Dangerously Irrelevant

CoSN Small District Technology Leadership Wiki

Over the past few years, I mentioned several times to Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), that CoSN was a great organization for larger districts that had CTOs or CIOs that supervised large staffs but that technology coordinators in smaller districts didn't really have an organization that represented their interests. Keith rightfully replied that many of CoSN's resources (which are superb in my opinion) also were relevant and applicable to smaller districts' needs. I concurred but still wished that there was an organization that better represented these folks. As I noted way back in August 2006 when my readership was about 12 people, there really isn't a national association that represents the majority of people in these positions like there is for principals, teachers, counselors, school business officials, etc.

Although my desire for an organization that comprehensively represents technology coordinators has yet to be fulfilled, in November 2007 CoSN unveiled its Small School District Technology Leadership Wiki. I can't take any credit for this, of course, but I'm delighted. The wiki is chock full of information for technology leaders in smaller districts and, of course, can be edited and expanded by others. I encourage you to check out this fantastic resource and to contribute and make it even better. Thanks, CoSN!

P.S. Join Keith and me later today for an online chat about PK-12 technology leadership.

Edublogs magazine

Edublogs has come out with an online magazine. One of the articles reports on Aseem Badshah's attempt to list the 'top edubloggers' (as measured by Technorati ranking). Although I'm delighted to be included, the blogs listed in the article are pretty heavily skewed toward educational technology bloggers. As both Aseem's list and my own work on this topic show, there are lots of non-ed tech blogs out there that have pretty wide audiences. As long as we only promote ed tech blogs, we are missing opportunities to engage and interest educators who have interests in areas other than digital technologies.

Same rules, different marketing

As Seth Godin notes, there's a huge difference between this:

THERE ARE NO REFUNDS, NO EXCEPTIONS.
THERE ARE NO EXCHANGES ON PLANTS.
ALL LISTED CONDITIONS MUST BE MET IN ORDER TO RECEIVE EQUAL OR LESSER VALUE EXCHANGE. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS. MANAGER RESERVES THE RIGHT TO MAKE SPECIAL EXCEPTIONS.

and this:

At Surroundings, it's really important to us that you be delighted (not just happy). Please keep your receipt and be sure to bring it with you if there are any problems. We'll be happy to exchange any cut flowers that aren't just right--we'll give you a store credit or any other item in the store of equal or lesser value. Unfortunately, we can't exchange plants. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask any of us for help.

I think it’s safe to say that most of our school rules are written like the former, not the latter. No wonder students grumble about the rules so much. Couldn’t we find ways to make our rules, policies, and guidelines more palatable, more positive, and more pleasant? They might go over better with our intended audiences…

The knowledge gap - Online chat

As a follow-up to the Education Week article, The Knowledge Gap, that I mentioned last week, I’m participating in an online chat with Keith Krueger, Executive Director for the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN).

Join us from 2:00pm to 3:00pm Eastern on Thursday, January 31, for a live chat about the technology knowledge gap among school leaders and what needs to be done to help them boost their knowledge and skills in this area.

Here’s the publicity blurb from Education Week:

In the Winter 2008 issue of Education Week's Digital Directions, released last week, Scott McLeod, the founding director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education, says that "The people who are in charge of facilitating schools' transition to the digital global economy – superintendents and principals – are typically the least knowledgeable about the digital global economy."

Why does this knowledge gap exist? What impact do you think it has had on the use of technology in schools? And what is the best way for superintendents, principals, and other school leaders to learn how technology can be used to improve schools?

Get a head start. Submit your questions in advance!

Guest bloggers wanted

Occasionally I have a guest blogger here at Dangerously Irrelevant just to spice things up a bit. You can read past guests' contributions by clicking on the Guest Bloggers category. Usually I invite people personally, but I thought it might be fun to put out a RFP (request for proposals)...

Want to blog here on a topic (or topics) related to K-12 school leadership or leadership preparation? Looking for greater exposure for some of your ideas? Read over my guest blogging page and then drop me a note with your ideas for a 5-day series.

You don't have to be a blogger to participate. If you are, however, cross-posting is both allowed and encouraged. Also, you can blog about school leadership issues generally rather than just technology leadership issues specifically. And, yes, past guests are welcome to blog again...

Hope some of you are interested!

