Category: Uncategorized

Make your world digitally interactive

Add a Paperlink to a window, a product, an ad, a poster or anything, and watch people interact with you or your brand on a whole new level, using the free Paperlinks iPhone app.

You should learn about getting a free QR code reader on your mobile phone. Soon these little digitized squares will be everywhere…often associated with free offers…which is nice.

LG, you big tease! T-Mobile must be feeling a tinge of regret for hooking up with the Korean hardware manufacturer lately, as TmoNews reports both the G-Slate tablet and a new G2x smartphone (believed to be the US moniker for the Optimus 2X) won’t be coming Stateside for at least another month. Neither will be exactly late, mind you, since both feature dual-core Tegra 2 chips and the G-Slate runs Google’s freshest Honeycomb software, however a launch date of April 20th does put LG a step behind its direct competitors. Motorola has already rolled out its own Xoom and Atrix alternatives, while Samsung is making noise about its new Galaxy devices, which might well beat LG’s wares to the market. Rumor is we’ll get an official date out of T-Mobile at CTIA next week, so keep your eyes peeled for that one.

Special package: The world’s emerging urban landscape

GREAT #visionary stuff, as usual.

figure out my prime time during the day Completed

Created by Matthew Cornell 7 days ago | Nudge Matthew | Category Work

 

Overview It seems like my ability to work each day is best in the morning, but I’ve never tested it. So I’ll measure it 4x per day and see what I find. Follow-on experiments might include making changes to counteract slumps, e.g., exercise, stretching, breathing, whatever. See experiment

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Matthew Cornell motivation in the toilet

yesterday

 

New

Matthew Cornell I’m calling this one done. Mornings seem to be the best, but my mood plays a big part. Rating: **/*****

2 hours ago

 

life as an experiment… #lifehacking #geekery

As a former high school English teacher, I used to have a pretty constricted view when attending continuing education workshops. Like most teachers, I thought: How can this help my school and students? Now, as a HuffPost Education editor reporting at the recent Digital Media and Learning Conference in Los Angeles, I got to think big in terms of the newest education ideas and who they affect. And there was lots to take note of.

The conference was a mix of educators, reformers and software developers who spent three days bouncing around theories, policies and practices on the best ways to use technology in the classroom. Diligent teachers tuned in by taking notes on their iPads and updated grades on their smartphones — all while discussing how best to use these platforms in their curriculum.

There were also students who attended, and I asked a couple if their high school classrooms used education apps — digital Shakespeare or a NASA app, for example.

“Oh no, our school is much more academic than that,” they said to me.

This telling comment heralded a later discussion involving education software developers, teachers and parents on a panel and in the audience. It was in this forum that one question got everyone talking wildly: How does a teacher make sense of which education apps are best-suited for the classroom when everything just looks like Angry Birds?

To be sure, education content is more appealing when packaged into a flashy app, so software companies are undoubtedly helping teachers to hook kids into learning. But once they’re hooked, then what? We’re overrun with talk of media literacy for students, but who provides it for teachers? It seems these app creators have a developing responsibility to show educators how to maximize technology’s educational value. It’s then that teachers can solidly sell kids, administrators and parents on its place in the classroom.

It’s no surprise that parents aren’t keen on their kids spending more time in front of a computer, even for educational purposes, explained Gwenn O’Keeffe, a child pediatrician on the panel who specializes in online safety for students.

“Screens are screens, and parents are fearful of them,” she said.

The panel and audience discussed whether software is being created and tossed out there with no way for parents or teachers to know how best to derive value from it.

Not to say teachers can’t figure it out. Most have an innate sense of the rule that also governs the Internet: Content is king. Teachers quickly learn that anything gimmicky wears off and quality content has to exist underneath.

When I taught, our teaching team wrote a grant to get a SMART interactive whiteboard when they were the hot new thing a few years ago. But after the thrill of immediate reinforcement for correctly choosing the adjective instead of the adverb to describe a noun wore off, the students continued to do well on their grammar tests. Beneath that big screen of blinking lights, there was curriculum aligned to standards. The same must hold true for education apps.

O’Keeffe said that to ensure teachers can capitalize on the education value of education software, developers should have an advisory board of teachers who know the subject matter consulting formally on the project. And I would agree.

As an example, there’s a new Android and iPhone app called Project Noah, which is a field guide that allows students to become citizen scientists by sharing pictures and info on plants and animals. The app functionality is impressive, as is their mission: Project creator Yasser Ansari says his goal is “No Child Left Inside.” He told me, “We want to make this app the most powerful ‘window’ to the world.”

While that all sounds good in theory, the app lacks a teachers’ guide or accompanying lesson plans. However, Ansari does tell the School Library Journal he’d be willing to meet with teachers on how they can integrate Project Noah into their classrooms.

Similarily, an app called Toontastic lets elementary students do interactive storytelling on an iPad by writing a storyline and adding animation and characters. It includes a study guide with questions such as “How many scenes are in your story?” and “What’s the conflict?”

It seems like most teachers could arrive at those basic lesson plan prompts on their own accord, but they might first be wondering something like, “What makes a good digital story in the first place?” That seems like a fitting place that an app developer could provide foundational media literacy guidance.

