Jun 21 2010
Time Perspectives
An interesting video on perspectives of time. Sent to me by Jill Baedke, an ITRT in Henrico.
digital
Jan 21 2010
Communication Speed
So what do you think is the faster communication medium?
Typing? Texting? Handwriting?
This guy set out to find out which. I won’t spoil it, but the results and comparisons may surprise you!
Jan 21 2010
Ian Jukes comes to University of Richmond
Last evening I was invited to attend a talk given by Mr. Ian Jukes, a former educator and a “thinker” today about education, digital culture, and digital fluencies. I really have enjoyed hearing him in the past (NECC), but this time around it was great to attend this session hosted by the Region 1 superintendents here in Virginia. Both Dr. Underwood and Mr. Gretz attended, along with several of our principals and Mr. DeWeerd.
His message was clear. It was about change, and not doing our jobs just because that’s the way it has always been done. He gave a great example in the theories as to why railroad ties are spaced at a standard of a little over 4 feet. He traces the origin of this measurement to Roman times, which means we’ve been building railroads the same width for reasons that go back thousands of years. Why? That’s the width that became standardized back then because it accommodated the width of two horses in front of a chariot.
What was more impressive is that the booster rockets of the space shuttle were confined to a size not much wider than 4 feet because they had to travel by train from Utah, where they are made, to Florida. That’s right, the space shuttle program was contingent upon the measurement of the backside of two horses, side by side.
Change can happen, and then he weaved in why we need to change the ways we provide learning experience. Science, brain research, and the digital world we live in are revealing new understanding about the climate in which our students thrive. It’s a lot of what I’ve heard and professed in the past here with teachers, but everyone from Goochland who attended I think picked up on something new. I’m sure we all left inspired.
You can check out Mr. Juke’s website and blog for more information. The “important stuff” from last night’s talk can be found here.
Jan 29 2009
Collaborating with Digital Text
This past summer I led a session for our school administrators, and one of the topics I talked about was “digital text.” I opined for awhile on why digital text was better text.
Check out how professor Wesch is using online collaborative tools to get his undergraduate students to read. They assign online readings and use an online form to collect summaries. Smart.