Right of refusal - Follow-up

Behold the power of Web 2.0:

• My original post = 26 comments (that's pretty good!)
• Pete Reilly's follow-up post = 52 comments (and counting; that's awesome!)
• Others' follow-up posts (and all of their comments; incredible!)

Check 'em out. There's some darn good reading here.

We need to teach administrators about this stuff. Take a post like mine that gets some play (and also is of interest to school leaders) and show them how this works. Show them that the learning is in the dialogue and the interplay of ideas and that it's not difficult to do. They need help seeing the power and potential. Lend a hand, won't you?

Want to get your Master's or doctorate?

Thinking about getting your Master's or doctorate in K-12 school leadership or instructional technology? Have the ability to move to the super nifty college town of Ames, Iowa? If so, CASTLE has graduate assistantships available!

Contact me if you're interested. Wouldn't if be fun to work together to kick start school administrators into the 21st century?

DABA: Carolyn Foote

This week's recipient of the crimson megaphone is Carolyn Foote, a high school librarian in Austin, Texas. Carolyn blogs at Not So Distant Future and is definitely someone that deserves a bigger audience (DABA).

Here are a few posts to get you started:

• Keeping It Real
• How About Some Wheat Bread?
• Desperately Seeking Engagement
• Getting Off of the Roundabout
• Changing Our Perspective?

Happy reading!

• See list of DABA blogs
• Read DABA posts on a web page
• Subscribe to DABA posts via RSS
• Subscribe to DABA posts via e-mail
• DABA clip code
• DABA blogroll code
• The Crimson Megaphone

2 Million Minutes

There’s a new documentary about to come out: 2 Million Minutes: A Global Examination. It profiles 6 high school students from China, India, and the United States. Watch the movie trailer or read the article about it in Education Week. It looked interesting enough for me to pre-order a copy. I’ll let you know what I think after I view it!

Educon 2.0

Educon 2.0 begins today. Do I wish I was one of the attendees? Absolutely!

Follow along at the conference wiki, via RSS, via UStream, via Technorati, in Second Life, and/or at Flickr. Kudos to Chris Lehmann and everyone else who worked on putting together what looks like an amazing event. I can’t wait to see what shakes out over the next few days!

Motorola Innovation Generation Grants

Schools that are interested in promoting innovation, science, technology, engineering, and math are eligible to apply for one of Motorola’s Innovation Generation Grants. Recipients can receive up to $100,000 and you can see what was funded last year. The deadline for applications is March 1. Good luck!

Last chance to complete the 2008 Education Blogosphere Survey

Just two days left to complete the 2008 Education Blogosphere Survey. We’re currently at 382 participants. Absent a last-minute deluge of responses, I don’t think we’ll make my revised goal of 500 respondents, but maybe we can tip over 400!

A HUGE THANKS to everyone who has participated and helped publicize the survey!

Deadline = January 26, 11:00pm, (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

Knowledge networks

My latest higher education article for Technology & Learning, Knowledge Networks, is now available. The article draws deeply from my previous blog posts, Linked, Scholarship 2.0, and The Future of Academic Publishing.

Here are a couple of quotes from the article:

[T]he system [of academic writing] is fairly clunky. There aren't easy ways to tell who the [top scholars] are, nor are there ways to easily find hidden nuggets of wisdom. . . . Tracking down a new resource from an existing article or book also is difficult, since readers have to first find the publication through trial-and-error searching of various databases and then either download it or track down a print version. Much high-quality writing never sees the light of day or isn't cited by anyone because it's not in the "right place." We can do better. . . .

If we can figure out how to get beyond academic publishers' revenue protection concerns, the world's body of scholarly research can be available to anyone with an Internet connection. That's a goal worth working toward.

Happy reading!

The knowledge gap

I was recently cited in an Education Week article, The Knowledge Gap, that addressed the technology-related knowledge of school leaders. The article echoes many of the themes from two of my articles last year, The Absence of Leadership and A Responsibility for Asking the Right Questions.

Here's the quote they pulled out as a highlight:

The people who are in charge of facilitating schools’ transition to the digital global economy - superintendents and principals - are typically the least knowledgeable about the digital global economy. It's scary.

Happy reading!

Curiosity

Here’s a short video of Seth Godin:

• Curious

Here’s the money quote:

For 7, 10, 15 years of school, you are required to not be curious. Over and over and over again, the curious are punished.

P.S. Every educator (and other change agents) should see Seth’s speech at TED.

