I’ve been thinking a lot this year about what I should teach kids. After a quick chat with my buddy Nic Finelli I have changed my thinking to where it likely needs to be.
What do I want my kids to know (or be able to do) when they leave 6th grade?
I am thinking this particularly in terms of technology. I know what I want them to do in my Spanish and Latin classes.
But what about tech?
So I turn that question to you.
What should a 6th grader know and/or be able to do when they leave 6th grade?
I am staring down the barrel of a cool new opportunity for the next school year. So this is more than just theoretical, I need to be able to answer this question effectively. So help me out, eh?
My school has installed a few projectors and televisions in spots around the school and wants to put it to use. And I need help.
They are looking for an online service (so they can show to the public as well) that would allow multiple users to add announcements. These may be as simple as a social event coming up or a congratulations for a student. They would also like to have curricular review mixed in.
I can’t think of a good way that would allow multiple users to add to the system. Do you know of a way to accomplish this?
I am interested in the nature of global connections. That should not come as a shock if you know me.
Yesterday, my daughter came home interested in Australia. It turns out her teacher’s mother came in to talk about Australia. Evidently she has traveled there.
Being an American (and overly US-centric I admit) I had no answers to her questions. I suppose I had to options.
1. Find the answers myself and give them to her.
2. Let her ask someone who would know.
I reached out to Jason Hando, who lives in Sydney, Australia. Jason and I met a few years ago online as we were exploring the educational uses of Second Life. Jason ended up being a critical part of the building of Life Round Here.
Jason happened to be available so we Skyped. I recorded the interview and sent it to my daughter’s teacher. She was floored and plans to show it to her class and perhaps beyond. Here is the interview if you care to watch. It’s about 8 minutes.
Get back Muzzle Lab in Gmail — Muzzle was the lab which let you hide the status of your friends in the contact pannel of Gmail. It has been removed from the Lab list on the sad 25th day of February 2010 — Tested on FF3.6 and Chrome 4
Mute on Lock is a tiny resident utility that sits in the system tray and monitors your session: when you are locking your Windows workstation, it mutes the sound of your speakers. With the help of this program you can quickly mute or unmute the system sound by double-clicking the tray icon or using an optional hot key.
I offered to present to the PLP Year 2 participants and was accepted to present on student blogging. This is a topic that has interested me in both a tools perspective as well as a pedagogical one. I have seen student blogging done very well and I have seen it done not so well. My aim here is to identify both potential tool-based issues and considerations as well as to consider the pedagogical implications.
The first question to ask is what the purpose is when blogging. I posit that there are a variety of purposes for blogging.
1. Teacher-centered blog for communcation with students and families
2. Teacher-centered blog for communcation with other educators
3. Student-centered blog for communication with teacher and/or classmates
4. Student-centered blog for communcation with wider audience
I suppose that is not an exhaustive list but will serve us for the purposes of this discussion.
So once you decide what sort of blog you want to begin, you can begin looking at tools. We will focus on student blogging here, as it has a different set of implications requiring a more specific tool.
Here are the specific tools that I think are suited for student blogging, with each having certain benefits and drawbacks.
I’ve been thinking about PleaseRobMe. It’s a clever idea, and a clever name. But all it does it search.
So I went to their site, and figured out how it works. And I set up a search for my local area. Now I can easily see who in my local area is not home. It certainly brings the robbing me issue closer to home.
Now the question is, what do I do about it? I’m not sure I need to do anything. My thinking goes like this..
1. Most of the time I check in, I am out of town at a conference. This is obvious by my earlier tweets, anyway. Am I putting my wife and daughters at greater risk?
2. Is anyone really reading that stuff anyway?
3. Shouldn’t I just protect my updates and not worry so much?
How do you all handle it that travel a lot? I confess I like to see folks check-in. It gives me a personal flavor to their tweets. And for me, Twitter is inherently personal.
Yesterday I had the distinct pleasure to present to a group of educators in Mexico via Elluminate. They were attending the Jornadas Tic conference. The room was full of folks who clearly wanted to learn about technology in education. They had to want to, since they were there at 5:15pm on a Friday evening!
Here is the recording of the session, should you want to hear it. It’s in Spanish, so if you want to brush up on your Spanish or just hear if I’m any good, hit up the link.
I’ve been thinking a lot this year about what I should teach kids. After a quick chat with my buddy Nic Finelli I have changed my thinking to where it likely needs to be.
