I was on Google Chat last night with Alec. One of the topics of our conversation was edupunk. We’re both attracted to some of the ideas that have coalesced around edupunk since its naming by Jim Groom and summation and further articulation by Leslie Madsen Brooks. Alec mentioned the ideals of being anti-authority and anti-establishment, but I didn’t want the identity of the – what is it? A meme? A movement? Maybe even partially a mid-life crisis? I didn’t want its identity to be a negation, I want it to be for something. But what? Alec suggested pro-disorder, pro-freedom, pro-messiness and pro-anti-establishment. That last one made me chuckle. Mike Caulfield eloquently describes what edupunk is against: … it captures the cultural revulsion many of us feel with theappropriation of the Learning 2.0 movement by corporations such asBlackboard. Learning 2.0, like … Continue reading »

Within the little educational technology corner of the interweb where I hang out, this has to be the fastest spreading meme/idea I have yet seen. I think that, like the mycelium of a fungus, edupunk has been growing below the surface of the conversation for a while. The conditions have recently become right for it to become visible. D’Arcy came really close to bringing it out in the open when he wrote about leadership in the edublogosphere: … one of the beautiful things about the “edublogosphere” is that there aren’t any leaders. There doesn’t need to be a leader. It’s a community of peers, and every individual’s perception of the community is different, according to their connections, needs, and contributions. Lack of, or downright disdain for, oligarchies of any sort feels like a one of the foundations of edupunk. Throw … Continue reading »

Jennifer Jones wrote yesterday regarding her daughter’s use of books as a source of information. It reminded me of a story about my daughter at the Calgary Zoo. Stick with me – it is relevant. (photo by D’Arcy Norman – http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnorman/7823971/ The Calgary Zoo is an amazing place. All the exotic animals are there – elephants, giraffes, monkeys, leopards and all those other charismatic megafauna. When my daughter was 2 we went to the Calgary Zoo. It is a big place, much more than a 2 year old can take in during a single visit. We scurried around the zoo trying to take in as much as possible. We don’t get to Calgary too often so we wanted to make the visit a good experience for her. But we were using our adult perspective on good experience, not the 2 … Continue reading »

I’ve been playing with Google Sites for a couple of days, and I noticed that one of the items that can be inserted into a page is a spreadsheet form. After a little playing around, I was successful. Here’s a screencast to explain how to embed a spreadsheet form into a Google Site page. You can fill in the form and see the results for yourself.

Jotspot was a hosted wiki service, similar to wikispaces or pbwiki or wetpaint, that was purchased by Google in October of 2006. There was some anticipation of a Google wiki service which finally appeared rebranded as Google Sites a few months ago as part of the Google Apps suite. Google just announced that they have set Google Sites free so that anyone with a Google Account, can set one up. So I created one called Technologies for Learning and Teaching.It looks like a pretty feature rich wiki. The WYSIWYG editor looks similar to the one in Google Docs. Images and videos can be inserted, as can content from other Google services like Google calendar, Google Docs, spreadsheets, and presentations. There is a menu item for inserting a form. I haven’t tried it yet, but that sounds like an excellent way … Continue reading »

I’m very lucky to work in a high school in which the principal has seen a need to have an educational technologist in the building. I’ve had the position for a couple of years and I’ve worked very closely with a couple of teachers, but I’d had problems trying to extend beyond them. I tried after school workshops, presentations at staff meetings, showing different tools to individual teachers – you name it, I tried it. I have had moments of despair and frustration although I try to be optimistic and enthusiastic. I was showing relevant, useful tools that could enhance student learning but there seemed to be little interest. This morning I had an ‘a-ha’ moment while talking to a math teacher at the school. He came with me to TLt last week to present about the school’s online learning … Continue reading »

I mentioned Dean Shareski’s presentation on sharing in the last post as one of my presentation highlights at the TLt 2008 conference. Not only has he put the presentation slides online, he also recorded the narration (he didn’t have a recorder at the conference) to accompany the slides. Thanks, Dean, for sharing this great presentation: Lesson #1 – Share | View | Upload your own I’m going to try to follow Dean’s advice and do a little more sharing of my mental activity, such as it is, on this blog. I’ve been tending to longer, well thought out posts. That’s what I’ve been trying to do, but others may disagree. I think I’ll try to open it up to having more mental snapshots of what’s bouncing around in my head in addition to some more expansive writings.

I’ve been reading some of the great reflections on TLt from others (Rick, D’Arcy, Jen, Alec, Dean and Dean again – gosh he’s prolific). After a couple of days for my brain to gear down from the conference buzz, a few presentations and themes stand out: The power of social networks, especially personal learning networks, arose over and over starting in George Siemens’ opening keynote. Twitter was mentioned a lot. Jen appropriately renamed the conference to “Teaching and Learning with Twitter”. That was a powerful theme for me. I spent most of my time with people in my Twitter online social network, including friends that I had met face to face before and a few that I hadn’t. I was greeted as warmly by people I was meeting face to face for the first time as by people I had … Continue reading »

Every once in a while, someone asks me why I blog. My answer is that if I don’t, my head will explode. TLt summit 2008 just ended this afternoon and I am in need of some decompression after all that mental stimulation. TLt feels like it has been the best conference I have ever been to. Keynote speakers were great, presentation and workshop sessions were challenging and exciting. But the best component of the conference by far was the people I talked with and spent time with. There were a good number of old friends including my compadres in the EdTech Posse – Rick, Heather, Dean and Alec. I also had the slightly surreal experience of meeting some people who were already my friends and acquaintances, via blogs and twitter, for the first time. I’d been reading D’Arcy Norman and … Continue reading »

It started with a small amount of mold on a window sill in The Boy’s room. The Boy has mild asthma so even a small amount of mold on his window sill is a bad thing. There was to be no discussion on the matter – the window, sill and all, needed to go. Looking around the house, we saw that the other window sills around the house were starting to show their age. A couple of them also had small amounts of mold. More windows would need replacing. Discussion soon turned to replacing all the windows. And adding an extension to the front entry. I’m not sure how the front entrance made its way into the discussion, but we’d been unhappy with the front entrance for a while, specifically the size of the front entrance and the lack thereof. … Continue reading »