Tim Hawes :: Blog

Just a quick apology for the email flood some of you received. Was testing a script to upgrade the Commun-IT.org site and it evidently still has a few bugs!!!

Still, there are worse ways to wake up than to hundreds of "X has made you a friend" emails...

./tim

I tweet, therefor I am.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=expbound&w=all

NEW - Video tutorial on how to subscribe to your external blog...

http://www.commun-it.org/community/mod/tutorial/index.html

Highlighting your content from other services (and importing from other blogging tools)

If your external subscriptions are your own content, you can ask Commun-IT to post any new items from your feeds to your main blog. When the RSS feed is brought into Commun-IT and published to your blog, content will appear the next time you update the source.

For example, this functionality allows you to maintain your blog on Wordpress and have the content post within Commun-IT.

To do this:

1. Go to the "Your Resources" tab and subscribe to your blog feed
2. Select the submenu option 'publish to blog'
3. Check the feed you wish to import into your Commun-IT blog
4. Click update

REGISTRATION FOR THIS EVENT IS NOW LIVE. HURRY TO SECURE YOUR SPOT!

The Ontario Teachers’ Federation (OTF), in partnership with the Educational Computing Organization of Ontario (ECOO), will be presenting two-day workshops which will provide you with a unique opportunity to work hands-on with Will Richardson to develop your skills for the Web 2.0 world.

More information and online registration will be available on the OTF Teaching Matters website at www.teachingmatters.on.ca in early December 2008.

View the Flyer

Sometimes I think I may have been a real sick in the mud when it comes to laptop computing in my district. Its not that I don't believe in the concept - just that our ability to execute has always been marginal at best. "Shared" computers often get treated like shared textbooks - no one takes ownership over them and then end up getting treated pretty awfully. This is true of any shared computing environment (consider your "swing" labs where there is no teacher who looks out for it.. what shape is in in come May?) but is especially evident with mobile labs where there is so much more that can (and will) go wrong.

In thinking about how to try 1:1 more effectively, I've been rethinking the idea of mobile labs as being the ideal environment for cross-curricular use. In the past, we have used laptop carts as a way of "bringing the technology to the classroom"for teachers in diverse subject areas that often don't have access to a lab, presumably because "computer" course are scheduled in there. The fault in this has been that we are giving the most tentative and temperamental tools to those who often have the least tolerance for failure (a geography teacher has a hard time of thinking about troubleshooting wireless connections as a "teachable moment"). Combine this with the fact that the carts are shared, and you have a recipe for failure in many cases.

So in rethinking, why not put the laptops with the teachers/students where they are most likely to struggle through the learning curve (say, in our BTT1O courses - a bread and butter computer course in our district) and get them out of the labs. This has the effect of freeing up reliable labs for other curriculum areas, and also can help break up the pedagogy in BTT from being a pure "applications" type course and refocus on the business aspects of the curriculum.

One approach we are considering is a 1;1 laptop program where the BTT students in out test school would be assigned a personal laptop for the entire semester. It would be theirs to take home/bring to other classes right up until they finish the course. Buying 2 or 3 class sets of 'netbooks (considering the new revision of the Intel Classmate, likely with Windows, but who knows,,,) isn't over the top expensive - especially when you consider that it frees up a lab in the school.

Still just hashing the idea around, but I'd love to hear if any of this rings true to your own laptop experiences...

There has been lots of chatter over the last week or so about whether learning styles are a real phenomenon, or just a posit that was let loose and has become a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

I can't help but wonder, even if they do exist, do they matter? Is it my learning style, or my learning patterns that matter? As a teacher, am I wasting my time trying to adapt teaching to fit their learning styles while force fitting them into a pre-defined learning pattern that is cold and unnatural to many of them?

I have increasingly over the last 6 months found myself wanting to spend more time talking to student about this question - which I see as a key to unlocking what might be wrong with education today...

"How do you learn when you WANT to learn?"

So, I'll pose the question first to any of you reading this. How do you learn when you want to learn? Do you follow the patterns you had imprinted on you in your days as a student? Have you patterns changed? How has technology changed them?

I've got to figure out a way to try and get some honest answers to this question from students, as I am sure there is a lot we can uncover that might help us reach more of them...

Not sure what I make of this, but though provoking none the less.

(maybe not a good time to post this  - right after so many have just left summer institutes where differentiated instruction seems to be the theme of the day...)

I've had this poster/image up on a bulletin board in my office for about a year now. I had always intended to share it, as there is lots of great stuff in it to unpack and think about, but lost the bookmark to the original and couldn't find it! (when did the Internet get so big???)

Anyway, here it is in all its glory 4mb jpg glory!

http://elearningargentina.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/informal-learning.jpg

(source Jay Cross, "Internet Time")