Three brave men

Three men who were willing to risk all for an important cause. How brave will we need to be to transition our schools into the 21st century? Are we willing to go all in?

Photo credits

• Martin Luther King, Jr. – Time Magazine
• Nelson Mandela – Paying The Bribe
• Mahatma Gandhi – MANAS

Please help publicize the 2008 Education Blogosphere Survey

The second annual Education Blogosphere Survey ends on Saturday. If you have a holiday today, it's a great time to complete the survey or publicize it to others!

We're off to a good start. Last year 160 edubloggers participated. Right now the total is 307. It looks like we'll make my goal of doubling last year's participants. Dare I strive for 500?

Please use the link and/or the graphic and help spread the call for participants. Here's the HTML code if you want to paste it on your blog / web site:

• 2008 Education Blogosphere Survey HTML code

As I noted in this year's call for participation, you can see last year's survey results to get a sense of how I'm going to report out this year.

A HUGE THANKS in advance to anyone and everyone who helps publicize this!

Deadline = January 26, 11:00pm, (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

School law blogs

For those of you who are interested, here are some blogs that cover school law issues:

• At the Schoolhouse Gate
• The Edjurist Accord
• The School Law Blog
• School and Education Law Blog
• Education Law
• Texas Teacher Law
• Connecticut Education Law Blog

These blogs also often have posts related to school law topics:

• BoardBuzz
• Blog from the Capital

Here are a few special education law blogs:

• Special Education Law Blog (Charles Fox)
• Special Educaion Law Blog (Jim Gerl)
• The FAPE Page

And here is a higher education law blog:

• UnivAtty

Want to read all of these at once?

• See list of school law blogs
• Read all school law posts on a web page
• Subscribe to all school law posts via RSS
• Subscribe to all school law posts via e-mail
• Clip code (for web pages)
• Blogroll code (for blogs)

Let me know if you know of a school law blog I missed. I’ll add it to the feed!

One year ago: Gone Fischin'

Some new videos

Here are some new videos I have recently run across:

• Blogs in Plain English
• Online Photo Sharing in Plain English
• Google Docs in Plain English
• Having Our Say: Middle Grade Student Perspectives on School, Technologies, and Academic Engagement
  
• The Essay

The last one is very funny and also illustrates yet again the power of Web 2.0. elkedas added the link to the video on the Moving Forward Videos and Handouts wiki page. If I hadn't made that page publicly editable by anyone, and if she hadn't voluntarily taken the time to add the link, I probably never would have seen the video. Now I have a new resource for when I present (thanks, elkedas!).

These are the kinds of examples we need to give educators in order to help them see the power and potential of some of this technology stuff. Also, please remember that the Moving Forward wiki is intended to be a free resource for all of us who are trying to facilitate technology-related change in schools. If you've run across a great education-related blog / wiki / podcast / video / etc., please add your resources to the wiki so that we all can benefit, just like elkedas did. Thanks!

DABA: Scott Meech

It’s time to name the next recipient of the crimson megaphone! This week I pick Scott Meech’s blog, Technology in Education isn't the Future... It is the Present!, as one that I think deserves a bigger audience (DABA).

Here are a few posts (SMosts, Scott?) to get you started:

• Digital Citizenship – Modern Day Slavery?
• When Web 2.0 Tools go bad... Tonight at 10 PM on your local News Network.
• I am a teacher @#@#$%#%_#$% .... why doesn't she listen to me and learn!
• Response to Gary Stager's Rant Against
• The most important quality of a technology coordinator is...

Scott’s also a great commenter on others’ blogs and is very active in the Texas educational technology scene. Happy reading!

• See list of DABA blogs
• Read DABA posts on a web page
• Subscribe to DABA posts via RSS
• Subscribe to DABA posts via e-mail
• DABA clip code
• DABA blogroll code
• The Crimson Megaphone

Great questions from Michael Wesch

Ask students these two questions from Michael Wesch:

• How many of you do not actually 'like' school?  (probably many hands)
• How many of you do not like learning?  (probably no hands)

These two questions would be great conversation starters regarding the difference between school and learning. I wonder how many middle and high schools would see little difference in their results for these two questions. I'm guessing very few...

2008 Education Blogosphere Survey is now open!

The second annual Education Blogosphere Survey is now open for business! 4 screens. 25 questions.

Please use the link and/or the graphic and help spread the call for participants. Last year 160 edubloggers participated. Let's see if we can at least double that this year?

