The fascinating and unusual saga of public, online, K-12 charter schools in Oklahoma continues. According to today’s NewsOK article, “Oklahoma online charter school has new sponsor,” the University of Central Oklahoma will no longer serve as the official sponsor of Epic One on One Charter School: A University of Central Oklahoma spokesman says UCO has
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Did you know a “freezer” for cooling glass can be one thousand degrees fahrenheit?! This past Christmas break, our family stopped in Santa Fe, New Mexico and visited Jackalope. Our favorite part of the store (which is fantastic) is the glass blower’s demonstration area, where we learned numerous things about this intriguing art form. I
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Journalism leaders at Oklahoma State University need to read (or listen to for free as an an Audible member) Chris Anderson‘s outstanding book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price.” According to John Abell’s article in Wired yesterday, “College Newspaper to Erect Paywall: It’s Academic:” The Oklahoma State University newspaper, in the belief that it
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Craig Grannell’s December 30th article for techradar.com, “The school that gives every student an iPad,” presents a compelling summary of the 1:1 iPad project at Cedars School of Excellence in Greenock, Scotland. On their school website, built with the open source software platform MediaWiki, they proudly proclaim: We are the first school in the world
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There are some eye opening statistics in the Time article, “Mark Zuckerburg, 2010 Person of the Year.” This year, Facebook — now minus the the — added its 550 millionth member. One out of every dozen people on the planet has a Facebook account. They speak 75 languages and collectively lavish more than 700 billion
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I’m thrilled The Daily Oklahoman, our largest newspaper in Oklahoma, created an iPad application earlier this fall. I used it several times during my free trial period, and really liked it. Now, however, I can’t access any current news on it unless I pay $10 per month. Even if our family paid to subscribe to
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Yesterday at the 2010 Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference in Manchester, New Hampshire, my 10 year old daughter and I shared a breakout session titled, “When Student Published Videos Go Viral: Lessons Learned.” In our discussions we focused on four different viral videos which can be considered case studies for student media publishing: Jessi Slaughter (Jessica
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On October 28, 2010, I attended and presented at OpenBeta5 at the Co-Working Collaborative (OKC CoCo) in Oklahoma City. Prior to the start of the lightning talks, David Glover took a few minutes to explain and demonstrate the amazing SQUARE device which permits anyone with an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch to take credit card
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These are my notes from Carl Anderson‘s (@anderscj on Twitter) presentation “Utilizing Social Media” at the “Co-teaching and Collaboration Conference” in St Paul, Minnesota on 12 Nov 2010, at the School Community of Excellence. MY THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS. IF YOU ARE NOT FOLLOWING CARL YET ON TWITTER, DO IT NOW. HE’S
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These are my notes from Ruslana Westerlund‘s keynote presentation “English learners in the digital age: natives, immigrants or outsiders” at the “Co-teaching and Collaboration Conference” in St Paul, Minnesota on 12 Nov 2010, at the School Community of Excellence. MY THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Ruslana’s website: http://ellbillofrights.com Facebook: Educators of English Learners
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Greyson Chance is a twelve year old from Edmond, Oklahoma, whose 3.5 minutes of YouTube fame at a local church talent show singing a Lady Gaga song in April 2010 catapulted him to the Ellen Show and a musical recording contract. According a tweet by Ellen last week, retweeted by Greyson, he’ll will be back
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Great quotation from yesterday’s Mashable article, “The Reinvention of Print, One App at a Time.” The final advantage is that because the app is built on an HTML5 base, the process of taking the app from the iPad to another platform is going to be less complicated. Portability and platform agnosticism is going to become
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If you haven’t sipped the Google Kool Aid and pronounced it GOOD in the context of email yet, here’s yet another compelling reason to do so: Gmail now offers FREE phone calls from within the Gmail interface to all phone numbers in the U.S. and Canada. That’s right: NOT just free cell phone to cell
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Kudos to CNN for it’s published video today, “Texting to Learn.” Unlike a lot of the mainstream media coverage we see and hear about cell phones in schools, this segment does a good job providing a fairly balanced viewpoint on the struggles as well as opportunities available with cell phone technologies in school. Students in
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At the request of several school leaders in Oklahoma and Texas, I’m putting together a series of updated presentations this year for K-12 students as well as parents and teachers focusing on Internet safety, privacy, cyberbullying issues, digital footprints and digital citizenship. (Contact info is available on my “speaking” page.) photo credit: cotaro70s Using video
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Charter schools are controversial, as is the provision of publicly-funded online education options for K-12 students nationwide. In her outstanding book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” Diane Ravitch explains how the charter school movement has become (for SOME individuals) a rallying cry and political objective replacing the call for educational
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Don’t use your cell phone during class if you’re a student at Canyon High School, in Canyon, Texas. This prominently displayed sign around the school puts everyone on notice (I assume this does not apply to teachers, however) they’ll face a $15 fine for violating the district cell phone use policy. A few years ago
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The following poster is on display at Canyon High School in Canyon, Texas: Students (and adults) are invited to use text messaging to alert the authorities about weapons at school or other criminal behavior. This project is sponsored by “Student Crime Stoppers of Amarillo.” The official organizational website explains how this works with text messaging:
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This afternoon my girls and I were able to spend about an hour at Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, along with my sister and nephew. In addition to having some fun taking composite cartwheel pictures using Pano, we also learned a bit about the amazing history of Union Station and trains in the Kansas
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This podcast is an interview with David Chaney of Epic Charter Schools in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on June 25, 2010. In early-June 2010, Oklahoma governor Brad Henry signed Senate Bill 2319 into law which radically changes the groundrules for online, virtual learning in Oklahoma. In this podcast, David discusses the model of virtual learning which
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Podcast353: Free, Online K-12 Education Options for ALL Oklahoma Students via Epic One on One Charter School [ 51:40 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2997)
