As most know by now, the Time Person of the year is YOU. You in the Time perspective refers to OUR involvement in the participatory net (Web 2.0).
I do not typically read Time online so I am not familiar with their conventions for offering magazine content online. When I first tried some days ago, the articles were not available, but now it appears that most articles can be read without purchasing the paper version. This is worth a look – not because any of the articles concern educational topics, but because the discussion of Web 2.0 topics is useful to those interested in general Internet use.
The article I found most useful was a short piece by Jeff Howe (I could not find this article online). I tend to be attracted to useful ways of describing or categorizing complete phenomena. In keeping with the theme of YOU as person of the year, Mr. Howe described Web 2.0 as:
I have written about the emotional attachment I have to some of my computers in previous posts. I do understand that these machines are just machines, but some machines also represent part of my personal history. I have used some of these machines to write the stories of my life.
Cindy gave me a MacBook Pro for Christmas and now I must decide what to do with my old iBook. By the way, this is the first “high-end” laptop I have owned. Typically, I have purchased the same type of laptop that would be used in K-12 classrooms, but not this time. Selling the G4 didn’t seem right and it also seemed pointless to add another laptop to the collection that lives under my desk. Cindy came up with a great solution – donate the computer to the hospital were our daughter works. Lynn is a physical therapist who specializes in maintaining the physical capabilities of children who are involved in long-term chemotherapy. She seems to have inherited her mother’s creative bent and comes up with unique and motivating ideas for these children. Her most recent brainstorm resulted in the production of individualized exercise CDs for her clients. She called up mom and Cindy talked her through the use of Garageband to generate her creations complete with her narrations. She has been using her own machine, but colleagues have become interested and want to generate their own. This seems like a productive new use for the G4. The only concern is whether the hospital IT folks will approve the use of a “nonstandard” product.
Apple makes it easy to transfer the files and programs from an old machine to a new machine. It is part of the startup process. What doesn’t seem to make the transition that well are some of the registration codes. I have spent most of the morning figuring out how to deauthorize and then authorize iTunes, etc. Most software products I download and I save the registration codes in GMail. A quick search and I can usually locate anything I have added in the last year or so. The one product that has me stumped is Microsoft Office. I am guessing the process assumes I will hunt up the install disk and either get the code from the box or reinstall. What a hassle – I am out of town for another week. Instead I have downloaded OpenOffice. Between OpenOffice and Writely, I can write and read any document required in my work. I have been in this position before and it was the capacity of the spreadsheet application rather than the writing tool that proved to be the barrier.
It is a little early for resolutions, but today swearing off Office would seem like a good choice. It will probably come down to getting along without Office or trying to lose weight again. Losing weight would be good, but messing with Office is also a threat to my blood pressure and perhaps a more significant risk to my health ….
We are in Minneapolis sharing the holiday with our children. It is Addison’s first Christmas and at this age she enjoys the wrapping paper and the stocking as much as the presents.
Cindy did buy me a MacBook Pro (more on that later). Enjoy the day!
Like many bloggers I started blogging years ago using blogger.com. At first I used their site and then I purchased the pro version so I could serve blog content from my own server. Eventually, I moved on to software that was more powerful.
Blogger.com remains an extremely popular choice. Now, Blogger.com has been upgraded and some of the changes may make the service of greater interest to educators. One of the basic concerns has been that students may reveal information that could put them at risk. Blogger.com offers some new security options. It is possible to limit access to those designated within a set of email addresses. If you want to make the effort, the group that can access a blog can be carefully controlled.
I promised yesterday that I would comment on the recent Time magazine articles that have commented on education and the participatory Internet. The cover story of the Dec. 18 Time addresses the question How to Build a Student for the 21st Century?
The summary –
Today’s economy demands not only a high-level competence in the traditional academic disciplines, but also what might be called 21st century skills.
The article presents a view that should be familiar to educators who attend national conferences or follow many education bloggers. Actually, Friedman’s The World is Flat presents what I would regard as a similar and more comprehensive analysis of many of the same issues (Friedman’s work is mentioned). US students will need to acquire an expanded set of skills to compete in a flat world – greater awareness of the world including a commitment to other languages, higher order thinking skills, the capacity to use information more efficiently and more wisely, improved skills in cooperative processes, etc.
The article references a new report – Tough Choices For Tough Times – that provides the summary of a new panel offering advice on a new direction for K-12 education. My copy is on order. I hope the corporate leaders and politicians who feel empowered to set such an agenda also have answers for what should be related funding questions. I assume the Department of Education association with this report will assure an extended conversation of the findings.
The authors do acknowledge what I think is a core question when reform recommendations are advanced? How are educators supposed to meet existing expectations (e.g., NCLB) for core knowledge and take on a new array of expectations? The answer seems to be “focus” – teach core concepts and forget the details. I have encountered this idea – depth vs. breadth – in reviewing analyses of international TIMMS data. If I remember the argument, other countries who seem to score better tend to focus on fewer objectives. US schools tend to both focus on many objectives and spend a considerable time each year reviewing objectives taught in previous years.
A year ago at about this time, MacWorld had an article describing how to use the Automator to generate a 20X30 poster from images stored within iPhoto. This article prompted me to generate a blog entry. The article provided access to an automator script that users can activate to generate the giant pdf poster. Now this only works for those with access to a Mac, but if you are searching for a present your class can generate for each other or for friends and you have been collecting digital images throughout the year, this script does a great job.
The idea is really that you would print out the pdf on a large form printer or send the pdf off for printing (we did this last year). However, the script saves the pdf back to iPhoto and you can then export the image in whatever size you like (see below for sample created from recent China photos).
Things have changed a bit since we provided last year’s blog post. The script has been updated for a more recent version of iPhoto (Versions for iPhoto 5 and iPhoto 6 are available online). If you try this project make sure you are patient. The script may take 10+ minutes to reach completion. Read the MacWorld article (link above) for complete instructions.
Internet neutrality proponents believe that the recent change in Congress is likely to boost their efforts to push legislation that would prohibit tiered access to the Internet.
The article suggests that Reps. Markey and Dingell will be in better positions to support a telecommunications reform bill.
See SavetheInternet for additional information (e.g., are your senators for or against – I did find this presentation confusing – I am assuming FOR means for neutrality and not FOR the Stevens telecommunications bill).
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