The U.S. Holocaust Museum is sponsoring a Darfur Editorial-Writing Contest. According to the website: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience is asking high school and university students to write an editorial explaining to their communities why the genocide in Sudan’s western region of Darfur matters today. Students can enter their published editorials
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A memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed this week between the United Nations Development Programme and the nonprofit organization One Laptop per Child (OLPC). OLPC spokesman Nicholas Negraponte said: One laptop per child is key, making learning more seamless with living, play and family life, versus being limited to school. Teacher preparation is important, in
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Tim Kane has published a new article in National Review online entitled “Income Relativism: When people care more about politics than helping the poor.” The issues of income inequalities, empowering the poor to better themselves educationally and economically, bridging the digital divide… these are all important to me. Tim’s thoughts are worth considering. He offers
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The Bloggercon III conference was held at Stanford University on November 6, 2004, and featured top notch presentations about blogging and web 2.0. Presenters included Dave Winer, Lawrence Lessig, Scott Rosenberg, Jay Rosen, Adam Curry, and many others. IT Conversations has compiled a nice webpage and podcast RSS feed of all the conference presentations. Check
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I have started a new “job hunt blog” this evening using iWeb software included with iLife06. I have several reasons for starting this blog (which I posted about within it actually), but the main ones are to learn more about the capabilities of iWeb as well as document my own job hunt that is ongoing
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School teachers and campus principles may cringe with fearful anticipation at the prospect of their own students having free access to wiki resources like the Wikipedia, but it is doubtful the behavior of their students could be worse than that of some US Congressional staffers recently. Check out this “Wikipedia:Requests for comment/United States Congress” page.
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Popularity can have drawbacks and costs, especially when it comes to web 2.0 and bandwidth issues. Just tried to pull up the Learnerblogs.org page, and I was greeted with the following: Hopefully they’ll get the problem resolved soon. I have been contemplating recommending to teachers that they look at Learnerblogs or Edublogs to setup classroom
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With the movie version of C.S. Lewis’ classic book “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” now grossing over $620 million (and still counting), reports are being circulated of the sequel being filmed in Ireland soon. The first book in the Chronicles of Narnia series is actually “The Magician’s Nephew,” but its events take place
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Durham Middle School in Lewisville ISD, Texas, has launched a new classroom podcast. Their logo is cute: David Stone, the instructional technology specialist at Durham, emailed me the link. He said my recent TechEdge article on digital storytelling via podcasts was an inspiring factor in getting them started with podcasting at school. That is awesome!
In the Bit by Bit podcast from January 29, 2006, Maine educators Bob Sprankle and Cheryl Oakes share a Q&A session with other teachers about very practical questions regarding classroom podcasting. They address issues like parent permission forms, the benefits of “starting small” and focusing on student writing via blogging first, using Feedburner to track
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Scientists are reporting discovery of “a gene that may control whether or not someone is a risk taker.” The published research cited in this article is from October 2005. The article’s author rhetorically asks: Why does one person like to skydive or ski off cliffs while someone else is happy reading a book? After studying
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Tony Evans is one of the most dynamic speakers and Christian preachers I have ever listened to in person. Tony was a speaker at a Promisekeepers event I attended several years ago. I have been looking for a free podcast feed of Dr. Evan’s sermons, but it appears none are currently available. Full sermons from
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This afternoon my oldest daughter and I created an enhanced podcast about her recent hedgehog science fair project. It is just 6 minutes long, and turned out well. The photographer of one of the attribution-only creative commons Flicker images we used (a cute one of a hedgehog yawning) has a Japanese Flickr contact named Tsuda.
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Jeff Moore posted some good reflections about the evolving role of computer technologists in schools back in November as a short podcast. I heartily agree with Jeff’s contentions that educational technologists in schools should be developers rather than installers, and should be viewed as TEACHERS rather than technicians. Schools serious about helping students and teachers
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The Explorer is the Staff Newsletter for Zeiger Elementary in Puyallup, Washington. This is a great example of using web 2.0 power via blogs to help educate others about them, through directly using them. The Puyallup technology director, Glenn Malone, is having some success getting other administrators in the district to blog. I think that
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Barbara Miner’s article “Teacher Quality: Transforming Teacher Education” in the current issue of Rethinking Schools tells the compelling tale of UCLA’s College of Education seeking to better promote social justice and better prepare pre-service and in-service teachers to serve students in low-SES schools. Center X sounds like an outstanding program, particularly because of its success
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In the context of a conversation about 1:1 technology learning initiatives and school reform, the author of the Left Lane Ends blog asks: So, where do we begin? …I am in full agreement… on the need for a dramatic changed [sic] in the process that entangles our education system. Yet I also believe that it
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Mike Klonsky observed on Thursday: …school size is in fact, one of the most over-researched topics in education and there is plenty of compelling evidence that smaller is better, especially when you look at the impact of school size on poor kids. However, small schools are not a panacea. They are often the launch pad
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Dr. David Miller is a psychology professor at the University of Connecticut who produces the weekly, interactive iCube podcast for his students. I learned about Dr. Miller’s innovative podcast last week and updated my post on “Higher Ed Podcast Purposes & Examples” to include a fifth category called “Interactive and Reflective Q&A.” iCube podcasts don’t
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Dr. David Orr, in the question and answer period following his presentation “The End of Education” shared with an audience at the University of British Columbia on January 13, 2006 (hour/minute/second mark 1:00:05 of the podcast), quoted a corporate CEO who stated the problem with his company was that they “suffered from a deficit of
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