Great article from David Pogue today!
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/assessing-the-dangers-of-the-internet-for-children/
Nice to have evidence concerning what many of us have assumed all along (Internet dangers have been and continue to be over-hyped). That being said, my other take away is that we really should continue to be having more discussions around cyber-bullying and empowering students with strategies to deal with this phenomenon.
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I have now been using the Eee for 3-4 days now and contineu to be very impressed. I am impressed espically from the view point that we can and should be putting this machine in the hands of students. I do have some first generation gripes:
And some praise:
Overall…when this thing gets to $300, I will recommend it to EVERY parent!
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It would appear to me that it is only a matter of time before my current job (Director of Technology for a public school district in Connecticut) becomes a certified position. Not necessarily in the traditional sense of certification such as teaching and administrative certifications, but as in school districts wanting directors of technology that are certified in education and in technology.
We have been waiting for the state department of education in Connecticut to create a certified Director of Technology position/program. My hunch is that we will continue to wait for sometime. However, public school districts in Connecticut (and I am sure in other states as well) are not waiting. Many of them are posting job openings that require certifications in technology and education. Often it is not specific as to what the exact certifications must be but they must be an educational certification and a separate technology certification.
Gone are the days of a teacher with a proclivity to use technology in his/her classroom sufficient preparation to take on the growing demands and importance of educational technology leadership in a school district. Who will guide the ship towards 21st century skills and knowledge? We must have formal training programs (and eventually a state sponsored certification) that help produce the educational technology leaders our students need and must have to be productive citizens of a “flat” world.
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Engadget recently had a post on the new Texas Instruments cell phone projector. It is only a prototype but they hope to have a working model out by next ??? (The version that will actually work in a real cell phone handset is still in the lab).
The reason I blogged this is becuase I believe this will be a major jump forward for cell phones and their use in education and particularly in educational institutions. Imagine the possibilities as cell phone networks get faster, more and more data/content moves online, the ability to access it anywhere anytime improves, and the ability to share it visually with the masses comes online. I think this is the next logical step. Imagine students discussing a topic, researching solutions, and taking turns showing ideas, all in a small group armed with cell phones and a white wall. (Yes, we can get close to this scenario now but don’t forget your laptop, power cord, high-speed cellular data plan, and a portal multimedia projector.)
The scenario above will be possible with zero oversight from schools and school officials. Students will have their own cell phones, connected to their own network, with their own cell phone plans. What happens when you completely remove us (the educators) as gatekeepers between the students and the information/data/content/ideas/etc? This has started already but this new technology certainly helps to complete the loop. Students have access now but still deal with filters, outdated-hardware, network restrictions, etc.
If we don’t act like designers and facilitators with this technology, and we try to stay the center of the classroom as the knowledge “gatekeeper” where will we be as educatros and what use will students have for us?
Not even a day after I wrote my last post I read on TechCrunch about a new Web 2.0 site named Glubble. Glubble is attempting to solve the problem parents have regarding their young would be web surfers. Glubble is a Firefox extension that allows parents to build/manage/customize a web white list for their children. The service will eventually include the ability for parents to access other parent created white lists and/or pool approved lists. My one complaint is that the default white list is small and there is no option fo filtering based on category. That being said, I think this site has a lot of potential…stay tuned!
This is a request to all of the Web 2.0 developers out there. As a parent with a 6 year old who is becoming more and more interested in the Internet by the day, I am looking for a hosted content filtering service that I can point my son’s browser thru. The service should be free (or low cost for advanced features). I want as many proxies as I can manage each with customizable settings (if I want one for my four year old daughter and one for my six year old son). I want to be able to choose to filter by content type and/or a white/black list. I want full reporting of what traffic is requested and passes thru the proxy. I want to be alerted via my choice of messaging service when a site is blocked. I would even like the service to summarize in general terms the types of content and types of topics that are going thru the proxy. This service could be advertised thru schools. This service could also be pre-configured in freely distributable customized copies of your favorite Linux distro. When the right developer reads this, let me know and we can get started!!!
Many of you saw the hugely viral multi-touch video from last year. Jeff Han is back with a new and updated version of the video. It is absolutely amazing!
I thought this was timely especially with the rumors swirling around that Apple is going to integrate their own muti-touch technology (see the upcoming iPhone) and use it in their line of PCs.
What would a multi-touch device allow a learner to do that we can’t currently do???
First, it would solve Alan Novembers problem with SmartBoards…it would make them a student (as opposed to teacher) centric device.
Second, it would change the way we interact with computer. We would move from conforming to the mouse/keyboard world to a more intuitive “touch” world.
Third, we can better bring the world of data analysis to the masses thru data virtualization.
Fourth, no more learning (or re-learning) a specific GUI.
Fifth, it is really cool!
I was excited today to try out Gizmo Call. It puts the functionality of Skype or Gizmo Project software inside a browser. There is a plug-in that must be downloaded, but the process is faster and easier than downloading and installing the full application. I believe Gizmo Call is based on SIP, not sure if it is GPL. I am interested to see if this new shift in the model gets Incorporated into other applications or stays on its own. Interesting possibilities for students and another arrow in the web-based quiver.
With the One Laptop Per Child program continuing to move forward the calls (and hopes) for US citizens to get our hands on one is growing. I fully endorse the thinking….I buy two…one for me one for [a student somewhere in the world].
A lot of discussion has been taking place lately around whole-sale public K12 education school reform. The catalyst has been the new report out from the NCEE featured on Time magazines cover.
I noticed a comment by Gary Stager to a blog post of David Warlick’s in regard to this report. Stager encourages us to go back to put the report in context to what Seymour Papert has been writing and saying for a long time. This lead me to a short essay written by “Papert on Piaget.”
From the essay:
Piaget recognized that Julia’s answers, while not correct by any adult criterion, are not “incorrect” either. They are entirely sensible and coherent within the framework of the child’s way of knowing. Classifying them as “true or false” misses the point and shows a lack of respect for the child. What Piaget was after was a theory that could find in the wind dialogue coherence, ingenuity and the practice of a kind of explanatory principle (in this case, by referring to body actions, in other cases much harder to state) that stands young children in very good stead when they don’t yet know enough or have enough skill to handle the kind of explanation grown-ups prefer.
Piaget was not an educator and never enunciated rules about how to intervene in such situations. But his work strongly suggests that the automatic reaction of putting the child right may well be abusive. Practicing the art of making theories may be more valuable for children than achieving meteorological orthodoxy. And if their theories are always greeted by “nice try, but this is how it really is…” they might give up after a while on making theories. As Piaget put it: “Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them something too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves.”
As the father of a 6 and 4 year old and as an educator, I find myself constantly trying to “educate” my children about “the ways of the world”. I was the parent that immediately corrected my children and tried to tell them in “kid speak” what was “really going on” in the world. If we don’t allow our children at a young age to create and test hypothesis on their own, no wonder they don’t do it in middle and high school!!!
BTW – (I thought it was important to explain how I got to this understanding by explaining the path I took above because I think it helps to demonstrate the interconnectedness and access to informal learning communities that blogs and the blogosphere provides.)
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