Fun & Exciting Stuff

As someone with a small child and remembering what it was like as a small child, this from The Onion is very appropriate and funny. Hits close to home too.

“6 year old stares downt he bottomless abyss of formal schooling”

Local first-grader Connor Bolduc, 6, experienced the first inkling of a coming lifetime of existential dread Monday upon recognizing his cruel destiny to participate in compulsory education for the better part of the next two decades, sources reported.

I found this new website that allows you to find full magazines on-line. It is called Mygazines.com. You scan images of the pages in your magazine and email them to the site in PDF form. It isn’t every magazine, but there are alot of the regular, common ones like Time and Newsweek. In an era of downward newspaper subscriptions, you had to know this wasn’t too far behind.

I am looking for a complete video (YouTube?) of the Beijing Opening Ceremonies to use as part of the history of China unit in 9th grade. I think it would be a visual way to show the early history of China. Any ideas? It isn’t on TeacherTube and NBC doens’t seem to have a complete version of it? I can’t find anything on YouTube.

Paul Krugman has this piece in a recent Op-Ed in the NY Times. To me, it rings of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat in reverse. You could also probably find it at your local library if paying for it is not your thing by the way – Hi Jacquie! Anyway, Krugman quotes Keynes writing on how pre-WWI, people lived a life of globalization.

Writing in 1919, the great British economist John Maynard Keynes described the world economy as it was on the eve of World War I. “The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth … he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world.”

And Keynes’s Londoner “regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement … The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion … appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalization of which was nearly complete in practice.”

Sounds eerily familiar, right? Then WWI,The Great Depression, WWII hits and it takes a few more decades to reach economic stability. So are we on the verge of another situation like WWI? I don’t know, but it is very interesting.

Short, sweet and to the point. I don’t think I could have said it any better.

From Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat Teacher blog. Of the many interesting things she discusses here, I will be doing the textbook scavenger hunt and taking away cell phones. The rest are blocked or can’t be accessed through my computer. Information Technology Skills??? I am sure we can’t even allow ourselves to use some of these. Although gCal, among others, would be helpful and a useful communications tool.

This would be my ultimate professional development day. Communicate with colleges about how to implement changes in your curriculum connected to technology. Instead of taking us from the classroom for a day, set aside a time, (10 minutes) to communicate with others. Think of how much we would learn.

Cosand became a Twitterer about a year ago, and he now considers Twitter one of his best sources of real-time professional development. “I’m able to get information and find opportunities I wouldn’t have been able to gather on my own,” he says.

Twitter is the most popular platform for microblogging, which combines the features of blogging, text messaging, and social networking. Since it launched in 2006, Twitter has attracted more than a million users, including a growing community of educators.

What’s all the buzz about? Teachers who are fans say they appreciate the easy-to-use tool as a quick way to network with colleagues. They like being able to ask and answer questions, learn from experts, share resources, and react to events on the fly.

Google is proclaiming that they have 1 million users worldwide. Does your school use it? It would seem like a cheap way to get out from under the behemouth that is Microsoft. For districts on a shoe string, this might be a way to get out of those extra fees.

Jacquie Henry and I are having an online discussion about ITS in the comments section of her blog. I am just not sure about the web 2.0-ness of the skills she has there.

with apologies to Homer S. in the title…

CNN has this article on a PhD student who has created a teaching robot that will respond to your facial expressions.

“Classical ITS typically have a somewhat rigid architecture of ‘first I ask a question; then I wait for a response; then I talk some more; then I wait for another response.’ Facial expression recognition, I believe, will allow the feedback from student to teacher to happen while the robot teacher is talking,” Whitehill said.

I don’t know if this will replace a regular teacher or how it would be used. The kids would have more fun making faces at the thing to get a response out of it. Teachers would be turned into computer technicians and “fileclosers“. What happens when you get the blue screen of death? Would the robot call home when there was a problem. Maybe email? Assuming every parent in the district has email access. (Twitter?) I would happily let the robot go to meetings for me and grade anything they want to. I would also like to be at the first parent/teacher meeting with the robot.

I think it is a nice idea in small doses. I don’t know that it can replace a teacher and the many jobs they do. It sin’t something that can be outsourced or automated. Teaching is not a business or an assembly line. Every person is different and you need someone to adapt to that.

So, what is the future for today’s teachers, classrooms, and textbooks?

Olney felt that human teachers would always have an important role, but said the current classroom set-up faces change.
“The traditional model of learning is consistently shown as one of the worst ways to teach people. It’s much better for a student to have one-on-one interaction.