Interesting quote to think about...

I just went through a slideshow posted on slideshare by Steve Hargadon entitled The Future of Education. One of the points he makes in the presentation is that "Formal education will become increasingly irrelevant". Interesting quote. Do you agree?

Things I have been writing about...

This weekend I was working on my dissertation. Here are some of the things that I have been thinking about:

Technology also makes it possible for multiple forms of communication to occur simultaneously allowing more people to have a voice in the discussion. Technology can also increase the size of collaborative networks than those provided in face-to-face environments because it gives users access to a larger networked community of learners (Pea, 1999). “The ease with which computer mediated communication connects friends of friends can also increase the density of interconnections among clusters of network members within communities” (Wellman, 1999, p. 203).

Technology can allow for a larger network of individuals and can make it easy for groups with similar interests to self-organize and have meaningful interaction around a shared practice.

The Internet decentralizes power and authority which conflicts with transmission pedagogy. Expertise is shared and this flattens hierarchical relationships.

Stimulus Package

Edutopia had a nice article on what we might be able to expect from the stimulus package in terms of Ed Tech http://www.edutopia.org/economic-stimulus-education-school-technology

How is Twitter Useful?

This weekend I came across two interesting blog entries that pertain to this class this weekend in my Twitter network.

The first blog entry was written by Carol Cooper-Taylor entitled 50 Ideas for Using Twitter in Education. This is a great article for people who are new to using Twitter. It helps you get your head around why you might want to use Twitter as a knowledge network and some tips on what types of things to post to get started.

The second blog entry was in the blog Kumegirl entitled Why Twitter is good for Qualitative Researchers. It sort of outlines the psychological stages people go through as the evolve their use of Twitter.

She outlines five stages of acceptance people go through when using Twitter. What stage of acceptance are you at?

Milwaukee Digital Media Conference

Registration for The Milwaukee Digital Media Conference is now live! More information about the conference is available on our website at http://www.milwaukeedmc.com/.

National Test to Assess Student's Technology Proficiency by 2012

http://www.eschoolnews.com/resources/measuring-21st-century-skills/measuring-21st-century-skills-articles/index.cfm?rc=1&i=55483

Diigo

This morning I went to a live webinar put on by Classroom 2.0 on the social bookmarking tool Diigo. This was the first Classroom 2.0 webinar that I have attended and it was great! They have one every Saturday at noon Eastern Time. You can view their calendar at http://live.classroom20.com/calendar.html . (Next week they will be talking about Skype).

Here are some of the highlights:

Diigo does some things that Delicious does not do. For example, you can annotate. What they mean by that is you can highlight and add stickynotes to sites you bookmark and share this with others. One of the presenters said she requires her students to do this when they bookmark a site. That's kind of cool because it helps get at those higher-order thinking skills of evaluating what's important, and summarizing important concepts.

Another big difference is in how you can share your bookmarks. In Delicious you can add people's Delicious bookmarks to your network. However, Diigo has a lot more options. For example you can have certain tags posted automatically to a blog in a tag cloud or as a list of links.

You can also create groups. If you are a teacher, once you have a Diigo account, you can upgrade to an Educator Account. You will then have access to a Teacher Console which will allow you to manage your groups. You can make groups private and enter students in without having to have an email address for them. Traditional groups have advertising, but educational groups do not.

Another cool thing about the groups, is you can have a group dictionary of suggested tags the group use. When you go to bookmark something, the tags automatically appear as buttons to choose from.

You can also "mirror" your bookmarks in both Delicious and Diigo.

This fits great into the PODetc course I'm teaching on Building Knowledge Networks. This week we are working on using social bookmarking to start to organize information around a topic we want to learn more about.

As some of you know who have taken online classes from me before, I like to do the assignments along with the course participants. I have decided I'm going to research how social networking is being used in education and organize my information in Diigo and mirror it in my Delicious account.

I'll let you know how it goes!

Best Practices for Internet Safety

number of school districts have asked for advice on how to handle Internet safety issues especially with the emergence of Web 2.0 applications. In response to the numerous requests we have been receiving we created a white paper of what we consider to be best practices for Internet Safety. Within the document we have included a number of helpful resources.

You can read our white paper at http://www.scribd.com/doc/11552925/-Best-Practices-for-Internet-Security .