Room With A View » Uncategorized

Geist on Canadian Wireless

Rob — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:21:59 +0000

I’m amazed when I travel to Canada each summer just how expensive and lacking in service the cellphone industry is. Michael Geist has written about this before and in a recent post entitled Why Canada Lags on Wireless. In it he argues that the industry is held back by four things.

Lack of competition
Lack of wireless net neutrality
Lack of transparency in cellphone plans
Length of consumer contracts

Stinto

Rob — Mon, 04 May 2009 09:36:47 +0000

Stinto looks like an interesting tool. It’s a quick easy way to set up a chat room. No email addresses or passwords are necessary for users. The whole thing disappears after a short period of inactivity. It might be useful in classroom situations when a teacher needs a quick and short term chat solution. It could be easily set up on the spur of the moment.

Podcasts vs. Lectures?

Rob — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:23:03 +0000

This article leaves me with many questions but it quotes a study which suggests that students that watched a podcast of a lecture scored better than students that actually attended the lecture. It’s worth a read.

Rumors

Rob — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:51:50 +0000

I’ve heard rumors that Edublogs in unblocked in my host country. I’m not seeing it. Too bad. I find the whole blocking thing makes me choose to write in other places.

Content

Rob — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:49:00 +0000

I spent some time this morning reading and thinking about Brian Lamb’s post Content. I agree with most if not all that he says on an individual level. I’m just not sure how to move an institutional, like the one in which I work, toward the ideas he expresses. Like one commenter said, I agree philosophically but I’m not sure how to make it work practically.

Perhaps it’s not a matter of making it work completely but more we need to move institutions in the directions he suggests. We need to trend them in the direction of syndication, PLE’s, openness, or re-use.

Seth Godin On Blogging–Metacognition

Rob — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:28:06 +0000

As I finished up my last post this link to a short clip of Seth Godin talking about blogging was sent to me. It’s well worth the minute and a half of your time it takes to watch it.

Schools Are Trying to Break Children

Rob — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:05:57 +0000

This article by Jeremy Clarkson is a couple of years old but it’s certainly “current.”

Thanks to Gary Stager for pointing the way to the article.

Sustaining Innovation Once The Innovator Leaves

Rob — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 05:53:40 +0000

Schools often have pockets of innovation. These pockets are lead by one or two like minded people. Sometimes others follow their leadership but it’s difficult for these pockets of innovation to spread to an entire school. Unfortunately, once these leaders leave the innovation flounders and dies. I’m not thinking only of innovation in the area of technology. Over my career I can think of an innovative environmental program and literacy programs that failed once the lead innovator moved on to a new school.

I heard Robert Landau speak at an Apple sponsored event last night. Landau is the new Head of the Western Academy Beijing. He was reflecting on his time at the International School of Prague. He commented that schools need to look at innovative systems rather than innovative personalities. It’s a bit of a sound bite/catch phrase but it got me thinking.

There is room for innovative leaders. They play an important role in schools but to bring about long lasting change schools need to tie innovation to their curriculum in such a way that the change won’t be lost if a few key people move on.

If nothing else, Landau has forced me to dust off my old copy of Fullan for a little weekend reading.

Note-taking: A fundamental skill of the independent learner

Rob — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 10:11:43 +0000

I came across this post regarding the important of teaching kids to take notes effectively. Learning to take notes whether on paper or electronically is a basic skill we need to teach.

Baseball Mashup

Rob — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:11:50 +0000

China Cup Baseball tournament is happening at my school this weekend. We have visiting teams from Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore. We’re using Cover It Live, Google’s Picasa, and Blogger to live blog the event. It’s been a fun mashup experiment. The first game was last night and we had “viewers” from as far away as Sydney, Australia and Boston, Massachusetts.