My first experience with the firehose was Usenet. In the pre-web Internet days, there was a global discussion board with thousands of topic-specific groups called newsgroups. You could subscribe to the newsgroups you were interested in, and see the messages posted to those groups. Using special software, called a newsreader, you could manage which groups you belonged to, and read, post, and respond to messages … Continue reading What Do I See?
A few years ago, MSN fired all of their reporters and replaced them with artificial intelligence. “Reporters” might be the wrong word. MSN didn’t report their own news. They used other news sources, and curated their own news site based on the content that they gathered from other places. They found that this could be done just as easily by software as it can by … Continue reading Did I Really Write This?
It was 84 years ago this Halloween that Orson Welles’ adaptation of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds was broadcast on CBS radio’s Mercury Theater on the Air. The radio drama was presented as a series of news reports from Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, describing a Martian invasion of Earth. Because of this presentation method, many listeners mistook the broadcast for actual news reports. … Continue reading War of the Worlds
Last month, I was asked to talk with our new staff about their use of social media. The school district wants teachers to share the awesome things they’re doing. We have a strong online community of teachers, parents, and school supporters, and we want our new folks to be part of that. There are dangers, certainly. Some students can’t be photographed. We generally don’t identify … Continue reading Navigating the Sharing
“On the back of your notecard, please write one thing that I can do to make this class better for you.” “Don’t make it boring,” fourteen year old me wrote on the back of my card. This was the first day of my high school biology class. The teacher had never risen from his table at the front of the room, and had just spent … Continue reading Attention, Please
For the first six years of my career, I taught a middle school computer applications class. Nobody really cared what I taught. They didn’t say that, of course. But the administration knew that kids needed to learn about computers, and they didn’t really know exactly what that should look like, so they carved out some space and just let me do my thing. I never … Continue reading Information Illiterate
It was eight years ago now that I heard Richard Culatta speak at EduCon. At the time, he was the director of the Office of Educational Technology at the US Department of Education. Now, he’s the CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education. In his little talk in the cafeteria of the Science Leadership Academy all those years ago, Culatta talked about pencils. … Continue reading Pencil Sharpeners
Why do we go to school? It’s an absurd question, really. If you ask students, they’re usually suprised by it. Everyone goes to school. There’s no real choice. We have to go to school. It’s what we do. And parents are generally in the same boat. They may say something about preparing students for the future, but really, kids go to school because society tells … Continue reading High School Knowledge
“You are permitted to bring one 5×7 inch note card to the exam, with any notes on it that you want.” My eleventh grade American History teacher was explaining the rules for the semester exam. “The exam will consist of two essay questions selected from these five.” He gave us the questions. I went to work. This was going to be easy. I wrote the … Continue reading Cheating
Francis Bacon is said to have coined the phrase “knowledge is power,” though it doesn’t appear in any of his writings. Thomas Hobbes used the phrase in the mid-1600s, and Thomas Jefferson employed it on several occasions 150 years later. But there’s evidence that it may be 1000 years older than that. By the time I first heard it from Schoolhouse Rock, it had been … Continue reading Attendentes Potentia Est
Schools are trying to figure out what fall looks like. Are we going to be back in the classroom like we were last fall? That seems very unlikely. Will we still be completely online like we’ve been for the last two months? That’s possible, but it’s more likely that we’re going to try to get teachers and students back in our buildings this fall. Most … Continue reading Designing Hybrid Learning
I started last week’s presentation on Google Docs with this xkcd cartoon. I’ve commented many times that my smartphone replaced more than half a dozen devices that I used to carry around with me. I no longer need a digital camera, digital video camera, mp3 player, navigation system, PDA, or wristwatch. I have access to the Internet all the time. But even if I didn’t, … Continue reading Analysis Paralysis
Taste of Tech 