You can see last year's call for participation and survey results to get a sense of how I'm going to report out this year.

Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas for questions and a HUGE THANKS in advance to anyone and everyone who helps publicize this!

Deadline = January 26, 11:00pm, (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

Do the math

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

Update: As of May 2009, I now have about 5,000 subscribers to this blog. Alter my calculations accordingly...

According to Feedburner, I currently have about 2,100 subscribers to my blog. While that's obviously not a huge number compared to many other blogs (see my Technorati rank, which is slightly below that of the TechLearning blog), let's do the math for a minute...

Let's say I average 4 posts a week for 50 weeks a year. 4 x 50 x 2,100 readers equals 420,000 person contacts each year. In other words, through my blog I have the opportunity to have 420,000 interactions with my audience every twelve months. These are folks who have actively sought me out and are voluntarily reading what I write (which, by the way, still blows my mind). Over 10 years, that's over 4 million opportunities for me to spread my message to others, assuming that my current reader totals don't improve at all (which, obviously, I hope they do).

Now, let's compare this with a journal article. According to the information sent to me by the editors, the most prestigious peer-reviewed educational leadership research journal, Educational Administration Quarterly (EAQ), has approximately 160 individual subscribers and 1,630 institutional subscribers (i.e., libraries), for a total of about 1,800 subscriptions. Because EAQ serves folks interested in a broad range of educational leadership issues, at best only a small fraction of the individual readers will be interested in an article on technology leadership-related issues. This also is true for anyone doing a literature search for a research article or dissertation. For argument's sake, let's say that each technology-related EAQ article might have 60 readers a year, or 600 readers a decade (this is probably quite generous): a very rough ratio of one-third of the subscription total. [Note: this is obviously not very scientific. I'm engaging in some very loose back-of-the-envelope calculations here. There's probably a better way to come up with a more accurate estimate.].

Now of course faculty don't publish in only one journal. An unbelievably productive faculty member might publish 5 to 10 articles a year, each in a journal with roughly 500 to 5,000 individual and institutional subscribers. For this example, let's assume the faculty member is super-productive and is publishing in journals with the widest reach. Using the same rough ratio I used for EAQ (i.e., about 1/3 of the subscription numbers over a decade), 10 articles per year x 10 years x 5,000 subscribers x 1/3 = 166,667. Again, I think this is quite optimistic. Few faculty members are this productive and, even if true, it's pretty likely that readership of a faculty member's articles is nowhere close to this total.

Okay, let's review:

• blog = 4,200,000 person interactions per decade
• journals = 166,667 person interactions per decade

The blog wins hands-down from a numbers perspective, even assuming what I think is probably the absolute best case scenario for the peer-reviewed journal path. If we also consider

1. the ability to hear back from people via blog comments (i.e., to have a true conversation about what's written);
2. the ability to easily search the content of the blog via Internet search engines (unlike research databases, which typically allow you to only search within article abstracts, not full articles);
3. the greater availability of blogs to the public generally and educators specifically (particularly since most K-12 folks rarely read peer-reviewed journals);
4. the ability of popular blog posts to be spread through other bloggers and tools like Digg to even larger audiences;
5. the ability of blogs to handle multimedia content (i.e., graphics, audio, video); and
6. the superior connectivity of blogs compared to journal articles (i.e., direct hyperlinks to other resources versus footnotes);

the case for a blog seems even stronger.

So this raises the question... Why would anyone who wishes to actually reach educators and hopefully influence change in schools not be blogging?

Also... why haven't more faculty caught on to this?

Convergent v. divergent thinking in K-12 schools

Feel free to use these images per this blog's copyright notice (and, hey, maybe let me know how you use them!). Here are the PowerPoint slides if you'd rather use them instead:

• PowerPoint 2007
• PowerPoint 97-2003

I'd like an idiocy filter, please

I received the e-mail below from yet another person who can’t access my blog at school. How is CASTLE supposed to help school administrators kickstart their schools into the 21st century if they can’t even read one of our primary communication channels?

The idea that all blogs should be categorically blocked - that NOT A SINGLE ONE of the over 100 million blogs out there might have something important or relevant to educators - is both ludicrous and shameful. This type of blocking is not required by CIPA and it’s just plain dumb (see also I don’t like Internet filters).

