Wanderings…

Chris Potter (my partner in Web 2.0 Geekdom) just sent me this video – The Networked Student.  Naturally – it’s blocked at school.

It is how we both want to teach.  What’s holding us back?  The content filter, aka “Bess the Barking Dog”.  I’d actually like to use a synonym that would add some satisfying alliteration to that phrase.  Oh well.  Keep it PG.

Yes – it is frustrating.  But it is not totally insurmountable.  To quote & paraphrase from my reply to his email

We CAN’T throw up our hands and say “if I can’t use Delicious (Wikispaces, Blogger etc etc), then I am taking my toys and going home.”  We HAVE to make compromises to get a little of what we want – and hopefully get a little more another day.

Student Accountability – We do not do nearly enough with holding kids accountable.  We simply block things to make  our lives easier.  As teachers in charge of such a project, we would have to craft a realy tight “acceptable use policy” for collaborative projects.  There would need to be specific, swift and significant consequences to violation of the policy.  We would have to do memorable teaching about the ramifications of signing such a contract and what all the parts of it mean.  Then – “violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Hopefully Paul Newman will not charge me for the title of this post – a take-off of his famous line in Cool Hand Luke.

I was shocked to read Will Richardson’s post today. I’m glad that he does not ascribe to the new AP pricing rules for quoting – or I would owe him money:

$12.50 for Five Words

That’s what it’s going to cost you to excerpt in your blog any content published by the Associated Press under it’s new pricing structure.

With a little more searching, I did discover a discount for educators. We would only owe $7.50 for quoting 5-25 words. 

What’s next? Charging students to use quotations from AP in their research papers? Might happen if any of said research papers should end up on the web.

Come on – figure out a way to make the web and web 2.0 part of your business plan. How are you going to police the Internet? Isn’t it better to figure out how to gain from your reputation as an authoritative source? I would think that bloggers quoting and linking to your sources would create a buzz, bringing more business your way. Get creative and realize that “You’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone.” How much do you think I should pay Bob Dylan for using that quote?

I am so happy that Anne-Marie Gordon has decided to start a blog. I greatly value her knowledge and perspective.

Today – she blogs about Twitter – a web 2.0 app that I felt safe ignoring – until now. Darn. It really does have an educational use after all. Twittering in Outer Space

No wonder space aliens are portrayed with giant brains. People of the future are just going to need more brain space to keep up. What’s the next step after “twittering” – the Vulcan Mind Meld?

One of our teachers shared this post with me: Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education http://www.stevehargadon.com/2008/03/web-20-is-future-of-education.html I have always been interested in Web 2.0 and I “get” the relevance and importance of web 2.0 to education – at least I THOUGHT I did. But this post made me realize that web 2.0 is not simply a collection of tools and it is not a passing fad. It is the new way that we will operate in a ”flat world.”  Education can’t ignore this.

I was particularly struck by this part of the post, with it’s implications for educators in general and librarians in particular:

Help Build the New Playbook. You may think that you don’t have anything to teach the generation of students who seem so tech-savvy, but they really, really need you. For centuries we have had to teach students how to seek out information – now we have to teach them how to sort from an overabundance of information. We’ve spent the last ten years teaching students how to protect themselves from inappropriate content – now we have to teach them to create appropriate content.  They may be “digital natives,” but their knowledge is surface level, and they desperately need training in real thinking skills. More than any other generation, they live lives that are largely separated from the adults around them, talking and texting on cell phones, and connecting online. We may be afraid to enter that world, but enter it we must, for they often swim in uncharted waters without the benefit of adult guidance. To do so we may need to change our conceptions of teaching, and better now than later.

We hope our upcoming Academic Challenge Event will help pull our school into the 21st century.  I am sure that unblocking Web 2.0 tools will be at least one of the issues students will focus on as they study and make recommendations about how to design school for the future.

I am very excited! One of our innovative and forward thinking teachers here at Gananda has started a new blog. He started it in collaboration with a MLIS student from Buffalo. Here are some of his thoughts about his new blog …..

A View to the World

I’ve created a category called English 12 Pop Topics, and I’d like to get my class involved in discussing some issues of debate/importance in the news. I’d miss a great teaching point with them right before they become citizens if I did not expose them to a forum on issues (ex. Imus). We can contain ourselves in (room) 110 and talk about it, but I’d much rather have them share a viewpoint with the world.

To use an phrase from my oh-so-distant youth – Right On!!