cannot afford schools that prepare kids for a world that no longer exists.  Now is the time for policymakers and educators to define 21st century learning environments and bridge the home/school digital gap.

John P of One Mans Blog (great tagline: Specialization is for Insects) was a busy camera guy at WordCamp 2008. I just got word (via a flickr comment) that the video of my session on It’s All You Can WordPress at the EduBlog Diner is now on viddler (and not exactly as it was/is billed as “The Future of Education and WP”):

I am headed out the door ASAP for a weeklong roadtrip and am thus avoiding watching and counting my ums.

“Web 2.0 University” to launch in Australia, New Zealand

Web 2.0 awareness in the enterprise world continues to grow.

flickr photo Autoretrato com Colorado by Paulo Brabo

Maybe two months from now will mark the 15th year I have been on the web. This will be October 29, exactly at 10:30am, 15 years to the minute when I inserted a floppy disk labeled “Mosaic” (in perhaps a Mac Quadra 900) that my Maricopa colleague Jim Walters had handed me, and had said, just with a smile, “Try this”.

Profound moment indeed.

In all this time, I have never lost a shred of excitement over those crazy serendipity happenings, connections, opportunities, that present themselves only because the web was there. Things that would not have happened otherwise, in that creepy parallel universe where there is no internet, no world wide web.

So I am going to toss out a few and see if others pick up and share there own. My stipulation is that each story much have a link to an artifact of the story. Cause if there ain’t a link, its not a web.

I have tons of stories, but will keep it to three.

How do You Say HTML in Icelandic?
One of my early successful web projects was Writing HTML — dating back to 1994– a tutorial on old school web content creation, where you could learn tags, linking, etc while building a fake web page about Volcanoes. Sometime in the mid 1990s I got an email from a teacher in Iceland asking if was okay to translate the lessons into his language. The entire package was always available for free download and re-use, so I said “sure” and warned Gudjon that there were like 120 files inside of it that would need translation.

I forgot about it, but months later, I got an email that said here it is - http://thor.vma.is/tut/ and wow, I could recognize by content in shape, but “NÁMSEFNISGERÐ Í HTML” read like:

Þegar þú ert búinn með námskeiðið getur þú gert röð samtengdra vefsíða um hvaða efni sem er og sett það upp með forsniðnum texta, myndum, og vefstiklum (e. Hyperlink) í aðrar síður á Internetinu

That is only part of the story. In 1999, Gudjon recommended me to a colleague in Reykjavik, and in June I was flying there to give workshops to a group of social studies teachers. After that part, I was on a small plane flying to Isafudor to meet Gudjon for the first time.

From me posting web pages Arizona to meeting a colleague at his home near the arctic circle in Iceland? Only by the web did this happen.

My Death Valley Photo As German Rock Band Album Art
I refuse to be convinced that you gain by locking up and protecting your “intellectual property”, and my mode of operation from my first steps onto the web were very simple- give my stuff away. Cause you get things back, and better than tangible are incredible experiences that can make you look like a wide eyed babe.

Back in 1988, when I was a grad student in the Geology program at Arizona State University, I had some wonderful “commutes” to the area I was studying for my Masters these near Bishop, California. One route I took was across Death Valley, and even then, long before a digitqal camera was even a glimmer of an idea for me, I was taking photos of weird signs… in this case, my car, a 1973 Ford Maverick, parked in front of the sign in Death Valley that said “Sea Level”:

Years later, when I had access to tools in my job at Maricopa, I scanned the photo and dropped it somewhere in the pile of my 1990s vintage “home page”. Interestingly enough, it was the file name of my photo, sea-level.jpg that enabled a German rock band to find my image — the name of their band was The Sea Level. And they were interested in using my photo as cover art for their next CD.

I was maybe a bit skeptical, but had nothing to lose by shipping them off a higher res version of my photo. And darned, if months later, did I get en envelope of a music CD with a familiar photo on the cover:

Only on the web would a German band find a photo for their music from an obscure directory of a web geek in Arizona.

Unidentified Arizona Flowers Spotted in Tasmania
I still have to question whether this last story could have really happened, but I was there, and it did.

I have a part of a presentation called Being There in that Unevenly Distributed Future where I try to make a pitch that on our human scale we cannot really grasp the immense size and breadth of the net. Its on a scale beyond our senses, like the physical scale of one puny human at the Grand Canyon. So I shared a few examples that are, I hope, more appreciable than talking about “millions of blog posts per day”.

