XplanaZine

Here’s a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Will Richardson has an insightful post on the global nature of the Web (using recent Technorati statistics)

“We need to be more expansive in our thinking. We need to be talking more about
the opportunities “out there” instead of how to make things incrementally better “in here.” (I’m serious, right now, all sessions on PowerPoint should be banned from conference schedules.) If educators who pay their way to ed tech events don’t at least leave with a sense of the changes and opportunities that the Web affords these days, they’re wasting their money.”

Also, Christopher Sessums has a nice summary of Social Software and how it is used to manage the Web.

“The Internet provides me an opportunity, or more precisely, an ecology to
connect, collaborate, and aggregate numerous ideas and contributions of others
which permits me to further my understanding and share it with others. In this
sense, social software like this blog contributes to my ability to co-create
knowledge that I will continue to draw from, reflect upon, and further refine. I
hope you find it useful too.”

Clarence Fisher continues to offer insight into the value of read/rite tools in the classroom. In his latest post, writes about the power of wikis for modifying knowledge through community editing. Also, Alex Halavais has a good article that lists his students reactions to blogging in a large class.

And George Siemens continues to develop our thinking about the connectedness of information and people. In this post on what knowledge looks like, he writes:

“The end product of knowledge is nice…but the process of acquiring (I like
“connecting” better) knowledge is where all the fun stuff happens (i.e. where knowledge gets “life”). The hierarchy of knowledge is much less intriguing than the life of knowledge. For example, it may be nice to know how beetles are classified…but for knowledge to be useful, I’m interested more in watching a live beetle do what live beetles do. Classifying is an example of what is wrong with our views of knowledge… actionability is critical.”

There were also a couple of good posts yesterday about assessment. Ewan McIntosh wrote that, “Assessment is nearly always seen as the main reason not to blog or podcast or wiki… Just listening to Wes’ recent brilliant podcasts reinforces this idea – in the USA at least – and no doubt elsewhere. But in France, Le Web Pédagogique is making its blog the main way for students to revise for their baccalauréat.” Doug Johnson also had an interesting piece related to the fact that Minnesota is at the bottom of states when it comes to educational technology spending yet ranks at the top in academic testing. Finally,. Vicki Davis gives her take on why are SAT scores declining.

Under the broad category of educational technology and tools, there have been a number of great posts:

• D’Arcy Norman writes about Drupal as a Learning Object Repository and Stephen Downes comments.
• The EdTechTalk #43 podcast is up and in this episode the team discusses Podcast Academy, BRO, Second Life, & upcoming Webcastathon.
• Tim Stahmer points to others who are getting in on the conversation about fear of new technology tools in education. He points to a post by Wesley Fryer and Stephen Downes also has a take on the conversation.

Here’s a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Jeff Utecht posts this article about the challenges and opportunities involved with getting faculty to do new things. “If teachers knew about blogs, understood how they could be using and how to
integrate them, would they become as popular as PowerPoint? What if teachers had
as much training on blogs, wikis, and web 2.0 as they have had over the last 5
years in PowerPoint. Would we see the same use?”

Albert Ip links to this demonstration by Ric Canale on converting Harvard Business case studies into role-playing simulations. As Ric points out, role-playing simulations have grown more popular in education over recent years and an increasing amount of study is being conducted on their pedagogical effectiveness. This presentation, while somewhat specific in its application, provides a nice overview of some of the possibilities related to this online teaching form.

And, Wesley Fryer writes about school governance and what it will take to change the way school administrations view new ideas and threatening concepts. This is in line with Stephen Downes response to Albert Ip’s post “What if Everything We Think About School Is Wrong?” Stephen writes, “Albert Ip also quotes some comments – this one struck me: “The world is not run by democratic process, and you usually CAN’T do what you want to do…” Well, yes, most of the world is undemocratic. But this is the problem. And we will not counter this by silently acquiescing to authoritarianism, either in our schools or in our lives. ”

Here’s a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Well, podcasting is certainly in the air this week. The EdTech Talk Podcast Academy is being webcast and is definitely worth the watch. This is great stuff. Also, Stephen Downes says that he’ll be podcasting more in the future and he links to posts from Alan Levine, Darren Kuropatwa and Mark E. Ott.

Tom Hoffman has this post about the passing of the Golden Age of edtech blogging and writes, “In the coming new age of blogging about classroom blogging, we’ll hopefully see the knitting together of a network which is much bigger and broader, with less pontificating and theorizing and more direct, close to the metal classroom experiences direct from the teachers’ mouths.” I agree that the loose joining of the many pieces will continue top evolve. What story will form the basis of that joining and who/what will serve to make the connections are the big questions.

Christopher Sessums asks some good questions in his post on social software and the co-creation of knowledge. He’s looking for comments and her is his dilemma:

“There are many examples of
href=”http://www.frappr.com/edubloggers” target=_blank>edubloggers who have introduced blogs and wikis into their classrooms with varying degrees of success. It would seem in this sense that social software was more of a top-down initiative, selected by the instructor instead of by the learner. In this light, is it still considered social software as I have defined it? Does it still support the desire of individuals to affiliate with others or is it another formal means for directing learning?”

Also, Jay Cross has this nice reminder about clarity in writing. “Write like your life depended on it, because your livelihood probably does.” Amen.

Finally, Vicki Davis has this post on authentic assessments, digital portfolios, and the real evolutionary process of learning. This is a candid article on how portfolios play out in the real world of Vicki’s classrooms and in the lives of her students. The eclectic approach does indeed seem to work best (or, in other words, always hedge your bets.) And, speaking of the “real world,” check out David Warlick’s article on how it’s not a textbook world out there.

“In textbook learning, we are taught one way to interpret the poem, one way to solve the algebra problem, one way to punctuate a paragraph, and one way to think. Perhaps that’s the way that some people like it. I think that the best learning for our future will happen when students are learning in authentic ways, from authentic information sources, and empowered to do something with what they are learning, to impose their learning on other people, to become individuals with value.”