Educational blog

Educational technology and news information

Thumbscrew and Design

November 22, 2006

Thumbscrew and Design

Daniel Pink has it right about design being an important literacy in a world where we are able to publish so easily. To that end, I’ve been noticing that a lot of us, myself included, have been putting more and more photos and graphics in our posts. Many of us are also reading Kathy Sierra’s blog which always offers up some compelling graphics, ones, however, that seem a bit out of reach for my scarcely artistic brain.

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“High-scoring nations on an international exam say success stems from autonomy, project-based learning”

November 22, 2006

I’ve noted lately there seem to be more and more studies and reports like this one. Check out this quote:

“A delegation led by the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) recently toured Scandinavia in search of answers for how students in that region of the world were able to score so high on a recent international test of math and science skills. They found that educators in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark all cited autonomy, project-based learning, and nationwide broadband internet access as keys to their success.”
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Ironic fruits of war technology

November 22, 2006

Old as I am, I can remember a time when walkie-talkies, radar, nuclear energy, jet propulsion aircraft, and computers were being funded and developed for war. We children were awed. Adults often shuddered at these ideas, as people younger than we are do now when they look at a story like the one in WIRED News titled “Pentagon’s Urban Recon Takes Wing.” The essence is unmanned small aircraft hovering over urban areas, locating enemies, and sending in weapons to kill them. The Internet is used wirelessly to recon the information dynamically.
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Flashmeeting - does it hold privacy concerns?

November 22, 2006

Flashmeeting seems to be all the rage lately among some of the folks in my learning network. I agree, it’s a great service that I’ve had the pleasure to see in practice. It works well, and provides a free solution that works nicely.

I seem to recall having had a “booker” account that doesn’t work any more. I emailed Kevin and in his response was this paragraph. I am posting it because the information is also found on their website if you dig a bit, so I’m not violating any personal ethics.

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