EDUC 628-Spring-08

The KDE website had this listed, and I thought some might be intersted.  I might go.  I think it will be neat.

News Advisory 08-035 – April 28, 2008

            (FRANKFORT, Ky.) – The Student Technology Leadership Program (STLP) State Championship will be held Tuesday and Wednesday, May 6-7, at the Lexington Convention Center and Rupp Arena. The championship event is open to the public from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. on May 6.

More than 4,300 adults and students are expected at the event , with 94 school districts and 310 schools represented. This event provides P-12 students from across the state with opportunities to present their projects to people outside their classrooms. Some of the best STLP projects in the state will be on display for parents and the public to view. The items range from community service projects to entrepreneurial activities. In addition to projects, students will bring digital music, video, writing and art products. The students will be competing in many areas of technology during live demonstrations, presentations and panels. An awards program is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, May 7, in Rupp Arena.The event is a unique because students take on major roles during the two-day event. Students will serve as STLP Engineers and Buddies, produce the awards program and serve as cyber-reporters. Universities, school districts and community and national organizations provide judges and learning experiences for the students during the event.            Also, during the competition, a new STLP alumni Web site will be unveiled. The site’s purpose is to celebrate the achievements of former STLP students as they leave school and move on to higher education and careers. A team of STLP students from South Floyd High School in Floyd County designed the site and will receive a special STLP Project Award for their work.            The site — http://www.stlpalumni.org — is set to go live on May 6. Henry Hunt of the Kentucky Dataseam Initiative provided guidance to the South Floyd team in implementing the site. Dataseam operates one of the largest managed computing grids in the world. By harnessing the untapped computing power sitting throughout Kentucky’s K-12 schools and businesses, the Dataseam computing grid allows researchers to access much needed computing capabilities to forward research and commercialization of ideas.            STLP is a project-based learning program that empowers students in all grade levels to use technology to learn and achieve. It was established in 1994 by the STLP State Advisory Council, which is composed of teachers, students and community leaders. The program is open to all students in all grade levels in every school in Kentucky. -30-

I don’t know if I said that right or not, but I have gone through all the posts—and I seldom do that.  I decided that I would devote today to doing that (I am only subbing currently, and had the day off) so I could touch base with about everyone because I am going to concentrate, for the remainder of this class on my ethnography and on finishing Stoll’s book.

also, I ran across this post by Taly Weiss with some interesting information about MySpace and Facebook, where Taly gives reference to some other research links regarding SNS, as well as some insight into Dana Boyd’s observations regarding the history of the two SNS, and  hooks us up to Dana’s  essay, Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace.  I haven’t read her essay yet, as I am saving that for my research day.

Weiss indicates pewinternet, and iprospect as other research sites, and gives a short version for Danah Boyds’ observations: 

1. Historical perspective: 2003-2007

• When MySpace launched in 2003, it was primarily used by 20/30-somethings The bands began populating the site by early 2004 and throughout 2004, the average age slowly declined. It wasn’t until late 2004 that teens really started appearing en masse on MySpace and 2005 was the year that MySpace became the “in thing” for teens.
• Facebook launched in 2004 as a Harvard-only site. It slowly expanded to welcome people with .edu accounts from a variety of different universities. In mid-2005, Facebook opened its doors to high school students, but it wasn’t that easy to get an account because you needed to be invited. As a result, those who were in college tended to invite those high school students that they liked. Facebook was strongly framed as the “cool” thing that college students did. So, if you want to go to college (and particularly a top college), you wanted to get on Facebook badly. Even before high school networks were possible, the moment seniors were accepted to a college, they started hounding the college sysadmins for their .edu account. The message was clear: college was about Facebook.

This blog was written I July of 2007, so things have changed some since, but I think it is a good resource if your doing your ethnography of either SNS.

….I’m done blogging today

While going through my blogs, I ran across Remonzer’s weblog where Classroom 2.0 is talked about highly.  Remonzer gives good information in the blogs, and mentions some workshops, and I just thought I would post if anyone was interested—including myself

http://remonzer.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/cr20-resources-wiki/

Upcoming Workshops, Tentative Schedule

• We are looking for venue/location sponsors for each workshop. See click through to information about physical requirements, and contact Steve Hargadon if you think you can help.
• We are also looking for local coordinators to help organize for each city. Here is a list of the coordinator responsibilities. Contact Steve Hargadon if you would like to help.

Requests and initial sign-ups for Classroom 2.0 LIVE workshop in your area can be made here. If an organizing page has already been started for a specific workshop, there will be a link below.

• May 8 & 9, 2008: Phoenix, AZ Local Organizer: Cherie Stafford and/or Peggy George
• June 20, 2008: Houston, TX Local Organizer: Stephanie Sandifer
• June 28, 2008: San Antonio, TX (in conjunction with EduBloggerCon NECC) Local Organizer: Steve Hargadon
• July 14, 2008: **Boston, MA** (around BLC?) Local Organizer: Liz Davis
• July 17 & 18?: Chicago, IL Local Organizer: Lucy Gray
• July, 2008: New York Local Organizer:
• August 15 & 16: Salt Lake City, UT. Local Organizers: Rachel Murphyand Darren Draper
• September 19 & 20, 2008: Philadelphia and Harrisburg, PA Local Organizer: Cheryl Capozzoli
• Louisiana (Fall, pending Steve schedule) Local Organizer:
• Atlanta (pending Steve schedule) Local Organizer:

Also, if you think you have everything for your ethnography, Remonzer’s post-here –made me think of things to do that I haven’t done yet.

