Month: May 2007

Books of Hope

The end of the school year is rapidly approaching and long-term projects are being wrapped up. One of the more interesting projects Cindy worked on this year was called “Books of Hope”. As part of their participation in this project, students from Nathan Twining elementary and middle school wrote books that were sent to Uganda.The 6th graders were working on a unit concerning ancient Egypt and wrote stories by reworking traditional American fairy tales within an Egyptian setting. The 5th graders wrote an original story on a topic selected by the student (everything from an ABC book to the story of a student’s trip to the hospital).

The project allowed U.S. children to learn something about the experiences of children faced with difficult and dangerous conditions and also to participate in an authentic language arts activity resulting in the production of a book. The books become reading material for children who have few resources.

Image of Books

A page on the Twining web site offers additional information about the project. A local grant from the Qwest foundation provided a way to extend the project by preserving and sharing the books for other audiences. The books were converted to enhanced podcasts with Garageband or Kid Pix. Sometimes sharing involved a parent who might be away from home. While clearly not facing problems of the magnitude faced by the children from Uganda, Twining school is located on a military base and these students face their own challenges as parents are deployed.

If you are curious, the podcasts are available from the Twining web site (use link provided above).

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Mother’s Day 2007

Our Mother’s Day tradition for the several years now has been to participate in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Susan Komen “Race for the Cure.” Cindy, a two time survivor, is the force behind our participation and commitment to this cause prompts my annual post on this topic.

Komen start

For us, taking credit for participating in any form of a “race” would be a misrepresentation. Cindy, just a few weeks past recovering from a broken leg to the point she could move without crutches, completed the “race”. Even the walk moves at a crawl because of the thousands and thousands of participants.

This is an event with many traditions.

Piper

It is a sad event because so many are walking for departed loved ones. It is also a celebration because of the courage of the many survivors.

Grabe Ground

Our Team

The walk was just the beginning of the day’s activities. Daughter Kim graduated from the University of Minnesota in the afternoon. Her request for a celebration was to take the entire clan to the Twin’s game. The mother’s day game incorporates some of the same themes – many of the players use pink bats. The Twins have been struggling lately, but not last night – Twins 16 – Tigers 4.

Twins on Mother's Day

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Ed Researchers Poorly Prepared

The Education Schools Project has released a new study focused on the preparation of educational researchers. A summary is available in Education Week.

The conclusion – researchers are poorly prepared in an era more focused on evidence and even a greater public appetite for proof. The result – a series of untested and poorly formulated reform proposals based on ideology rather than data.

Among the problems:

  • researchers often prepared by faculty with little personal research experience, and
  • need for faculty and an expectation that most institutions promote research results in the hiring of many with poor credentials.

Some ideas:

  • reserve the Ph.D. for researchers, and
  • focus research expectations in fewer institutions.

To some of these ideas I would add –

It is much more difficult to do applied research than some may assume. Opportunities to work in schools are difficult to secure because of the imposition such research requires. It is even more difficult to conduct research involving expected standards of random assignment and control. Creating the right circumstances for meaningful classroom studies is very costly and funds for such efforts are generally very limited. While the preparation of researchers is certainly an issue, meaningful research requires the cooperation of institution outside of higher education.

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The future is not a game, but a parallel universe

The Gartner group predicts that by 2011 80% of active Internet users will have a presence in a virtual world. I must admit I have yet to fully grasp what this means (after spending a little time in Second Life). To me, the Internet is already a virtual world – I interact with different people, explore different information resources, take on different roles, etc. than I do in my physical world. Isn’t this what we all do? I admit the interface may change (I may need to represent myself in virtual space as a virtual persona – i.e., avatar), but what about the Gartner prediction is assumed to be that startling?

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Just the Facts About Online Youth Victimization

The Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus assembled several researchers who focus on online victimization with the intent of informing congressional decision making. The hour and one-half sessions is available from the link and the site also identifies key papers from the presenters.

The general conclusion might be that public perception is off target.

Some descriptive statements from the presentation:

  • Seldom young victims (most are teenagers).
  • Small percentage involve violence or abduction.
  • Seldom involve deception. Most are clear about sexual intentions. Multiple meetings for sex.

These findings have important implications for intervention – need to target teenagers, not teachers or parents (except to get them to talk to teenagers). The core problem is not about giving out personal information, having a blog, etc. Rather, predictors involve being willing to talk about sex online and going to sex sites. The situation is more like convincing teenagers not to engage in other risky behaviors (drinking, smoking).

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WOTs Up?

WOT is a Firefox add-on that attempts to collect and convey “reputation” information about web sites. The free download allows you to both access reputation data and contribute your own impressions (offer testimony).

Once installed, you will note a symbol in the toolbar of your browser (it looks like a LifeSaver to me). The color of this icon indicates the overall reputation of the site you are visiting.

WOT

Clicking on this icon opens up a window offering additional information. You contribute your input by clicking on the individual sliders.

WOT

If you want, you can use the preference panel for this add-on to block sites that are not considered safe for children.

At face value, this approach appeals to me. I like the idea of a warning system more so than a filtering system and I like the idea of participating in the process. I wonder if this system would address some of the concerns of the proposed DOPA legislation. For example, as I understand DOPA, commercial social software sites would be blocked. Consider an app such as blogger.com. While the service is a commercial social software site, access is really to individual blogs (i.e., the URL is unique). It would seem a system such as WOT would offer reputation stats for individual blogs.

I wonder if “WOTs Up” is original. 😉 Probably not.

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Tim O’Reilly on Web 2.0 and Education

I find that I read or listen to a wide variety of resources in order to shape my ideas regarding future applications of technology in education. The World is Flat, The Social Life of Information, Wisdom of Crowds, The Long Tail, etc. and other books have provided insights. I do a similar thing with people. Anyone interested in “participatory” web applications has probably read the comments of Tim O’Reilly on  Web 2.0.

Sometimes, what you would like, is to have the individuals responsible for these perspectives to comment more directly on the application of such ideas for education. Steve Hargadon offers an interview with Tim O’Reilly in which he asks O’Reilly to do just that. The podcast is worth a listen.

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