Dr. McLeod,

I read your "D.I." (a constant reminder just in those two words), but I am unable to click through from school (as I tried today). You must be so dangerous that I really shouldn't even be reading you to  begin with (tongue in cheek).

The atomic-bomb-to-kill-flea net filter that is used here blocks anything in the "web log" area. I am dangerous as well, since my own blogger rants about soccer are blocked.

My other item to vent with you about is the school's new wi-fi network - it is completely blocked from student use (around 15 teachers use it daily). They spent a lot of money on it, and then locked it up so no one could use it. As you suggest many times in D.I., it is easy to become irrelevant - I have seen a few Iphone users on campus that don't even need wi-fi. And when I even slightly suggest to the tech guys that blocking access may not be trusting the students enough, they circle the wagons quickly and become very defensive.

Did I mention that teachers are not allowed access to any networked drive for fear of student access and destruction of data?
I'm sure you have heard of much worse, so I will stop.

Anyway, if you didn't know, you are a troublemaker according to my school. ;-)

Keep up the good work.

I plan to read some of your longer writings this weekend where my own wi-fi network is completely UN-blocked.

Teachers that aren’t allowed access to any networked drives. An expensive Wi-Fi investment that no one can use. Who is steering the ship here? How can this district’s administrators possibly show their face to their community and justify how they have used taxpayer money? This is horrible.

DABA: Greg Farr

Greg Farr makes me laugh ‘til my sides hurt. That’s probably the best endorsement I can give this Texas principal blogger. Greg also blogs for LeaderTalk (and I encourage you to check out his posts there too). However, he reserves the best part of his comic brilliance for his own blog. I think Greg deserves a bigger audience (DABA) and thus award him the crimson megaphone:

• FarBucks

Greg mixes in the personal with the professional and is always thought-provoking and/or entertaining (for example, he has no qualms about posting a picture of his father wearing a rice sack). Here are a few posts to get you started:

• Wii Wanna Play, Too!
• My Origami Learning Curve
• The Check Is In the Mail
• Is the Word of God Research Based?
• Tossing Dan a Lifeline

[Sorry, Greg. I outed you. Hope I don’t drive you under cover again.]

Happy reading!

• See list of DABA blogs
• Read DABA posts on a web page
• Subscribe to DABA posts via RSS
• Subscribe to DABA posts via e-mail
• DABA clip code
• DABA blogroll code
• The Crimson Megaphone

Publications

I do a lot of other writing besides blogging for Dangerously Irrelevant. As some of you may have noticed, I recently added a Publications button to this blog (on the right below my Top Posts button) for anyone who's interested in accessing my other work.

Happy reading!

ASB Unplugged

My colleague, Dr. David Quinn, and I were invited to come help with the ASB Unplugged 1:1 laptop conference for international schools in late February. We'll be working with the folks at the American School of Bombay in Mumbai, India. They're sponsoring the event along with The Laptop Institute. Hope some of you will be there too!

ROTW: Electronic learning growth

It's a new year and I think it's time to revive the Wednesday Report of the Week (ROTW)! I've made a public Google Notebook page for those of you who are interested in the reports I feature here:

• Dangerously Irrelevant - Report of the Week

I'll begin the new year with an Ambient Insight report that came out last November and was featured in T.H.E. Journal. The market analysis forecasts that K-12 education will have the highest demand for self-paced electronic learning products over the next five years. Ambient Insight studied six major types of self-paced e-learning products:

• IT packaged content
• Non-IT packaged content
• Custom content and technology services
• Learning platform hosting services
• Software tools
• Installed learning platform technology

Sam Adkins, the company's chief research officer, was kind enough to explain to me the different categories. Here's what he said:

• Packaged content is commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) content sold as a self-contained course (think "shrink-wrapped" as an analogy) - it has a retail price per package. It is "built once, sold many times."
• IT-based packaged content is courseware designed to teach software skills. We break it out for suppliers because in the early days virtually all of elearning content was IT courseware. Those days are long gone but suppliers still want to see the forecasts.
• Custom content is a "one-off" created for customers. Suppliers charge a service fee (usually time and materials) for it. There are many technology services as well.
• Hosting services are platforms provided to customers as a Web-based service and the customer does not own the software, per se. They pay for it, usually with a subscription fee. Lately people are referring to this as "Web 2.0" although there is no consensus on the meaning of that term.
• Installed technology is the opposite of hosted technology and customers install it themselves.

