Author: abendelow
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Memphis schools are starting the "blend"
According to this piece from the Memphis Commercial Appeal (which wins the award for newspaper title, imho), the public schools in this Missisippi River town are mandating at least one online course from each student prior to graduation. The reception is positive, and motivating for the kid who needs credit recovery, the one who wants…
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This comic shows the awkwardness that social media can bring
Some scenes, like the one depicting the garden-variety selfishness and the ignorance found on social media sites, are what one might expect of weak social ties, and are not really serious. They merely point out the weird rhetorical circumstances of virtual communication in places like Facebook and Twitter. Such awkwardness is expected. We haven’t been…
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"Does the social web kill genius?"
Paul Sutton’s unseen dangers of social media expresses the fear that …language may suffer as we get more and more used to txt speak and fitting as much info as we can into as smaller number of characters as we can… are we losing the ability to ‘consider’? And more importantly, are we sacrificing individual…
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a 3-2-1 reflection on EDT 6060–"Trends and Future of Educational Technology"
One of the last and best assignments for this class went thus: Using a “3-2-1” reflection technique: Identify three (3) things you have learned as a result of taking this course. Identify two (2) things you still have questions about or want to learn. Describe one (1) “nugget of wisdom” you would share with a…
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"Learning Space of the future" preso
Here is a slideshow that accompanied my presentation last evening. It was pretty well received and my colleagues came up with similar features in their visions. Among the commonalities: each kid has a Personal Learning Device (PLD) with digital textbooks year-round learning ubiquitous video–surveillance and capturing the action for later retrieval an end to standardized…
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A proposal to transform a 20th c. district into a 21st c. district: overdue!
The winning entry from Slate.com’s Classroom of tomorrow competition–very appropriate for the plan below! Abstract In order to transform the mainstream of American public education, America’s mainstream public school districts will need to be transformed. This paper proposes one such transformation, over ten years. The main features of the district’s transformation are in the delivery…
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Thinking about "life-technology" — how the old job has changed
I’ve been thinking about my work–what it is, what good it is to society, and what it’s worth to me. That is why I’m tagging this post “life technology,” since a career/job may be seen as the device/tool by which a life’s purpose is fulfilled. I dedicated myself to the noble ends of education–service to…
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OK–NOW it's time for states to get aboard the Blended-ed bus
Last spring I felt the time had long since passed when smart administrators and superintendents of education should be seeing the logic of bringing more virtual learning into the classrooms. The un-beatable combination of lower cost and higher quality were in my mind undeniable, and since my local admins weren’t listening, I wrote the superintendent…
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Are you empathic enough?
This survey from the University of Michigan–the basis for my speculations in a previous post–is designed to measure the extent to which you care about other human beings. Questions like these tell us how much you care for your fellow man: Is it possible that we can institutionalize empathy building in schools through a service-learning component…
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We're on the cusp of a connected world
Evidence is seen in this nifty counter of social networking’s growth: http://www.personalizemedia.com/media/socmedcounter.swfI tell my students that they are lucky to be among the 20% of the planet who are currently connected, and that their responsibility is to create a solid knowledge-base for the un-connected who follow them. There is a Chinese or an African baby…
The Wikiness 