As someone who used mostly homespun curriculum created in cahoots with another team teacher, I’m not saying teachers need explicit hand-holding with media literacy and making meaning out of could-be curriculum. I know there are countless anecdotes of science teachers who create units with practical hands-on applications from “Myth Busters” or units on literary devices using rap songs — all the sum of their own ingenuity and savviness.

But when it comes to the newest technology like education apps, teachers aren’t usually super eager to use it for many reasons, mostly because it takes extra time to research and set up — with the potential for technical failures. Of course, apps are pretty foolproof for the most part, but a “screen is a screen” to many teachers as well — and for good reason that you can’t understand unless you’ve had a technical failure on a Friday afternoon with impatient students praying you don’t know how to work the A/V. As such, if app developers provided some media literacy for teachers on all these new apps, it would make technology integration in the classroom just that much easier.

In the current upside-down world of education policy, there’s one foolproof strategy for being taken seriously as a reformer: Make sure you’re not an educator.

Urban districts nationwide, with Chicago leading the way, have hired those with business or legal backgrounds to head their school systems. Major voices in the reform conversation, such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and philanthropist Eli Broad, have never been teachers. And when Oprah wants to talk about schools, she invites Bill Gates or Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg — all the while reminding her audience how much she loves teachers.

So it probably shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that Performance Counts, a proposal that zoomed to the top of the legislative agenda in Illinois last week promising to “promote great teaching,” boasts a roster of local supporters who aren’t exactly known for their educational expertise: the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Illinois Chamber of Commerce and the Illinois Business Roundtable.

Backers of Performance Counts say it’s pro-student, not anti-teacher or anti-union, but the wide-ranging changes it proposes are nearly all aimed at the state’s teachers. The legislation would link tenure decisions to performance evaluations, make it easier to fire teachers, prohibit them from negotiating on issues like class size and make it virtually impossible for them to go on strike.

It’s also no shock that the proposal has gained traction among corporate-minded reformers. It fits nicely within a narrative that’s been gathering momentum since early last year, when both President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan publicly applauded the mass firing of teachers at a Rhode Island high school: Our public schools are woeful and teachers are a big part of the problem.

Shortly after the firings, Newsweek accompanied its cover story, “The key to saving American education,” with a photo of the phrase “We must fire bad teachers” written repeatedly on a chalkboard. More recently, the much-discussed film Waiting for Superman hammered home the same theme, depicting teachers as dozing mopes in New York City’s infamous “rubber room” or screaming lunatics manipulated by out-of-touch unions.

Focusing on getting rid of weak teachers as a cornerstone of school reform, however, is a distraction from the kinds of changes we should be pursuing.

But what kinds of changes?

Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, said in response to Performance Counts:

“How do you improve schools? Lower class sizes, limit instructional time spent on standardized testing, fund schools based on need, not clout and be sure that all children receive a full diet of art, music, physical education and foreign languages.”

That’d be a good start. And it’s what affluent parents — including the Duncans and the Obamas — demand for their own kids.

But the mainstream discussion about schools has a decidedly different character. An underlying assumption of almost every utterance is that standardized tests are an essential tool and are here to stay. Poverty’s not on the radar. And the arts? What arts?

A big part of the problem is that the conversation has been hijacked by corporate leaders who think they know best how to improve our schools. I’ll concede that some of these “new reformers” may have good intentions, but their arrogance is astounding and their lack of interest in the wisdom of those who spend their days in classrooms speaks volumes.

The thing is that it’s tough to understand the complexity of teaching if you’ve never done it. Sure, it’s possible to come up with catchy slogans like “performance counts.” But what exactly is teacher performance? For most of the business-minded reformers, it means raising student test scores. They may nod toward multiple measures of assessing teachers, but they’re really looking at “the data,” the bottom line.

During the decade I spent teaching in Chicago, I came to understand that being a good teacher is about far more than that. It’s taking time after school hours to get to know the community in which you teach. It’s figuring out how to create a learning opportunity when one of your students uses racist or homophobic language in class. It’s effectively planning research projects even when your classroom has just two computers for 31 kids. How does “performance count” in situations like these?

I’m not trying to dodge the issues raised by the proposed legislation. And I would agree, as would many teachers I know, that tenure and evaluation processes need to be revisited and improved. But if we’re serious about making schools places where meaningful learning happens, not just test prep, then directing our energies toward further disempowering and firing teachers is a horribly misguided approach. What’s really strangling the life out of classrooms across this country are the myopic, test-crazy policies of the past ten years.

Then again, I’m an education professor, so what do I know about schools? Maybe only this: If you really want to understand what’s going on in them and the direction we need to be headed, don’t ask Bill Gates or the Business Roundtable. Ask a teacher.

Books by this author

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This Blogger’s Books from

Holler If You Hear Me: The Education of a Teacher and His Students, Second Edition (Teaching for Social Justice) (The Teaching for Social Justice Series)
by Gregory Michie

See You When We Get There: Teaching for Change in Urban Schools (Teaching for Social Justice)
by Gregory Michie