Did you know that as a city Toront0, Canada has one of the largest Facebook penetration rates in the world. In a recent count the number has been said to be close to 700,000 members. Much has been written about Facebook recently. Big business scorns it; too distracting. Parents don’t like it; too distracting. Schools block it; too distracting. No matter what side of the fence you sit on with regard to this network you may find it interesting that the first Facebook camp was held this summer in T.O.

From what I understand, it was packed!
What is FacebookCamp?

FacebookCamp is an unconference for everyone with an interest in building on the Facebook Platform. FacebookCamp brings together developers, marketers, strategists, technologists, and students, in an open and collaborative environment of sharing and learning.

So now I ask…………

What makes applications and communities like this so compelling?

Why has this social network taken off while dozens of others have failed?

Knowing that close to all high school students are a part of some sort of online social network, what responsibility do schools have to teach literacy around these new mediums and skills to safely navigate them?

What do you think?

As educators around the world slowly wake up to the possibilities and opportunities that many of the new web tools afford, the world gallops ahead. It is always the business community that seems to be the early adopters  of tools that can increase and enhance collaboration, communication and creative thought. The global work-space has shrunk but the hours in the day have not and as a result any tool that can allow for collaboration independent of time and space has many appealing merits. One recent site caught my eye as a emerging resource for business, economics and math teachers: Wiki Invest.  What better way to get skeptical teachers on board to the virtues of collaborative technologies than to expose them to resources that will not only enhance their classrooms but their portfolio’s as well .  In all the in-services that I lead last year, the most well attended were for resources that helped teachers outside the classroom (itunes, iphoto, image editing, movie making etc.). Perhaps I should re-think our schedule of offerings this year?

This resource is new but gathering steam.  I especially like the concepts section of the site which at a quick glance provides an extensive resource of all of the current issues facing global business today.  Notice “sub prime lending” as one of the most popular?

Relevant, engaging and meaningful.  The way learning resources should be.

Another one!!!

This is getting silly.

The International Educator, a wildly circulated professional newspaper has made the editorial decision to put this article on it’s front page with the above title.

If you read the article you will come across lines like:

“The students were told at the beginning of the course that they could bring their laptops to class to take notes if they wanted to but they would never NEED their laptops”

“You’d sit and watch the students and wonder, “What are they doing with their laptops?” You’s walk by other classes and see everyone playing solitaire.. I wanted to know, ‘Is this a problem?,” said Fried, a psychology professor at Winona State.”

To its credit the article goes on to add: “It’s just good classroom management. If you’re a good professor moving around your classroom, engaging your students, you don’t have those issues. Our best professors don’t see those issues.”

It is clear that pedagogy and instructional practice is the villan here and NOT the laptop. However my big issue with this article lies with the fact that TIE decided to lead the article with “Study finds laptops in class hinder learning.” Like our students, adults just read headlines, and this headline  actually refers to a college study. TIE is largely read by K – 12 educators and this article which really should be focusing more on the poor teaching practices of the these college professors will actually just provide one more “See I told you so !!” moment for some teachers to latch on to.

But what do I know?

I know that:
1) Good teaching , instructional strategies, and pedagogy leads to learning.

2) Good classroom management contributes to effective learning environments which affect student learning.

3)Technology is a tool that can enhance student learning but on it’s own will not guarantee it.

When you take number 3 and apply some number 1 some number 2 you get a classroom that is engaging, relevant to the lives of our students and possibly fun. All of these things are essential elements to learning.

Articles like this one just cause people to stop thinking.

I have written about this before. Here and here.

The tipping point for all of this is near.

Keep writing and keep reading and DON’T STOP THINKING and in time it will all fall into place.

I can feel it!

The 2007 IASAS Track and Field season is officially over and what ride it was. I just got back from Singapore where Singapore American School hosted all three spring IASAS sports on their massive campus. It also happened to be the 25th anniversary of IASAS so there was much fanfare over the three days of competition. My boys relay teams dominated the meet closing out the final day with a huge win in the 4 x 400m. The picture says it all.

With the season over I can get back to writing down and sharing the loads of ideas I have and continue to work through.

This post is for all of the coaches out there.

This season I decided to use a blog as one means of communicating with my team. The Panther Track Team Blog was used to post workouts, team resources and other general announcements. Using a free resource like blogger made it easy to create a forum where students could feedback about workouts and also see what was coming up on the competitive calendar. The other major benefit to using a blog as a coaching tool is that all of my workouts are posted in chronological order so that next season I can easily review what I was doing at that same time the year before and improve on it. There is not much difference between this and a website but it’s cost and easy of use make it a great choice for coaches who want to have a communication portal for their teams and don’t have much technical background.

Get you coaches using one today!

Over here at ISB we are always thinking about innovative ways to broaden, strengthen and improve the technology awareness and skill sets of our teachers. It is a dilemma all schools are facing and if you are reading this, you are well aware of it as well.

