In 1922, Fredrick Taylor came up with a model of management planning. Henry Ford used this to organize & manage his famous assembly line. Education used this same kind of thinking to organize itself. Previously, there were 1-room schoolhouses, with teachers teaching 8 grades, with olders teaching youngers, personalized instruction, etc. As a result of the Taylor management, education became squeezed into the assembly-line mold. This was not a problem, though. In fact, it worked extremely well at the time! The problem is that the economy has changed!

We then talked about RSS feeds. It’s his view that every student, in order to graduate from high school, should know how to manage their RSS feeds.

Wikipedia should not be so much a source, but a publishing center. He challenged us to write a wikipedia article WITH our class. Lots of great discussion there.

We discussed the ways we might teach the different perspectives on the American Revolution between the US and Britain. We could fascilitate a debate between American kids and British kids. Kids prepare, they make PowerPoints using GoogleDocs, send the PPTs to each other (across the pond). They then are essentially telling each other the story from their perspective. Then a debate is scheduled via Skype. This is recorded, and it can be put up on iTunes. What a motivation!!!! Compare that to kids that just “learn” the content for the test, and then forget it the next day. The podcast would be something that the students would very likely listen to over and over, would share with many others.

He also showed us how to use Google Custom Search for several purposes. More on this on a different post.

This is an email I received from The PBwiki Team <support@pbwiki.com> They clearly said that they wouldn’t mind if the email was forwarded to 10 of my friends, and since I’m not sure if my readership actually has broken into the double-digits, I figured they wouldn’t mind if I shared it here. (Actually, there are a few more of you than 10. See my ClustrMap here.)

—-

Hi,

We have two free new goodies to announce for educational PBwikis.

Don’t feel guilty if you have the urge to forward this email to 10 of your friends. We won’t mind.

1. PBwiki Presenter Packs
If you’re giving a presentation about wikis, we’ll ship you a free PBwiki t-shirt, an easy-to-read PDF about wikis, a Powerpoint with pictures of real PBwiki users, and 3 FREE Gold Premium wikis to give out to your audience. We’ve already distributed over 100 Presenter Packs to educators round the world, and we’d love to give you one, too.

Get your PBwiki Presenter Pack here:
http://educators.pbwiki.com/PBwiki%20Presenter%20Packs

2. The coolest videos in the world
We went out and filmed real educators who use PBwiki, asking them questions about how they use PBwiki, what they like, what we can improve, and common concerns that they had using PBwiki. Now we’re thrilled to unveil 7 gorgeous videos about using wikis in education:

* “How do you use PBwiki?”
* “Is PBwiki safe?”
* “How does collaboration work?”
…and more. Use these videos in your classroom, show them to friends who are new to wikis, or just watch them endlessly over and over.

The PBwiki Educator Videos:
http://educators.pbwiki.com/PBwiki%20educator%20videos

Enjoy!

David, Ramit, Nathan, Emily, Brian, and Darren
Your PBwiki Team

The dream was dependent on my student having internet access when she was in India. Turns out, she didn’t have access. So, alas, my dream was not yet realized. However, the fact that I was able to think that way, and come up with that plan was really an important learning/growing experience for me.

I do have some positive news to report, though. One of my top students, also one of my most “online” students, has been sick for a few days. She has tended to blog quite a bit, and does so from home most of the time. Since we are working on a project right now where the students are in pairs, her presence in class is becoming more and more missed by her partner!

I decided to email her parents and ask if it’s possible, if she could find her notes about the project, and type them up on our class wiki. This way, her partner (who didn’t have any of the notes) could continue with the project! We’ll see how this turns out…

She’ll probably show up at school tommorow, making this entirely un-dramatic, but again…..the idea is what’s interesting!!

Listen to Steve Jobs’s Keynote at the Macworld Expo 2007.
He introduces the iPhone, what he calls a “widescreen iPod, revolutionary phone, and a breakthrough internet device”. He frames the introduction of the product by putting it in the context of the the revolutionary way that the Mac (1984), and the iPod (2001) changed the entire industry(ies).
And now, the iPhone (2006), looks like it’s going to change the world again.

