Author: grabe

I am working on the book revision and attempting to address an issue that continually surfaces as a criticism – why isn’t the investment in technology having a stronger influence on learners? Part of the answer is – the learners do not spend much time using technology. Why?

I think we used to assume that the issue was a problem in teacher preparation. Cuban argued a counter position when he noted that technology integration was not really happening even when teachers were sophisticated users.

Russell, Bebell, O’Dwyer & O’Connor have reached a similar conclusion. In fact, their data seem to indicate that new teachers feel confident and skilled themselves, but use technology less in the classroom that teachers who have been in the system 6-10 years. Pretty hard to explain this away as an access or a teacher preparation issue. Maybe this just means new teachers just have too many challenges and don’t see tech integration as essential. Maybe this means personal technology skills are not the same as technology-based instructional skills. If this finding generalizes, this will be an interesting observation to explain.

Viruses are not the only threat to the security of your computer. Spyware and adware, small programs downloaded when you visit certain web sites, can also be a danger. This Washington Post article describes the problems and some recommended solutions.

eSchool News describes the effort to tailor new search engines to “scientific content” and describes Scirus a search engine supported by the publisher Elsevier. Scirus scours the web for documents that have scientific bibliographies and are structured according to scientific norms. Scirus is a free service.

What do schools attempt to accomplish with their web sites (assuming they have one)? Do the intend to offer resources for parents, an outlet for student projects, the latest sports scores, or what? Do school web sites follow recommended design principles?

Pat Swann’s paper on the typology of school web sites” offers comments on these questions. This site offers a nice general review of what is known about school sites.

The technology plan is coming and various sources are “hinting” at what it has to say:

Converge Magazine

eSchool News

I was listening to “All Things Considered” on public radio and heard a report about a high school that had followed the launch of “Space Ship One” and made the images available to the general public. The Center made the images available to the general public despite the opportunity to sell the video. The Clay Center for Science and Technology offers programs for K-12 students.

This is not the K-12 experience I remember.