In a couple of previous posts I had talked about the idea of postdiction (see the posts here and here). The argument being that good teaching (among a long list of other good things) is postdictable, i.e. it walks the line between predictability and chaos, and most...
Jere Brophy, note from the Dean
Carole Ames, Dean of the College just sent out this note regarding the sad news of Jere Brophy's passing. She has asked for it to be shared with our broader networks, so I do so. Note: The memorial service for Jere Brophy has been scheduled for Monday, October 19th...
AACTE Webinar series coming up!
I chair the committee on Innovation & Technology of the American Association for Innovation & Technology (AACTE). The committee has been working hard with people over at AACTE (Rachel Popham deserves a big shout out) in organizing a webinar series coming up November...
Postdictable, the commercials
I had written earlier about the idea of "postdictable" which was defined as something that is "surprising initially, but then understandable with a bit of thought." It lies at the spot between predictability and total chaos. The movie Sixth Sense is postdictable in...
Shreya’s blog, new Sci-Po’s
Shreya, my daughter has a blog, Uniquely Mine. An RSS feed from her blog can be found right here (just scroll down and see the right column). Anyway, over the past few weeks she has been doing something for extra credit for the science class. Her fifth-grade teacher...
TPACK newsletter #4, Aug – Sept 09
Welcome to the fourth edition of the TPACK Newsletter, now with 494 subscribers (representing a 36% increase during the last four months!), and appearing bimonthly between August and April. If you are not sure what TPACK is, please surf over to www.tpack.org...
Ron Clark Academy, scalable?
Scott McLeod over at Dangerously Irrelevant posted a video of a CNN story about the Ron Clark Academy and asked whether something like this was scalable? Watch the video as you ponder this question. Embedded video from CNN Video This is a question often asked of me,...
Leigh Wolf @IgniteLansing
Leigh Wolf, my partner in crime as far as the MAET program goes, recently presented at Ignite Lansing. She talked about her two passions, teaching and food (not sure which order to place these). Specifically she talked about food photography and the connections she...
San Diego Unified School District embraces TPACK
I had written recently about TPACK being the top story on eSchoolNews (see TPACK is top story on eSchoolNews or go directly to the article: TPACK explores effective ed-tech integration). What I didn't realize at that time is that there were actually three stories...
The end of the university II
From my end of the university as we know it series, here is another article, this time from The Washington Monthly, titled College for $99 a Month: The next generation of online education could be great for students—and catastrophic for universities. Here are some key...
Seeing differently (veja du with video)
I am always looking for examples of looking at the world differently - of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. This is of course connected with the veja du assignments I give my students. I just came across a couple of very interesting video examples...
Unpacking TPACK, the book
Candace Figg & Jenny Burson have just released a book titled: Designs for Unpacking Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), making this the second textbook that utilizes the TPACK framework. You can find out more about the Figg & Burson book by going to...
21st Century Skills? What do they mean?
A decade into the 21st century, how are we doing with the movement to "position 21st century skills at the center of US K-12 education." The National Journal Online has been conducting an discussion on this topic... some very interesting views represented there, from...
Jugaad, educational toys from Junk (TPACK at work)
I had written earlier about the idea of Jugaad, the quintessential Indian idea of situational creativity. One of the masters at this is Arvind Gupta. Check out his website for tons of wonderful science toys and experiments that can be made from stuff we typically...
The death of the university?
Zephyr Teachout (supposedly an associate law professor at Fordham University, a writer, and an online entrepreneur) has a great article on bigmoney.com, titled Welcome to Yahoo! U: The Web will dismember universities, just like newspapers. His essential argument is...
Technology & Literacy, bemoaning the youth of today 🙂
One often hears the criticism that students today don't know how to write... the part of the blame is placed on technology, on the limitations of texting and twittering! For instance, here are two quotes from a book review TXTNG: THE GR8 DB8 by Marcus Merkmann in the...
TPACK (and friends) in T.H.E. Journal.
Matt Townsley sent me an email this morning informing me about a TPACK sighting in THE journal. Well... actually it's a journal whose title is THE journal! Does that make sense? Anyway, T.H.E. Journal (Transforming Education Through Technology) has an article by Dian...
Tech Trends, Special Issue on TPACK
TechTrends is a leading journal for professionals in the educational communication and technology field and is the official publication of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT). The current issue has 5 articles devoted to the TPACK...
Color me Creative
I just ran across this blog (Color Me Katie) that just blew me away. Katie Sokoler is a freelance photographer and street artist living in Brooklyn - and her blog just throbs with life, and energy and the sheer pleasure of living. That's her down there blowing bubbles...
Mind power: Brain Machine Interfaces
Imagine controlling machines, typing text or juggling balls using nothing but the power of thought. What sounds like far-fetched science fiction is gradually becoming possible, providing hope for disabled patients -- and new gimmicks for the computer gaming industry....
Learning for free? What does that mean?
Josh Dean writes about his experience with learning from freely available curricula on the Web. What does that mean, How Much Can You Really Learn With a Free Online Education?. The article also has a set of links to such curricula that are available on the web.
TPACK in a podcast
Just discovered a podcast on TPACK (titled Understanding TPCK) at the msad75mltinews website. It appears to be based on the article (Too cool for school) that was recently published in Learning & Leading with Technology.
TPACK is top story on eSchool News
I just discovered that TPACK made the Top Story of the Week for Educators on eSchool News! Written by Laura Devaney, Senior Editor of eSchoolNews the article is titled, TPACK explores effective ed-tech integration. It is a pretty comprehensive piece with quotes from...
Visual proofs
I just came across these lovely visual mathematical proofs. For instance consider the following sequence: 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + ... = 1 and then see the following image on the blog!! How cool is that!!!! I had posted about something similar earlier (see visualizing...
Creativity @ Plymouth, year 3
I spent some time last week with each of the MAET cohorts at Plymouth England. I have blogged about my time with Year 1 here and Year 2 here (as well as some other posts here and here). This is about what I did with the Year 3 cohort. As usual, I did my TPACK and...
MAET Graduate Celebration, Plymouth
Last Friday we celebrated the latest graduates from the MAET off campus program. These were students, who for the most part, have completed the MAET program over three summers in Plymouth, England. We here at MAET headquarters are extremely proud of their...
Pomes on creativity
I am in Plymouth, England, for a week, as a part of our off-campus MAET program. I spent time today with the first year cohort, talking with them about creativity in teaching (with our without technology). One of the short (5-10 minutes) activities they completed...
Design and creative repurposing: Thinking about Ed Tech
One minute design ideas... http://www.dailymotion.com/fr/video/x93dzc_lota-1-objet-en-moins-de-1-min_creation I had posted something similar here (from Bic to vase). There is something deeper here than just cool design ideas though. What this video highlights is...
Summer Institute for Superintendents, presentation
I was recently invited to present at the 2009 Summer Institute for Superintendents at the beautiful Crystal Mountain Conference Center in Thompsonville, Michigan. The yearly institute, which began in 1999, is co-sponsored by the MSU College of Education and the...
Rethinking Little Red Riding Hood
Awesome retelling of the old tale... (h/t Steve Dembo @ teach42). SlagsmĂĄlsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo. As Steve says (you can read his full post here) such remixing can provide interesting opportunities for teachers, particularly given...