Maybe it’s a bit of Steve’s showmanship getting to me, maybe it’s my fondness for Apple products in the first place, but…this is an incredible product!

Selling for $499 in June, exclusively partnered with Cingular…
It’s on my wish list…

Steve Jobs’s address, or just the introduction of the iPhone

The iPhone page

Great point!
I was just about to reflect on this general point myself. I see my own blog as sort of a resource for those teachers that I’m helping to see the benefit of maintaining a professional blog, and for blogging with their students.

To convince a teacher that blogging is worth it, that it helps us grow as professional educators, helps us to do our job, and unleashes lots of energy, learning, and growth between educators…..this point is very helpful.

Blogging myself helps me keep track of my own learning. The more I blog, the more I develop a sense that, “I’m onto some important learning here – I should blog about this.” Then, as I’m writing the blog, I deepen my understanding as I put my reflections into words, that solidifies the learning.
As you point out, a very important side benefit is that others can learn from your reflection!

Sorry if my reflections here are a “duh!” no brainer for those of you reading that are more experienced in the edublogosphere, but this just resonated with me, and stimulated me to express my thoughts more completely.

However, as I read the issue, and reflected on who/what was the real newsmaker(s) this year, I have to agree that Time probably got it right. They basically are championing those that made a difference by diving in to Web 2.0 the most. The issue includes a brief profile of:
the You-Tube guys, MySpace & Friendster, a woman who has posted 12,8xx book reviews on Amazon, and such.

Very interesting. I recomment checking it out.

Here’s another blogger blogging about this issue.

Hopefully this will inspire you to use wikis in your classroom.

If you are totally new to the idea of wikis, here’s some links to get you started:
http://del.icio.us/wark/wiki

Here is my classroom wiki (such as it is):
http://34eagles.pbwiki.com/

And finally…
This is the original blog post that I posted the following comment to:
http://durffsblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/wiki-ideas.html

I have been using wikis for about a year now (with 6th graders). Here are some of my favorite ideas. (Not that I’ve been able to successfully implement them all yet):

A glossary of vocabulary words that can be categorized, or just put all together. My current sense is that categorizing is better – puts things in context. However, having a section for words that students encounter on their own in their self-chosen books should exist. I’ve had a real hard time getting students to use this. Perhaps because of lack of internet access at home…

Similar to what you’ve described – I’ve been jigsaw-ing some of the topics that we’re studying. 1. Assign sub-topic to student or small group. 2. Require them to type the written portion of their project on the wiki.
This can be for whatever topic you’re studying.

Vocabulary for topic – on the fly:
Sometimes, I have copies of a form ready to hand out – In the middle of a lesson, I’ll be teaching a certain word (parallel, Israelite, food web, or whatever) and I’ll put the form on a random, or not-so-random, student’s desk, and ask them to include on our wiki:
definition (at least 1)
sentence (at least 1)
part of speech
the source of their information (if applicable)
their first name (so I can give them credit)

Finally, one last idea (may be more appropriate for younger grades, though):
1. Write a few story starters.
2. Make a new (numbered) wiki page with each of those story starters.
3. Repeat the story starters & pages enough times so that there is a wiki page for each student.
4. Then have everyone get on the wiki, and “edit” their page (the one with their class number). They will add to the story at this point.
5. At the end of 20 minutes or so, everyone clicks, “Save”, and goes to the next page (different story starter, and with one other student’s work added)
6. After another time period, repeat Step 5. Then they will see a 3rd story starter, with 2 students’ work added.
You get the idea.

I suppose this could work for persuasive essays, too. One page for each of several Theses. Students log on (”Edit”) and add a supporting point, or a counter-argument. They would have to know how to deal with the error message that comes up that tells them that someone else is editing that page. Possibly not a whole-class-at-the-same-time activity.

