Ever write a blog post that started as one thing but then ended up as another? This is one of those. It started after I finished reading 21st Century Schools – Pedagogy Must Give Way to Andragogy over on Open Education. The basic point was that there was a need for educational reform based on the shift from pedagogy to andragogy as a dominant approach to learning. What I found interesting was that pedagogy and andragogy aren’t two mutually exclusive ideas, although they are presented as being such. I think there are some important reforms that need to happen, but if people are going to be rallied to the cause by fallacious premises then the collective will to reform will be short lived. The impetus for educational reform too often seems to be based on false dichotomies – digital native … Continue reading »

I couldn’t make it, but Dean Shareski, Alec Couros and Rick Schwier talked Tuesday with Michael Geist about Canadian copyright law and the changes first proposed in Bill C-61. I’m enjoying listening to it because a) it’s a great conversation, and b) I don’t need to worry that I sound like a knob. EdTech Posse Podcast 4.6 – Talking with with Michael Geist

I’ve just been taking a glance over the literature review released by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society (thanks to Clarence for his post on this, which sparked my interest). To be honest, I would encourage you to go read the lit review itself. The only advantage my few thoughts might have is brevity. A few items attracted my attention which I’ll be sure to mention the next time I am in a conversation with someone who is concerned about the safety of their children who are online instant messaging and facebooking (ack – another noun, and a proper one at that, has become verbized): 95% of sexual assault cases reported to authorities are committed by family members or known acquaintances. Generally speaking, children don’t need to fear strangers and most children don’t need to fear family or acquaintances. … Continue reading »

I’ve been working on a project lately that relates somewhat to my earlier post about who owns student work. In addition to exploring alternatives for storing student work online, I have also been looking at where I can put my teacher stuff online. I don’t want to bring that into my personal blog so I had been using some free services (wikispaces and wordpress.com most recently) to publish my stuff (and some student stuff). Being of a geeky nature, I’ve decided that after trying school hosted and free web tool approaches, it was time to create and host the whole thing myself. My professional teaching/learning/resource site is called the World of Wall. It consists of a WordPress blog and a wiki (using the mediawiki software. It’s what powers Wikipedia amongst others, although I don’t expect to get that big). The … Continue reading »

I’ve been trying to put together some resources for my grade 9 computer literacy class to use so they can find some legally usable images to use in an assignment. In addition to links to public domain and CC licensed search engines or repositories, I want to give them a sense of why they should use images or other media that are explicitly usable instead of just picking out whatever images show up in a Google image search. How do I convince them that it’s better to share stuff than just take anything whether it is meant to be shared or not? Dean Shareski gave a presentation entitled “Share Everything” at TLt 2008 earlier this year that has made me think a lot about the importance of sharing. Coincidentally, I read a few posts about sharing while reviewing the infostream … Continue reading »

I’m teaching a Computer Literacy 9 class this semester and, although I hadn’t taught grade 9s for nearly 15 years (I’ve been teaching that long – geez, I’m gittin’ old), I’m starting to have a really great time. The last two assignments in particular have involved some seriously fun learning. Both involved students creating a wiki page. One was the Amazing Web Search Tool Evaluation, and today they started the Fun and Interesting Page About Something I Like (FIPASIL). Neither assignment is particularly novel, in my opinion – basically an online report. Maybe we’ll be able to get into some collaborative work sometime this semester. I think that some of the work they are and will be producing is worth saving, but then some questions of ownership and stewardship arise. When I’m asking students to put some work online, using … Continue reading »

Sometime recently, I passed the 3000th spammer deflected by Akismet mark. This incarnation of my blogging presence is just over a year old so it’s nice to know that I’m noticed. It gives me a feeling of belonging and acceptance, somehow, to know that some loathesome, SEO-pimping spam-whore considers this blog worth targeting. Thanks for caring.

I haven’t written much here lately, because I’ve been happily busy working on some school related projects that are starting to get interesting: I have a Grade 9 computer literacy class working on The Amazing Web Search Tool Evaluation Assignment, putting their web searching guides into a wiki. They are each doing their own page instead of collaborating, but if the opportunity arises I’ll have them work on some collaborative work. I also had the grade 9s rate some web search tools using Google Forms, then published their results for subject indices, search engines and meta-search engines. (I’m finishing up the results for the subject indices and meta-search engines – links to be added when available) My Theory of Knowledge (Best. High School. Class. Evar!) are writing their reflections on one of them bloggy things everyone seems to be talking … Continue reading »