Author: abendelow
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The night Microsoft took over my work computer
30 June is the end of the fiscal year, but this year it’s also the start of a new technological regime, at least in the relationship teachers in my district will have to their working computers. And when you think of it, almost all of a teacher’s official communication and an increasingly large percentage of his curriculum is…
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It's so easy to let people know what you're thinking now
Good or bad things happen to you? Let others know! The power of the crowd thereby grows, and we all benefit. This 21st century truth was brought home to me when, after having a bad experience with a Holiday Inn, I sought out the corporate owners so that I might send a complaint letter. This…
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Don't "reject" or "repair" the old curriculum, "remediate"
I read Kevin Leander’s “Composing with Old and New Media: Toward a Parallel Pedagogy” and appreciated his re-purposing of the word “remediate” to describe the sort of “parallel composition” that can happen in classrooms when you mix an essential rhetorical act (his example is memoir or autobiography), good questions, and 21st century digital communications media.…
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What ARE they learning, then?
One of the literacies the Survey course requires we teach is technical: students are supposed to emerge from the experience capable of using the suite of four Microsoft Office tools–Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Publisher. The premise is that these are worthy ends and I am not arguing against that. Instead, the way they’re learning is…
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Online learning in computer labs–what might the effect be?
OK, we’ve got them. My co-teacher and I have successfully got our classes of kids, whose classrooms essentially are computer labs, into their online modules. The sound of a classroom full of simultaneous keyboards takes me way back to typing class in the 70’s–but way quieter. A teacher can speak aloud over a classroom of…
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How is this night different from all others?
(photos courtesy of the Chicago Sun-Times, the best source of local sports coverage.) For the first time in my life, the Chicago Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup, and the social environment on my placid suburban street explodes with yelps and screams of delight and release. It is because my apartment is located between two sports…
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What's inviting about Onlineexpert?
Looked at on the small platform of EDT 6040 “Visual Literacy in the Classroom” at CUChicago, how graphically well-designed is the website of LearnKey’s OnlineExpert.com.? An analysis:There are many effective design elements being used in this home page for the Excel 2007 training I am doing. Especially, according to my limited knowledge of the principles…
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It looks like the Republicans are harnessing the online social networks
Ironic, since in my very last post I wondered whether progressive political forces would use the “democratic dynamite” of social media. In their new website, www.americaspeakingout.com, the GOP, or Republicans are pulling out the TNT. According to this Wall Street Journal piece, the site will have online instant polling, “open mics” (podcasted too?), and faciliate…
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The times a-change for the union with democratic dynamite; stick to it now with social media
Yep. Don’t go down to the union hall. Go online to Facebook. Because the old school centralized 2.0 apps like AFT‘s stateweb (b. 2001) that have allowed local councils to post information on a central webpage have been passed already perhaps by social media. They’re using it at the federal level of our American Federation…
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First thoughts on EDT 6040–Visual Literacy in the classroom
Our teacher for this class, Professor Richter, is not a practicing teacher. Nor is he an administrator-teacher, or a recently-retired one. Neither is he an un-tenured PhD. or a college administrator. No, this fourth teacher in our cohort of Educational Technology at Concordia University of Chicago is an artist first (”Art is the process or…
The Wikiness 