The NY Times is reporting that Eli Broad and Bill Gates are investing $60 million to make education an issue in the 2008 US presidential race. Bill Gates is quoted as saying that their initiative will focus “on three main areas: a call for stronger, more consistent curriculum standards nationwide; lengthening the school day and year; and improving teacher quality through merit pay and other measures.”
Money well spent? Hmm…
The folks at the Bit by Bit podcast referred to the Horizon 2007 Report. It’s written by the The New Media Consortium. I read the report a while ago but the podcast inspired me to go back and have another read. I’ve been holding off writing about it because there’s too much to write and I have too little time. So, I’ve decided to write about the report in stages. Here’s my first post.
The report is “a research-oriented effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within higher education.”
I work in K-12 education and though several of the report’s finding do not apply to my field of education many of the findings do.
The report identifies 6 technologies to watch and a time frame for each.
All but perhaps the fifth technology have direct implications for K-12 education.
It’s well worth a read to learn more.
This article in the NY Times deals with the growing number of students in film schools even though few will get jobs in the traditional film industry. The reason for this? Film schools are
beginning to attract those who believe that cinema isn’t so much a profession as the professional language of the future.
Ms. Elizabeth Daley, the dean of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television comments that
filmic skills are too valuable to be confined to movie world professionals.
She goes on to say that
“The greatest digital divide is between those who can read and write
with media, and those who can’t,” Ms. Daley said. “Our core knowledge
needs to belong to everybody.”
We live in a media rich world. We need to recognize this in the way we teach and learn.
Thanks to David Warlick for getting me thinking this morning.
For those that attended the What’s Up with Wikis Session yesterday, I’ve posted some useful links on-line. The first is a page on the ISB Tech Pioneers Wiki. It contains some notes on wikis that were put together after a session we had on the subject. On my wikispaces wiki I’ve started a list of ISB classes using wikis. It’s a good place to look for ideas and inspiration.
Yesterday we just scratched the surface of what can be done with wikis. You will have questions. Feel free to corner me in the hall, e-mail your questions, or post your questions here. Ask away.
Thornburg compares the way Wikipedia is written to the way the Oxford English Dictionary is written. [Link]
Marc Prensky coined the terms Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, but this week I felt like a Digital Refugee. I spent time moving and setting up a new bog site because the government here blocked this blog. (I’ll avoid using the county’s name in case some bot trolls through sites looking for it. I don’t know how decisions are made to block sites.) This blog wasn’t blocked per se but the domain edublogs.org was.
While attending EARCOS a couple of weeks ago, Jeff Utecht had tipped me off that edublogs.org had been blocked. I logged on from Thailand and exported my site to my hard drive. I was thankful upon return to find my blog wasn’t blocked. Unfortunately, within a week it was.
I spent a couple of nights this week setting up a new site at http://rcormack.blogsavy.com. Thanks to Wordpress’ ability to export and import files it wasn’t hard. It was just a pain in the neck.
Surprisingly, yesterday I checked my edublogs site and found it accessible so I guess I’ll continue using it. I don’t know how long it will be accessible so I’ll keep the blogsavy site too. If you find this site hasn’t been update in a while, check the blogsavy site. I may be there claiming refugee status.
EMI and Apple announced today that all of EMI’s music sold through Apple’s iTunes store will no longer have DRM or Digital Rights management built in. (DRM is the copy protection that sites like Apple’s put into songs so they can’t easily be copied.) It comes at a price. Songs with DRM are still $0.99 and songs without DRM are $1.29. I’ve not found Apple’s DRM restrictive in the past (they allow songs purchased on iTunes to be used on five devices) but more significant to me is that the $1.29 will be of higher sound quality than their $0.99 counterparts.
What does this have to do with education? Well, a lot actually because it has implications for copyright. As we grapple with copyright issues with our students, the music industry has been in a state of rapid change for a number of years. Will this help? I doubt it. It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.
Peacemaker is a simulation game where one plays either the leader of Israel or the leader of Palestine. I’ve been watching it’s development for several months and it’s now finished.
PeaceMaker challenges you to succeed as a leader where others have failed. Experience the joy of winning the Nobel Prize or the agony of plunging the Middle East into disaster. PeaceMaker will test your skills, assumptions and prior knowledge. Play it and you will never read the news the same way again.
It’s tough. I installed it on a desktop machine in my computer lab in hopes that I’d be able to review it–no way. Five minutes here and ten minutes there just didn’t work. It’s way too involved for that. Last week I bought a license for my personal MacBook so I could play it on the plane on the way to Thailand. Even so I’ve barely got started. It’s involved, there’s a lot to learn, and there’s no easy solution–pretty much a realistic simulation.
If you’re at ISB and you want to check it out, let me know. I’ll sort out a way for you to try it out. I’m dieing to see how we can use this with kids. Right now I think it has potential for high school social studies, Theory of Knowledge, and MUN classes. I look forward to hear what you think.
For those that attended my session on RSS before the break, there are some session notes available.
