Philosophy Without A Home

Originally posted on my work blog http://techintegrationblog.blogspot.com/ Some basic resources for effectively using twitter as a teacher. http://twitter.pbworks.com/w/page/1779796/FrontPage A wiki to introduce people to twitter. Yes, you can tweet all about your boring breakfast (and worse) but if you would also like to get past that you can. http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com/w/page/22554534/FrontPage A wiki specifically for teachers to learn about using twitter in education. The real question is: Why would I bother using twitter as a teacher? It does make one wonder. This Internet time suck used by celebrities and sports stars, how can it possibly be an effective tool for a serious endeavour like teaching?   That is the beauty of twitter, you make of it what you want or need. Twitter, along with many other similar social media sites (Google +, Facebook, “yes, facebook”, pinterest, scoop it, etc...), has the ability to connect like minded people. Imagine if you will the t

Perhaps this is just my view, but it looks like education is slowly inexorably changing and we have two choices competing for the dominant theory of what constitutes a quality education. TECHNOLOGY BECOMES THE TEACHER This is a nice model for the business community, because, eventually, the costs will drop. The basic premise is that if we design adaptive software students can sit in front of a computer all day and just follow the learning program. Costs will be limited to the hardware (less than $1,000), software, ($5 per student), and a person to monitor students (minimum wage). $45,000 for a class of 30, or $1500 per student, $65,000 for a class of 60 or $1,100 per student. Or about 10% or less of the cost to teach a student now. TEACHERS AS MENTOR / FACILITATOR. Instead of the presenters of knowledge teachers become the facilitators of knowledge. Experts in their craft who guide students through individualized learning experiences. Teachers of young children f

I've read a several times in different articles this week the author saying something to the effect of If a student can learn from the best teachers then why shouldn't they? This is a great sentiment, but I find the underlying assumption being that the idea of a great teacher is a person who wrote a great book, made a great discovery, presents a great lecture. I think they are missing the point. Teachers don't present the material so much as they set up the learning environment. Teachers facilitate learning. Sure it could be a lecture, or a presentation, or a power point-keynote, whatever. On the other hand it could be a project, or following a misconception all the way to it's end. Teaching is more than filling the empty vessels, it is igniting the fire. "For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.&

Master Learners , a photo by Clint Hamada on Flickr.

So I get this in the mail the other day. Dear Friend: Today, we are excited to announce that more than 1,700 schools will plan and hold events during National School Choice Week 2013 (January 27-February 2, 2013). Please check out our press release below. National School Choice Week 2013 is going to break all records — so please help spread the word on social media about our big news today! If you're on Twitter, be sure to retweet this tweet. I know many of you are on Facebook too, so please like this post. You can also check out our new video. Now is the time to start thinking about how you will participate in National School Choice Week 2013 — and we're excited to have you celebrate with us. Best, Andrew And I think to myself. What do they mean by school choice, don't they really mean I give up? Our public schools are what we make it. We vote the school board in and we sit on our butts and watch Tuesday night TV while school boards decide what

Try this, type ruby yacht of khayyam into Google or Yahoo or Bing . Go ahead I’ll wait. Bullwinkle (Photo credit: bbaltimore) Did you come up with a Rocky and Bullwinkle episode? Did it come up even before you finished typing yacht? I find it amazing that a a bad pun for a children’s show that has been off the air for years comes up so quickly and easily. I guess this goes to show you that I am not part of the digital native generation. I grew up with the idea that computers were stupid, if you didn’t spell things out exactly the way you wanted then you didn’t get what you wanted out. It even had its own acronym GIGO garbage in garbage out. I suppose we shouldn’t read too much into this. The pun after all is probably the only one like it. Then I’m sure some geek heard the pun as a kid years ago and spent hours searching the information in dusty encyclopedias in the library. With the invention of the Internet and Wikipedia and finally Hulu s/he then created the pag

This post can also be found on my blog It has been interesting to watch Bill Gates grow and evolve in his efforts to improve U.S. Image via Wikipedia education. Just an informal overview of the highlights I remember. There is High Tech High School in San Diego, which I think is a pretty successful group of schools. Technology infused with project based learning . There was the small school initiative which didn’t work out so well. Reduce the size of the student population. I thought there were better methods ( Leads , research ) to reduce school size without reducing the options available to students, but Bill tried his methods and admitted failure. He also tried measuring teacher effectiveness . The idea that teachers are the determining factor on student success has hinged on the research that states teachers have the greatest influence in student success. However influence and determining factors are different. A lot of educators are wary of value-added measurements

As a first time organizer of an EdCamp I very much enjoyed the experience. For a conference that pretty much ran itself the work really is only as difficult as you make it. If you would like to learn more about what happened at EdCampChicago 2012 the participants were asked to link their notes to the official schedule. Outside of that I wanted to think about bringing EdCamp mainstream. I created a proposal for ISTE2012 about organizing EdCamp. Sadly it was rejected (and with it my excuse to travel to San Diego). I filled out the required paperwork to be a Professional Development Provider for the state of Illinois. I am currently in the process of doing the paperwork to present my first CPDU credits. I worked with a marketing friend to develop a campaign to present to businesses. I had mixed feelings on this and was not too sad when this died as he got busy. First, I don’t own a decent laptop or tablet device so I had to borrow a Chromebook from the school. I was very

  I was thinking the other day of the great waste in the world. How so many people in this Image by wpwend42 via Flickr world spend the majority of their waking hours using all of their energy and resources to survive. I wonder sometimes if the cure to cancer might be sitting in a refuge camp in Darfur. Perhaps the inventor of a FTL engine is  selling drugs  because she can't get a scholarship to college. It could be Einstein is throwing a rock at a tank in some desert. Who knows. Perhaps the next Bill Gates will be in India. She might have been here  http://www.honoraryunsubscribe.com/arfa_karim_randhawa.html We just don't know. I got into education because I saw it as an equalizer. A poor child with an education can compete with the son of a rich man. Almost, perhaps the 1% is exempt. Now if we can just convince our children to wait and be good for about 20 years or so, then they too can compete on equal footing. As long as they can find the  seed money  to inves

Image by Sean MacEntee via Flickr Look I understand math pretty well. I like math and tend to get excited about the nitty-gritty details about what is happening and how to teach it at a very granular level.  I am not an English teacher I don't get excited by the granularity of the mechanics of writing I just do it. Examining student work for the exact level they reached and teaching to that exact level is not fun and tends to be a lot of work Should our teaching be all about drilling down using data to find out exactly where students are deficient and correcting that? Does that take all the art, all the love out of teaching? Is it possible that the tests are that accurate?Do I need a test to tell me that information?

What I want to say when the interviewers ask “What makes you the best fit for the job?” is: You’re asking the wrong question. There is no fit for the job of leader. Unless, that is, you want to keep things going exactly the way they are. The world is changing, it has changed profoundly just in our lifetime and the pace of change is increasing exponentially. Sure, we can prepare our children for today’s world or even yesterday’s world and most of them will be fine. 70, 80, maybe even 90% will earn a decent living, raise a family, grow old and die without experiencing true hardship. What if hard times hit? Times like we are in now. Will our students be able to recover from being knocked down? It is said that most people who lose their jobs in a recession never recover. Sure, eventually they will get another job, but they may never reach the same pay scale again. Do we want to set our future up for that crap shoot? Don’t worry kid, these cyclical downturns actually only af