It would be interesting to see which categories will see the biggest growth for K-12. I'm hoping it's not 'drill and kill' software.

Notes

I can't emphasize enough how helpful Mr. Adkins was. Despite his belief that his company's research is "written exclusively for product suppliers and that very few practitioners or thought leaders gain much value from the data," he was gracious enough to have several e-mail exchanges with me until I understood the categories for this blog post. Thank you, Sam!

Conditions of employment

Following up on yesterday's post, many school districts have taken great care to define the essential duties and responsibilities of employees' jobs (typically for legal, rather than educational, purposes). For example, here are job descriptions for a teacher and a principal:

• Teacher (East Otero School District, CO)
• Principal (Bryan Independent School District, TX)

How many of you work in a school or district that has clearly and explicitly outlined technology usage expectations for teachers and/or administrators in its job descriptions? Should a school organization do this? If so, how might such expectations be worded?

See also

• Comment thread for yesterday's post
• dy/dan post
• Daily Integrator post

1 year ago: Future of learning manifesto

LHRIC Technology Leadership Institute

On Thursday I will be the speaker for the Lower Hudson (NY) Regional Information Center's Technology Leadership Institute. I'm not quite sure how I got included in the all-star lineup, but I'm appreciative of the opportunity. If you're attending, please make sure to stop by and say hello during a break!

Right of refusal

I've blogged about this before:

• Key question
• The aggregate impact of individual choices
• If you took away technology

but can anyone else think of an employment sector other than K-12 and postsecondary education where employees have the right to refuse to use technology?

For example, a grocery store checker doesn't get to say 'No thanks, I don't think I'll use a register.' A stockbroker doesn't get to say, 'No thanks, I don't think I'll use a computer.' An architect doesn't get to say, 'No thanks, I don't think I'll use AutoCAD.' But in education, we plead and implore and incentivize but we never seem to require.

In many industries, knowledge of relevant technologies is a necessary prerequisite for either getting or keeping one's job. Sometimes the organization provides training; sometimes the employee is expected to get it on her own. Either way, the expectation is that use of the relevant technologies is a core condition of employment.

Why aren't our school organizations expecting more of their employees? Are we that desperate for workers?

Copyright morality of youth

I just finished reading David Pogue’s fascinating article on the copyright morality of today's youth (thanks for the link, Ian Jukes!). Here's the key quote:

Right now, the customers who can’t even *see* why file sharing might be wrong are still young. But 10, 20, 30 years from now, that crowd will be *everybody*. What will happen then?

Read the comments to Pogue’s post too!

Videos from Barry Bachenheimer

Courtesy of Clay Burell, here are three great videos from Barry Bachenheimer:

• 42
• 180
• 1620

I've added all three to the Moving Forward wiki!

DABA: Kilian Betlach

As I mentioned last week, each Friday I'm going to try to highlight a blog that I think deserves a bigger audience (DABA). The first recipient in 2008 of the crimson megaphone is... (drum roll, please)

• Teaching in the 408

Blogging under the nom de plume of TMAO, Kilian Betlach is probably my favorite education blogger. It's downright criminal that he doesn't have more readers. Here's the tag line at the top of his blog:

We must reject the ideology of the "achievement gap" that absolves adults of their responsibility and implies student culpability in continued under-performance. The student achievement gap is merely the effect of a much larger and more debilitating chasm: The Educator Achievement Gap. We must erase the distance between the type of teachers we are, and the type of teachers they need us to be.

Here are a few posts to get you started:

• On NCLB
• The Ledge
• I Hate This Time of Year
• The Teachers You Hate Sitting Next To During All-District PD

I'm not quite sure what needs to be done to boost Kilian's readership. Kilian's writing already has been recognized by Jay Matthews at The Washington Post and he finished fourth in the Best Teacher Blog category of this year's Edublog Awards. I agree with Dan Meyer that Teaching in the 408 is 'without question the best classroom blog on the Internet' and that Kilian 'deserves every page view.' If you only add one new blog to your reading list this year, this should be it.

Happy reading!

• See list of DABA blogs
• Read DABA posts on a web page
• Subscribe to DABA posts via RSS
• Subscribe to DABA posts via e-mail
• DABA clip code
• DABA blogroll code
• The Crimson Megaphone

P.S. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach had a nice roundup of some new, provocative teacher blogs. Thanks for sharing with us, Sheryl!

