1. My biggest worry (spurred by an email reply I wrote on software engineering, see below) is that the pace of innovation may never slow down. This does not allow stabilizing institutions to form. One example of what I mean is that far too few people generating the infrastructure for Web 2.0 understand how fundamental standards are. They are not to blame, because Web 1.0 did not set any sort of example of developing national or international standards. Are we doomed to eternal frustration with new technology?
One of the biggest uses of a PLN today seems to be to have enough people around to help you figure out the technology.
btw, I use 'standards' in an engineering sense, not an education sense. When you go into two hardware stores and buy a nut and a bolt from each, they will still fit together. Or when you walk into a car rental and pick up a car, you can drive it off the lot once you have adjusted the mirrors, and you can figure out the rest in under 5 minutes. Technology needs to be like that if people are going to use it.
It is far from clear if the Software industry is in early stages and will settle down, or if things are going to continue to be chaotic until the planet implodes.
2. The other observation is that education as practiced around the world is not exactly collaborative, even though we have the tools and understanding to be doing so. This idea took seed a while back, but has not done much germinating since then. I wrote about it back in April after attending an MIT open-house for Math and Science teachers.
This course has given me pointers to lots of activity in schools that utilize Web 2.0 in interesting (and hopefully successful) ways. But even while we are encouraging our students' urge to be more social, I don't see any examples yet of how we as educators are modeling that for our students. And I mean more than just co-teaching. Okay this probably requires a whole post of its own, so I will just re-post (RP?) what I said in April, and save the rest for later.
From MIT Open House - musings.
3.One of the graduates has been teaching two years after getting her MIT. She's a career-changer, having previously been a chemist. It struck me as strange have lonely she sounded.
I am still trying to get my head around this. But I really have been very surprised how individual the school teaching enterprise is. I am surprised how little I hear the word 'we' compared to 'I' when teachers talk about their work with students. It is not that they don't say "we," I just expected much more of it.
Part of this might be logistics - if you want to maximize a teachers contact time with students, then they are not going to have much time to collaborate. Plus classroom schedules don't allow any mixing and matching of student and teacher contact time.
I have run into rare examples of co-teaching. But that is rare. And even more rare is where more than 2 people are collectively responsible for a group of students. Okay, so I expected more of a team attitude, and am not feeling it. But what is strange to me is that there is some much buzz these days about collaborative work. How children have to learn to work together, how learning is collaborative, etc. There is a huge push away from a one-to-many delivery style of lecturing. At the same time, I don't see the teachers setting an example of this with their children.
It is like sitting through a 1 hour lecture about inquiry-based learning. 'Do as I say, not as I do.' I need to explore this much more.
Is there a mashup available that will take 33 blogs over one week and
1. plot blog length vs. time?
2. make a Wordle?
Was able to use the 'search' functionality on my blog to find a comment from a friend/follower that highlights one small advantage that accumulates, and her approach to counteracting it.
From neena's comment on What pushes your buttons
My co-teacher and I have been teaching together for 7 years and we have a strategy that came to us in the first year of our teaching together. This is probably absolutely unethical but because the outcome has always been so darn healthy, we do it every year. Around the 2nd month of school (once the honeymoon period is over and the kids begin to show their true colors)we each write down the names of 1/2 of our class. The names have to be of those kids that we love the most. Believe me this is so hard to do because you'll truly feel like you love them all. We then compare lists. We check which kid/s didn't make either of our lists and then we make a point of spending as much time, energy and LOVE into recognizing those children for the rest of the year. My theory is that the children who didn't make it into our lists will probably not make it into any one else's lists and the ones who did make it in our list are the generally popular kiddos anyway. Even though we think we give equal attention to all of our students, the truth is that we actually give more positive attention to those who seem sharper, cuter and more aware. So it is up to us teachers to understand the children who can otherwise fall through the cracks and then love them dearly. Once you have accomplished that, you can teach them quantum physics in Kindergarten and they will understand (well, hypothetically).
The rest of the day.....
Heated frozen pizza pockets in the oven for the children's lunch.
Children and wife are better now - all are back at school and work, which also means I have not excuse not to load the dishwasher when I get back home after the school drop-off.
Was able to email both class teachers to say that we were running late today.
Read some reviews online for exercise/fitness/yoga balls to replace my office chair. Ordered one on Amazon. Avoided the bright pink one.
Did the usual email.
Used Bing and Wikipedia to reply to a long email about the lack of engineering in Software Engineering.
Sent out an excel spreadsheet to help a 9 year old build his confidence in math - it just uses RAND() to setup simple addition problems.
Checked in with the teacher I am helping with Math Club after school.
Checked when soccer practice was now that the days are shorter.
Reminded wife to pay the babysitter while driving to class.
Used Bing to look up new terms during class.
Wondering if a Wordle is good or bad. (Of course there are not absolutes)
Like Google Squared, but am yet to use it.
So all in all what I would call a normal day - at least in Web 1.0 land.
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