Jeff over at the thinking stick recently posted about Individual Educational Technology Plans for teachers and students and some of the interesting things Doug Johnson had to say at this years EARCOS conference. Some cool thinking going on here. Since we know that teachers like students are all on different learning continuum’s when it comes to technology would something like a IETP be helpful in ensuring accountability and skill growth for teachers while still respecting the fact that acquiring these new skills takes time and effort? How hard would it be to manage?

In steps the Personal Learning Environment or what I like to call your PD TREE.

If you had to map the sources of your own professional development, what would the root system that feeds your learning look like?
Where do you look to gain new knowledge and information that helps you become a more informed citizen?

What mediums does this information come in and how much control do you have over it?

Who, what and where are your main sources for current information that help you develop and improve as a teacher?

Where and how do you enhance your own skills?
Are these not good questions to ask all teachers to reflect on?

Ray Sim’s over at Sims Learning Connections recently shared his own Personal Learning Environment and I found it really impressive. More importantly it is an example of what is POSSIBLE with today’s access to information.

Having teachers map their own PD Trees would very quickly expose gaps in knowledge ,skill, and awareness in staff and provide an easy guide for further PD training in areas like RSS, Blogs, Forums etc.

Imagine if everyone shared their trees?

I plan on designing my own in the coming weeks and posting it here to share. I encourage you to do the same and if you do please let me know.

Tomorrow I will be presenting to the ISB admin team about Web 2.0 tools and how they can enhance teaching and learning in our classrooms. I certainly will be bringing this image up as an example of how some administrators are tackling and leveraging the information landscape to stay current and customize their own learning and development.

Click on the picture to get the whole view as the entire image does not show up in this post.

Next Gen Teachers,

A lot of buzz surrounding “Yahoo Pipes” at the moment.

My favorite early adopter and news master Robin Good describes it like this:

“Put simply, Yahoo! Pipes is a way of visually manipulating data feeds from around the web, and mashing them together into new interactive creations.

Yahoo! Pipes lets you drag and drop different information feeds – for example, the latest news items from your favourite news sources, or search queries from the online shop of your choice – and combine them through a series of filters into so-called “pipes”.

In this information heavy world. It’s is ALL ABOUT FILTERS and the thinking that goes into choosing and using them.

A tool that can easily connect, filter and remix ideas, content, in a visual way to get at the information the user is looking for sounds like a 21st century classroom tool to me.

I’ve been playing around with it today and would love to hear some ideas around some possible classroom integrations. I already have some ideas bubbling.

Lesson 1 : Building your pipeline

Students will connect and filter information from a variety of sources to examine output and accuracy of information.
Essential Question: How do the choices we make in source and filters affect the accuracy and appropriateness of the information we are looking for?

Care to share yours?

MedagogyTags : yahoo pipes

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis were the dynamic duo behind SKYPE , a small but ingenious program that has flattened the entire world. I have heard it called a “disruptive technology”. This term refers to any technology, which when introduced, either radically transforms markets, creates wholly new markets, or destroys existing markets for other technologies .
The last few years have been quite busy for the telecom industry as it tries to re-invent itself in a rapidly changing market. I can’t wait to see how a product like Joost will shake up the television world and change the way we interact with this medium.

“Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis have been talking about the idea behind Joost™ for a long time – even before their last venture, Skype, was born. But to make it work, they needed the right combination of factors – widespread broadband and powerful computers in particular. In early 2006, the time was right. Gathering the world’s best engineers, web gurus and media visionaries, they started work under the code name of The Venice Project™ – and now, after much fretting and polishing, that work is ready for public viewing.

In under a year, we’ve grown from a handful of people to more than 150, establishing offices in five countries. Already, Joost™ is a truly global venture, serving a truly global community. It’s still early days for us, but Joost™ is getting bigger and better every day – and we’re still waiting for it to become self-aware… “

Watch out !

2007 is shaping up to be an interesting year.

Technorati Tags : joost technology telecom

Wow!

Will Richardson’s “What the future holds” post put me onto this video from the 2006 Technology Entertainment and Design conference (TED) . The featured speaker takes the audience through a dizzying showcase of a multi-point interactive display board. While Smartboards only allow for one point of contact this board allows for many. What is even more impressive is that there are no instructions, no interface to be seen, just human intuition to be applied to what the user sees. If you want to move something, then move it. If you want to stretch something then stretch it. The traditional mouse is still a barrier for so many young and old students due to the degree of dexterity needed to operate it. Wouldn’t it be nice to remove that barrier?

Imagine if operating a computer became as easy as finger-painting. How would that impact the way we teach?

I am about to check out a bunch of the past presenters here.

If you see any cool presentation that impact teaching and learning, let me know!

Tags technorati : Jeff Han Will Richardson TED