Thanks for asking about this. Writing this for you has encouraged me to work harder at some of these ideas, or to implement some I haven’t actually tried yet…

This is what happened to me recently. However, this one was significantly different! It was so exciting, I had to share it with you here. My student was to be gone for 2 additional weeks just after the Christmas vacation. She went to India! (This is especially exciting for our class because later in the year, we will be studying ancient India!)
More common plan vs. This one
replaced activities,
activities that didn’t change,activities added to the list

1. Read as many books as you can get permission to check out, and take the Accelerated Reader test for each of them when you get back. as soon as you finish the book.
2. Write a “Response to Literature” in your notebook on your blog for every 2 points worth of your books.
3. Write a page in your notebook blog article for each day you are gone about each of the following prompts: How is India different from where you live? [several specific ideas about what to write about]. We will comment on your blog articles with questions and comments.
4. Science – Read the textbook [pgs], complete workbook pages [pgs]. Blog at least 2 articles, about things in the reading that you have questions about, and things in the reading that you hope to see and experience at Scicon. [That's our 6th grade Science camp. We'll be going up to Scicon for a week the day my student gets back.]
5. Social Studies -Read the textbook [pgs], answer questions [pgs]. Blog at least one article about what you read. [some specific prompts] OR Go to our class wiki and write a summary of what you read/learned.
6. I gave my email address, so that is there were any questions, my student could contact me…

This was all possible because my student:

1. had an internet connection where whe was,
2. is responsible enough to handle the technical skills necessary to accomplish the assignments,
3. is advanced enough to deal with the more advanced nature of the assignments

I was excited about this because it resembles distance learning, where there might be some face-to-face interaction, but a lot of the learning happens using internet tools, allowing direct interaction in various ways.

When my student wants to publish a blog article, the work will come to me via email. I will then be able to write comments and/or instructions for revision, and students will be able to read and comment on the work as well. This is possible using a tool called ClassBlogmeister.

To a remarkable degree, it will be as if my student never left!

I’m excited to see how this all turns out… I will blog again about how this turns out. I thought about publishing an article about this only after it works well. However, the more I thought about it, it made sense to share the beginning of the experiment, and then later share how it turned out. (That will be Part 2 – stay tuned!)

Here is the wikipedia article about it. Be sure to glance at the Arguments in Opposition.
This is also a good summary from David Warlick.
In short, this is a bill that would go a long way towards outlawing blogging in schools, a short-sighted attempt to protect our kids. Kind of like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

A relevant quote that I can’t seem to find the source of (nor get quite right) goes something like this, “Block an internet site, protect students for a day. Educate them about how to handle the internet appropriately, and navigate through the problematic and dangerous parts of it, protect them for a lifetime.”

I plan to begin my school year talking about online safety. I will use some of these resources and activites.

So, please urge our legislators to vote no on the current version of this bill, and consider a rewrite. Here’s an incredibly easy way to do it. Go to this blog article by Mark Ahlness. He describes how to put a button on your blog to assist your blog readers in writing this letter. You, of course, don’t have to do the button thing. Just use his button and send those emails off!

California residents, you might need to do one more step w/ Barbara Boxer, but it was very easy to do.

Remember, “we’re preparing our students for their future, not our past!”

This idea has sparked many, many conversations about reaching our students. In our FPU class, it has come up, as we have been reading Richardson’s book.

Here is a comment I left on one blog from a classmember about this topic. She had asked, “In fact, I am evidently speaking with an accent right now because I have not grown up with this medium. Like any second language learner, I cannot sense this accent, but others who are fluent can.  Can anyone “hear” this accent? I am not sure I know what an accent in written form looks like, especially when the base language is the same.”

When we “digital immigrants” speak with an accent, it is not so much the pronunciation or words we choose, but more our behavior, or which medium of conversation and commerce we choose. For example, when we write a check instead of using a check card or an online account with an online store, that’s an accent. When we send & receive paper memos instead of sending & receiving emails, that’s an accent. Actually, emailing is getting so it is perceived as an accent any more: instant messaging and blogging are more “where it’s at” with the next generation, I would suppose.
Those who share the same accent don’t perceive that accent, whether we’re talkilng about the digital native/digital immigrant thing, or whether we’re talking about spoken human language.
Generally, those that would hear/perceive your accent would be those that are progressively younger and more tech-savvy than you.