From her blog,

http://lisab.uniblogs.org/2008/04/27/high-tech-heretic-the-hidden-price-of-computers/

 Lisa points out what Stoll says and gives her opinion.

“For the dirty little secret of educational technology is that computers waste teachers’ time, both in and out of the classroom.”

Wow!  What a statement.  This jumped out at me as I was reading.  I am wondering what analysis has been done to back this statement up.  I know there are times when I feel like I have wasted some time using computers in class, but I think overall, computers have added to class, not taken away.  I guess this is the statement of a heretic. 

I don’t think that computers waste time either.  I mean I may spend too much time sometimes on one, but nothing to me is a waste–if I am learning.  When I first started reading this book, I thought that Stoll had some valid points, but the more I read, the more it seems to me that he just goes on and on about why he can’t stand computers involved in education.  I am not finished with the book yet, and only starting the chapter A Question for Balance, so I don;t know yet if there is going to be a balance in this next chapter or not.

I figured out just a few minutes ago that I am only taking baby steps with what I am learning right now, after visiting Traci Prater’s blog, located below.

http://tnprater1006.wordpress.com/

which includes links to her YouTube video

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39Up1f0lmOA

…and her online classroom, and much more interesting things that I think represent a 21 Century Learner.

This stuff is cool.

I have only visited about 10 of my 90 something blogs today, so don’t be offended if I haven’t mentioned others yet.  I am just pecking away at all this knowledge here in my reader.

Stoll compares the knowledge translated by computers, from webpages, to comic books that he read from his Classics Illustrated collection when he was a child.  I don’t read comic books, but thinks that, like comic books, that multimedia writers….”task is to absorb and compress great gobs of information into small, easily digestible on-screen chunks.”

This man really is against multimedia and education, but I don’t think that when he wrote this that blogs existed as they do now, with educational content available on the Internet.

In the chapter CRTs for Tots, he mentions Seymour Papert’s vision on page 62, opposing Papert’s ideas, saying that computers and technology “…isolates us from each other,” 

I do not think computers isolate us from each other at all.  Maybe people spend too much time on the computer, or on the phone, or watching TV, and that this time could be spent reading a book instead.  People can read books too.  Homework assignments, and school assignments can incorporate reading as well as some technology.  I don’t think it is one or the other.  It is both.

In this chapter, Stoll presents computers and technology as something not good for education.  He asserts that with technology that content learning will not happen, or he is just totally against it.  On page 40 he says

” The technical needs of the computer of the computer create a new bureaucratic bumpf of technicians, computer coordinators, and information specialists.  These people tend not to teach, but to fix machines, buff the school’s high-tech image, and promote high-tech pedagogy.”

I think this may be true in some cases now, but probably was more so true when he wrote this book.  I think that technology education can be implemented into a curriculum, while still maintaining learning the content, and that the field of education technology nowadays strives to do so more often than in 2000.

Clay Burell writes in his Beyond School located here the following:

Three weeks after the Diigo stampede, I’ve been concerned that the new trend of putting Diigo annotations on postsinstead of leaving comments in the thread was a negative thing. Only Diigo users would see the conversation, and the post’s comment thread would be left poorer for that.

But after a wild four-hour storm of 74-and-counting comments on my Muhammed Ali post about privileging writing over other communication strands when we grade, it occurs to me that Diigo might come in handy here. There are so many incredibly insightful comments there, and the issue is so relevant to the futures of our students, that I fear the sheer bulk of comments might dissuade new readers from discovering the gold shining here and there.

I visited the Diigo site briefly to see what was up, with the highlighting on the web, etc., and thought I would post here for you tech savvy bloggers, which I am not.

 There is a demo from the Diigo site here which could help figure out how to use it—if you want to use it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RvAkTuL02A

I was checking blogs today, and ran across this one where she describes a science lesson where fruit loops can be used.

http://successfulteaching.blogspot.com/2008/04/making-molecules-out-of-froot-loops.html

Seems like something very doable –and fun, while the content can be learned with this hands-on activity. 

From Phaedrus   and his reference to this  blog, where the following was stated:

For example, they studied different approaches at teaching the basic mathematical property of commutativity — that you can switch up the order of elements and still get the same answer, as in 3 + 2 or 2 + 3 equals 5.

Some students learned the concepts using generic symbols. Others were taught with concrete examples such as pictures of measuring cups  filled with liquid, or slices of pizza or tennis balls in a container.

I thought about an example that an instructor gave at a training I went to once about the associative property, and I repeated this, with my own little changes, to see if a student would understand, and this particular student did, which was exciting.

For addition and the associative property, one can tell a story, to pretend that there are three friends a,b, and c—and a can represent Alice,  or whatever name one wants to put in for the scenario, and that b represents Bobby, and c could stand for Cathy.  Well, it could be that all three are friends and that they like to hand around together, but sometimes Alice walks to lunch with Bobby, while Cathy walks behind them because the hallway is so narrow, which would be (a+b) + c, or sometimes Alice walks behind while Bobby and Cathy walk up front together, which would be a + (b+c)—but they all go to lunch together, and the answer will always be the same–a,b,and c–for addition.