2008 education blogosphere survey: Question suggestions due Monday

There are just a couple of days left if you want to submit your question ideas for the 2008 education blogosphere survey. If you have any suggestions, please send them to me by Monday, January 7

Great blogs for busy administrators

One of the things we do at CASTLE is try and expose administrators to modern technology tools with which they may be unfamiliar. For example, if we want principals to understand the power of blogging, one good way to do that is to show them (and maybe even sign them up for) some blogs that are directly relevant and helpful to their daily work.

I have updated our list of blogs that we recommend for school leaders:

• Great blogs for busy administrators

You can subscribe to each blog individually or I also have created a feed that will allow you to read and/or subscribe to all of the blogs in one place:

• Read posts from the overall feed on a web page
• Subscribe to the overall feed via RSS
• Subscribe to the overall feed via e-mail

Here's the code if you want to add the blogs as a clip on your web site or a blogroll:

• Web site clip code
• Blogroll code

1 year ago: What do students need to memorize?

Internet democracy

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

The nation’s first presidential primary is rapidly approaching here in the state of Iowa. I thought it might be appropriate to blog about new media and politics...

As a former Social Studies teacher, I’ve been intensely interested in how the presidential candidates (and their supporters) are using online video channels in this election season. Below are the top two most-viewed pro-candidate YouTube videos for each major contender (plus I included Ron Paul because he has such a strong Internet following). View counts are in parentheses after each video title. Although all of the videos listed are positive depictions, they may or may not be ‘official’ videos from candidates’ campaign teams. If you watch these, you will see that there are major differences regarding style, depth, and substance of message. It’s very clear that most political candidates haven’t yet figured out how to use this medium to great effect. Compared to television and print advertising, online videos are awfully inexpensive and have few length/time restrictions. Why not make the most of it?

There are a wealth of possibilities here for Social Studies and other teachers. We have unprecedented opportunities to engage in critical analysis of political messages, oppositional videos, media manipulation, etc. Students can discuss what makes an effective political video message (pro or con) and can even make their own (with the concurrent chance to reach and converse with a potentially large audience, which would be its own learning opportunity). I wonder how many teachers and administrators are really taking advantage of this stuff…

Hillary Clinton

1. Join the Hillary Clinton 2008 Myspace (1,186,489)
2. I need your advice (638,232)

John Edwards

1. What are you going to do to bring about change? (375,214)
2. We the people (192,040)

Rudy Giuliani

1. Obama Girl v. Giuliani Girl (1,661,241)
2. Rudy on his 12 commitments (361,158)

Mike Huckabee

1. Mike Huckabee responds to evolution question (1,816,458)
2. HuckChuckFacts (1,264,535)

Barack Obama

1. I got a crush … on Obama (4,407,776)
2. Vote different (4,110,758)

Ron Paul

1. Ron Paul ad – awesome! (1,960,265)
2. Stop dreaming (1,141,756)

Mitt Romney

1.America’s single greatest challenge? (470,279)
2. Interview with Jan Mickelsen (204,938)

Notes

I selected the candidates by using results from the latest CNN poll. Videos were obtained by going to YouTube, searching on a candidate’s name, and then sorting by View Count, All Time. View counts were current as of December 31, 2007.

Students 2.0

Clay Burell has done a masterful job of launching and publicizing Students 2.0, the new student group blog. It has been less than a month since the launch of Students 2.0 and it already is in the same Technorati arena as LeaderTalk, EduBlog Insights, The Blue Skunk Blog, and other edublogosphere favorites. The Students 2.0 blog notes in its sidebar:

We are students: the ones who come to school every day, raise our hands with safe questions, and keep our heads down. Except, now we have a voice – a strong voice – to share our ideas through a global network.

A global platform for aggregated K-12 student voice? I love it!

Clay's got his work cut out for him. As I’ve learned with LeaderTalk, sustaining initial momentum and enthusiasm can be difficult. Also, I think he needs more authors (maybe Sylvia Martinez and others can help?) and he's going to have start thinking about a succession plan. Who will replace these students when they graduate? Will we follow this initial group of bloggers into postsecondary education (Higher Ed 2.0?) and beyond? The challenges are both daunting and fascinating.

Clay, I hope you're at NECC this year so I can shake your hand. Nice work! Kudos also to the students. They are off to a great start. May their voices become numerous and powerful…

Happy New Year