I am doing this presentation at the first stop of my October 2007 Australia tour for a group of educators gathered in Hobart, Tasmania. I tell them of this little trick I learned on flickr– as I enjoy taking macro shots of flowers, I really am terrible at identifying them. So by accident, I learned if I use the words “unknown flower” or “unidentified flower” in a description, that often people seek these out and will tell you, in the comments what the species is.

So I have a preset flickr search string that pulls up maybe 13 phorts from my stream that have that as a description/ So in Tasmania, I scroll up and down thatr page and decide to use an orange one as an example.

I tell the audience how I posted the image and a someone named “Kirsty S” commented, “I suspect it is a ranunculus.”

Here I am in Tasmania telling this story (I could have picked any of 12 other photos) and a hand goes up halfway back of the room and a woman says, “That was me! I am Kirsty S”.

I am sure my heart stopped a beat.

Or twelve.

The odds of this seem astounding to me. But I was there, and so was Kirsty S

Only on the web could have this connection happened.

It is these stories that keep me going, and hoping for more.

So what are your “only on the web” wild stories?

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Professor Veit Bader, chair of sociology and social and political philosophy at the Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Doesn’t Uninstall mean go away? Remove yourself? Not if you are the Foxmarks extension for Firefox. Like trying to kill a vampire, even having the right tools does not get read of the nuisance.

cc licensed flickr photo by JoshBerland19

I upgraded to Firefox 3 a few weeks ago and was sad to learn the Google Browser Sync extension was left out to dry and not upgrade to work in FF3. This as a flawless tool that kept my bookmarks matched between my Mac and PC, and not only that, kept my cookies and browser history in line too, so it was like the same Firefox on both machines.

So I opted to give Foxmarks a try, which only synced bookmarks. It seemed to work fine for a while, but over the last few weeks, using Firefox 3 on my MacBookPro has become a protracted act of waiting to use the browser while it spins the cursed Mac beachball.

Some research suggested extensions were a possible cause, so I started disabling all the ones I had added recently (3). Disabling Foxmarks seemed to clear things up… for abut a day.

I then completely uninstalled Foxmarks.

Which means it should be gone.

but it is not.

It refuses to go.

All day, when I see the beachball, I note in the bottom of my browser that there is still a Foxmarks progress bar claiming “bookmark sync in progress”! How is that possible? Is it a ghost?

Do I need more garlic? An excorcist? Some have suggested I create a new Firefox profile and import my settings. I read elsewhere that that move did not kick Foxmarks out of the house.

More weirdness- for an uninstalled extension– why are there traces of Foxmarks in my Firefox about:config settings?

But I think I just found the silver stake to drive through the heart of Foxmarks… I logged into their site and deleted my account.

And for the last 10 minutes? No sign of beachballs of phantom syncing.

My experience hopefully is not yours, but I am giving a Big Pile of CogDogPoop for the havoc of Foxmarks. I’ll show you who is top dog in my browser.

Update: Arrgh, I am still seeing the beachball producing “browser sync in progress”. Is it Foxmarks or a relict of the incompatible Google Browser Sync? I am going in sometime soon the bowels of the Firefox app directories and libraries to see if I can find any tracks.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Google Sky on your iPhone

Medical iPhone apps for students and practitioners

Includes a video demo

Includes a video demo

The Virtual Worlds in Education Conference
Real Education in a Virtual World:
Using Online Virtual Environments for Teaching and Learning
Hosted and sponsored by East Carolina University
November 10 and 11, 2008: This event is held entirely in Second Life on the East Carolina University virtual campus (http://slurl.com/secondlife/ECU%20II/112/107/26)
The conference will be over a 48 -hour period. The schedule [...]

more…

On this "pageflake," you'll find a collection of pre-writing tools to help you develop your essay with greater depth and complexity. The topoi are designed to encourage students to view an issue through multiple lenses. The Topoi raise questions, challenge assumptions, reveal contradictions, offer new points of view.

On this "pageflake," you'll find a collection of pre-writing tools to help you develop your essay with greater depth and complexity. The topoi are designed to encourage students to view an issue through multiple lenses. The Topoi raise questions, challenge assumptions, reveal contradictions, offer new points of view.

AT&T to Deliver Mobile Student Response Solution, Enhancing Higher Education Classroom Experience

Is Penn State doing anything with this, and if so, what?

An RSA panel of judges and expert witnesses explore the recent remarkable change in behaviour and attitudes towards privacy in an increasingly public world.