Philosophy Without A Home

This weeks resource is crowdsourcing , which isn't in spell check yet. Crowdsourcing is people coming together and doing bits and pieces of a task and the final project is something splendid to behold. It is I think the essence of what is known as Web 2.0 and in my opinion the real power of using technology in education. The biggest example of crowdsourcing is Wikipedia. Any English teacher will tell you that Wikipedia by itself is not a valid source of information, however it is a great place to start research. With that caveat in mind I suggest to you the Diigo bookmarking site. This site allows you to bookmark any site online so that you can access the site at any time from any Internet connected computer. The site also lets you add tags to sites so you can find the site again even when you bookmarked it two years ago and just vaguely remember why. Finally, and why it is crowdsourced, Diigo also lets you network with friends and join groups. A quick search of t

  Michael Fullan writes about some of the problems of schools in his chapter “Understanding Change” of the Jossey-Bass reader . First there is the problem of managing change because “many of us have concluded that change cannot be managed.” (p. 173) Then after change is first implemented there is usually an “implementation dip” (p. 175). In his book School Leadership that Works Marzano explains that type II problems are those “for which no clear-cut solution is available.” … while type III problems are those “for which current ways of thinking do not provide a solution.”(p. 66) A school with positive culture is ready to face the inevitable problems that come with reform. Part of what makes positive school culture is a sense of empowerment. Teachers and staff feel empowered to make decisions and take actions based on the shared vision. Therefore they don’t wait for instruction from the principal. What works is shared and what doesn’t work is dropped. When teachers begin

Philosophy Without A Home: Thesis from 2000