We?re Blogging at eSchool News Online

The “official” launch isn’t until Monday, but the new eSchool News “Ed Tech Insider” Weblog is up and running, featuring the blogging insights of yours truly, Tim, Tom, Anne, Steve and a few other edbloggers. I think it’s a great opportunity for all of us to reach a much, much wider audience of teachers and administrators not only about the Internet technologies (blogs, wikis, rss, etc.) that we normally write about but about other ed tech issues as well. I’m pretty psyched to have the opportunity. Thanks to Clarity Innovations for the initiative. Here’s the RSS feed.
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The News About Weblogs

Greensboro 101 seems to be the on everyone’s blog radar these days as it’s turning into an effective model for community journalism a la Weblogs. They have about 50 or so bloggers, but even more importantly, they’ve got t-shirts. I say this not in jest as the t-shirts, snappy as they are, tell me at least that someone has decided to actively market the meme. (This may be something to think about for edubloggers as well…)

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More Media Coverage And Some Really Cool News!

Last Tuesday a reporter from the local paper came to spend 45 minutes to do a story about how we Skyped Celest into class, but now-she-was-able-to-return-and-she-knew-how-things-worked-in-our classroom-because-she-had-been-here-via-Skype. Two hours and 45 minutes later he left. He stayed because he saw students blogging and using our class wiki page and working on more than 20 wiki pages we are making for a local animal park. Today 2 front page stories (Here and Here) came out about what we are doing with technology in our classroom (the reporter explained to me last week that they put the story off until now because it came after a three-day weekend and helped fill the pages on an “off-day”). Actually he did a pretty good job.

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Blogging the World News

I think about the evolution of blogs as serious news sources probably way more than I should, but as an educator and journalism junkie, I can’t help but try to figure out what effect bloggers are going to have in terms of media literacy and consumption. I’m in the camp that says traditional journalism has some serious problems ahead, that more and more, forms of participatory journalism are going to cover the news that people consume. I think by and large that people who do any thinking at all about their sources of news have lost faith in the accuracy and trustworthiness of what’s being reported. It’s just becoming way too hard to separate fact from opinion and story from advertising. Trouble is, of course, is that there are too many people who don’t give what they read or hear a second thought.

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The “new” news process

The graphic in this short post - The "new" news process - captures part of the iterative, evolving, multi-faceted, and multi-contributor process of where we are going with education. Journalism today has shifted from a broadcast model to an interactive model with reader input/feedback. I see no reason why we don't take a similar view of our educational resources. Instead of having the educator present "read this" material to learners, a more desirable model would be for learners to interact/critique/update/improve existing learning materials. It will likely result in greater learner engagement (which in turn we generally conclude with result in "better" learning), but also the resource will be more valuable for future learners as it (the resource) is more current and reflective of multiple perspectives.

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eSchool News

eSchool News online published an article today, Ed tech: What do students want? They reminded us that students who want to speak out on the state of educational technology in our schools have until Nov. 12 to participate in Speak Up Day 2004. This is an online survey that gives our K-12 students a voice.

Excerpts from the article:

Approximately 40 percent of the questions on this year’s survey are new questions, Evans said. Topics will include timely inquiries into cyber-bullying, plagiarism, the educational value of video games, and what types of writing students do using technology.

Play The News

Play The News is a new, and continually updated, series of role-playing games about current events. Each game highlights a different news event — the Olympics, elections, etc. A short accessible video is shown with background information. Players then decide, of the different key roles involved in the event, which one do they want to be. After you pick it, you choose from various options about which action you think should be taken. You then see how many other players chose that and the other options.

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Utah’s Online Electronic High School Leads The Nation In Student Enrollment - Deseret Morning News

"More than 50,000 Utah students are earning high school credit from their bedrooms, dens and kitchens. And though the Electronic High School may not be the easiest way to earn credits, students are flocking to the program to catch up on classes, graduate early or just fit a few more electives into their school days.Currently Utah has the largest online learning program in the country. Florida is a distant second with just over 20,000 enrolled.Richard Read the rest of this entry »

Ask NBC News - classroom resources for presidential election

From an NBC News press release:

Washington, DC (January 29, 2008) – As the year’s presidential election campaign shapes up to be one of the most unpredictable and dynamic political events in history, NBC News is making available its top political reporters and experts to answer pressing questions about Decision ’08 from the nation’s students and teachers.

“Ask NBC News” is an exclusive feature of NBC News Archives on Demand, a rich compilation of thousands of primary source video resources created specifically for classroom instruction to engage students in active learning and transform classroom instruction into 21st century “e-learning” centers. The Archives on Demand are available on HotChalk, a free web-based learning management system for k-12 teachers and their students.

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Nick News at Longfellow Middle School

Nick News with Linda Ellerbee is visiting Longfellow Middle School in Hill City, Kansas next week, April 16 & 17. Longfellow Middle is a long-time GenYES school, and the teacher, Scott Parker, is terrific!

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