Can the past accept the future in education?

I hope so. The future of our children continues to be at stake as the pre-digital dominance in education continues to cope with the growing intrusion of the digital, virtual, connecting world. From a completely irrelevant source comes an insightful statement of the problem in this struggle. New York Times book reviewer Caroline Weber writes today about The Diana Chronicles, Tina Browns new book about the saga of Princess Diana. Weber writes:

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I-Podding Along

I know this whole I-Pod/Podcasting thing kind of strays away from the main focus of this blog, but it’s just been so interesting to watch the ways in which this particular little piece of hardware has exploded. And, I just can’t resist when I see people finding ways to adopt any of these tools into the classroom.

Hence this link to an article in Campus Technology about the ways that some professors are bringing the I-Pod into their teaching.

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Linux distros update

I was thrilled with the comments that I read following yesterday’s posting about Linux distros in the classroom. I am in the process of trying a couple of them, and I wanted to put it out there for everyone else.

I downloaded and burned the ISO for FreeEduc-CD and ran it as a Live CD, albeit for just a few moments. Now, I am a Spanish and Latin teacher by trade, and speak wonderfully fluent Spanish. Troublingly, it didn’t help me too much when I realized that the ISO I had burned was in French. It is also worth noting that the ISO alone weighed in at just under 700 MB. That doesn’t sound too thin. I know it is geared towards primary schools, but I am not sure it has anything on Edubuntu, especially once you add Childsplay to the mix. That, along with GCompris provide lots of wonderful educational software. I have explored the apt-get repositories as well as the Synaptic Package Manager (the GUI for apt-get) and once you enable unsupported software, you find a plethura of quality educational tools. But I’ll save that for another post, detailing Edubuntu and all of the fun stuff available for fairly simple installs.

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Work Experience Pupils Keep Us On Our Toes!

Media Education has recently hosted two pupils on their fourth year work experience placement. Libby from Boroughmuir High School and Emma from Leith Academy each spent a week finding out what it's like to be a media professional.

Libby decided to create a short broadcast investigating the very current issue of a smoking ban in pubs and restaurants, and interviewed local cafe owners and users to find out their views. She also had time to make a short film featuring our mascots, the blue squirrels.
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Writing history, together

I've been focused lately on trying to get a sense of the defining element that shapes, drives, and influences what's happening in the educational technology space today (and to a related but lesser degree, what's happening in society). I guess I'm asking the question: "What is the element/entity, that if we understood it better, would illuminate that nature and scope of the changes occurring?". People living in the midst of a revolution likely aren't aware of the full scope. And, I suspect, people living in non-revolutionary periods are not aware of how history will perceive their era. Are we in revolutionary or non-revolutionary times? Ultimately, history will pass the verdict. But in trying to find the element that will illuminate what is happening today, I'm increasingly returning to information. To how we create it. Share it. Dialogue around it. To this end, I find sites or concepts that alter how interaction with and around information of particular interest. For example - History Commons "allows people to investigate important issues by providing a space where people can collaborate on the documentation of past and current events, as well as the entities associated with those events." While people have always been able to do this, the scope and ease of collaborating and (hopefully) creating a multi-perspective information source is now greater than before. It just feels different to me. Like we're still going through many of the motions I recall going through in the past with regard to information creation/sharing...but something fundamental is different. Can't quite put my finger on it...

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