Teach And Learn

Reinventing the Square Wheel

Most of District Administration is puff, but I'm finding more and more I like reading Gary Stager's columns about technology. In Reinventing the Square Wheel, he actually slams PowerPoint and most of the typical ed tech juggernaut, and he doesn't mince words: "PowerPoint sucks the oxygen out of educational computing." Congratulations--with him and Larry Cuban (his "The Laptop Revolution Has No Clothes" in EdWeek is wonderful) focusing on these issues, perhaps we'll bring a bit more strategy to the educational technology world.

Stager closes his piece with a bit on podcasting. I'm not quite as enamoured with this as an educational tool as Stager is--it's certainly great for communicating, but just creating RSS feeds of MP3s isn't going to change student achievement levels dramatically. I think of it more like websites and email lists--essential tools for doing work in the year 2006, but not something unique to teaching and learning. Focusing on the instructional core  will make the difference.

Google Teacher Academy

Looks like I'm not the only one who things that the Google Teacher Academy might be more about making converts to the Google cause than actually helping teachers and students. I mean, how hard is it to use Google in your classroom?

That said, it does seem like they might know what they're doing. Kudos to them for keeping it local in order to build community, and I lo ve the required videoclip upload as part of the application process.

No Test Tubes?

Chicago's Laboratory Chicago 2020 addressed the issue this New York Times piece raises about virtual science classes, as did America's Lab Report. There's certainly some good models about how to do this well, but some terrible ones as well.

FIRST in Chicago

The folks coordinating the FIRST Midwest Regional have a great video clip about CPS students participation in this robotics competition. I'd really like to see more students have the opportunity to work in these sorts of after-school programs--the Midwest Regional I attended was nothing short of amazing.

Guest Blogging

I just figured out how to have TypePad include multiple authors, so look for some more guest blogging action in the weeks to come.

FIRST Robotics

Here's an ABC7 story about the FIRST robotics competition.

It was very cool to see the students with disabilities so excited about this work, and to get such strong attention from schools for it as well.

Kids Are Smarter Than We Are

Why aren't we doing things like this article about GenYes describes all over the place?

One of the things I learned early on in my career is that students are capable of much more than we generally give them credit for. More programs to have students teach teachers (and administrators, and bureaucrats!) abotu technology would be wonderful.