Fun & Exciting Stuff

This is just amazing. 438 students are freshmen this year.

# Percentage of first-year applicants who applied online in 2003: 33%.
# Percentage of applicants who did last year: 89%.
# Year that an incoming Amherst College class first created a Facebook group so that they could socialize and otherwise get to know each other prior to arriving on campus: 2006.
# By the end of August 2008 the total number of members and posts at the Amherst College Class of 2012 Facebook group: 432 members and 3,225 posts.
# Students in the class of 2012 who registered computers, IPhones, game consoles, etc. on the campus network by the end of the day on August 24th, the day they moved into their dorm rooms: 370 students registered 443 devices.
# Number of students in the class of 2012 who brought desktop computers to campus: 14.
# Number that brought iPhones/iTouches: 93.

And I am running dittos and using a textbook. Sheesh. I have never felt like an old lady driving a 1970 Pinto in the slow lane of the 6 lane super highway. Teaching is passing us by.

This is a great post, kinda long, but right on the money.

I am going to attempt to give you principles (not how to prescriptive steps) by which to guide your why approach to managing the needed changes in your schools and school systems.

I think this post is very important to educators.

“Why do we have to write an essay?”

Ans: Well, these types of essays will be on the final exam, so these are preparation of a sort for the Regents exam.

Will you be asked to recite the cultural changes of the 1920’s in some future job interview? Maybe if it is for a job as “flag pole sitter” down at the “Chaplin & Capone’s Restaurant – Where silence is our business!” Probably not.

I don’t know that there is a correct answer to that question. I think there is a certain level of correctness, for lack of a better word, to my answer. In the immediate future, the final exam carries a certain weight. I can’t change the situation in 3 months, so they are going to have to answer an essay like that.

But I have been having an ongoing conversation with another teacher about how in “teacher” – as we know it will be obsolete within our lifetimes. From the perspective of a student, if, and that is a big “if” knowing some of the students I know, I wanted to learn about the US Civil War, where would I go for information? Would I cycle back through all the worksheets Mr. Potter handed out to me? Go talk to my history teacher? Or would I go here, here, here, here, or here. And those are just web pages. What about blogs, wikis, Twitter-ing a historical expert, etc. etc. And this is a five second Google search + Wikipedia. I could find a good overall gist of the situation pretty quickly.

I go into used book stores when I have time + cash. I think it is a national requirement that they have a copy of American Caesar. My thinking is always that I should buy it. It is something that I am interested in, but I don’t need to be an expert on it and have the background knowledge and be able to connect to the greater concept of WWII. But then one night I came home and did this. More information than I could possibly want. Most of it reliable, but enough that is that I can get a good overall picture of it.

I don’t know that you could become an engineer or a doctor based off of reading Wikipedia, but if you are looking for general information/content, then you could definitely use sources like those.

The skill of writing/communicating obviously has a level of importance. The ability to organize information has another level of importance. But content knowledge has been changing.

Our role as teacher has to adapt to today’s knowledge-level. I don’t know what that is yet, but it is getting late.

This looks very interesting and straight forward.

Download Video: Posted by teacherhacks at TeacherTube.com.

I am on a committee that deals with 21st Century learning skills. We have a plan in which the students are going to visit other local schools that have advanced farther than us down the 21st century learning skills path. We have (finally) come to the conclusion that we can only go to 3 local schools. The main problem at this juncture is transportation. We are coming to the end of the school year and the $ is not there for us to get 2 buses and go all over the county.

Now, I am thinking that since we are teaching 21CLS, there has to be a technological way to overcome this obstacle. Maybe a face-to-face with admin./teachers/students from other schools is the”old way” of doing things and since we are trying to practice what we preach, there might be a better way to do it. I brought up the dreaded Facebook/MySpace combo as a way to overcome this, but it was immediately shot down. YouTube is blocked by BESS. TeacherTube is blocked by BESS. Most wikis are blocked by BESS. Most blogs are blocked by BESS. Yes, we can unblock the filter, but we are trying to teach 21CLS, using 20th Century technology.

And we aren’t even on to some of the more complicated issues yet.

I have spent some time refining my homework for both 9th and 11th grade. It is not the typical homework that is busy work for the kids. If you do this work, it adds to your knowledge and will help you do better overall. The problem is that like typical high school students, they don’t see the value and throw the work out once it has been passed back and don’t use it as a study tool.  Part of me says if they don’t care, then why should I. The other part of me would like to solve this problem.

At first I thought they should get 1-inch 3-ring binders to leave in the room. But I am not a kindergarten teacher. So then I thought maybe putting together a wiki. The problem seems to me, copying. If I can limit access to only the page where they would type in their homework, it might work.

I have created a Twitter account. It was one of those “Everybody’s doing it” – moments. Please feel free to add me (id: mrpotter) and we can Twit @ each other like 2 Twit-wits. See, I made a funny.

Apparently not alot. Facebook ran a little test on its members trying to find out how many of them would “friend” someone else and give them access to information available to friends.

Sophos created a fake Facebook profile, under the name ‘Freddi Staur’ (’ID Fraudster’ with the letters rearranged), and randomly requested 200 members to be friends with ‘Freddi.’ Out of those 200, 87 accepted the friend request and 82 of those gave ‘Freddi’ access to “personal information” such as e-mail addresses, dates of birth, addresses and phone numbers, and school or work data. Presumably, the other five had restricted ‘Freddi’ to limited profile access, which many users select for bosses, parents, or people they don’t know in real life.

44%. This is one of the situations we as teachers have to work on as we try to teach our students to become more web-centric. Personal freedom doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot when you have access to the world.

Wired magazine has a nice little article on a new searchable database that allows you to see who has been editing Wikipedia. This was one of the things that always bothered me about Wikipedia. Who is putting the information there and what are they taking out. Now you can go in and see who is editing these webpages.