Secretary Paige recently hosted a showcase providing examples of the use of technology to meet NCLB expectations in rural settings (eSchool News). Rural schools have difficulty meeting requirements for “highly qualified teachers” and technology can facilitate the efforts of rural teachers to improve personal qualifications or can bring more qualified teachers to rural schools through distance education.
Tne National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has released the most recent CIPA (Child Internet Protection Act) study. This is a good current source for descriptions of protection measures and statistics associated with Internet use in schools.
Issues of overblocking and underblocking are discussed, but the general tone of the review is positive.
The October 2003 issue of Learning and Leading with Technology (Note – not available online at this time – try in a couple of weeks) includes an article by Kajder and Bull outlining blog applications in the instruction of reading and writing.
One interesting techniques makes heavy use of images (photo blogs) such as a thousand words.
Dan Geer a security specialist was fired by his employer @Stake following the release of an analysis of security risks associated with Microsoft products. Geer evidently did not have the authorization of his company to release the analysis. I happened to listen to Geer presenting his concerns on TechTV. This ought to get the conspiracy theorists going.
Looking for an overview of blogs in education? Anne Davis from Georgia Southern has organized information to introduce educators to this topic – Weblog Workshop.
eSchool News reports that Texas is cutting its educational technology division. State officials say the move is about integration and others contend it is simply a way to cut expenses.
A recent New York Times piece asks the question are we becoming a Nation of Copiers. Interesting concept – swapping music files, integrating info copied from the net into papers, and perhaps even copying ideas from other Internet sources for blogs. I guess the fundamental question has to be when is this laziness and when is there any value added.