Sunday, April 09, 2006

Professional Development 2.0

How rooted in the past is professional development for our teachers and administrators? We focus on using tools such as blogs and wikis with students in the classroom, but how could we use these in our professional development programs?

David Warlick got me thinking about this with his recent post, Conference 2.0 – 10 Tips for Extending Your Education Conference. In the post, David advocates for the use of blogs, wikis, tags, and the like to extend the conference experience. But how about using these tools to extend the professional development experiences of our teachers and administrators within the school setting? So often these experiences are like conference sessions – there is great enthusiasm during the session, but it falls off dramatically thereafter due to issues of time, curriculum, testing, and all the other things that our present educational system throws at us.

So I ask this question – In what ways are web 2.0 tools being used to extend the professional development experiences (in any area, not only technology), beyond the traditional? How can we best utilize these tools to support the learning of our teachers and administrators throughout the day and school year? I would like to see us shift from “blaming” teachers for lack of follow-through to thinking about how we can improve the system to encourage that important piece in the professional development process.

Posted by Randy on 04/09 at 12:07 PM
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Sunday, November 06, 2005

Freakonomics

Although not related directly to technology at all, I think after reading this book, my desire to question things has been sparked. A few interesting bits:

“Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool?” Authors Levitt and Dubner discuss our poor record of assessing risk. And how effective risk management is often times clouded by fear. There are lots of emerging technologies in our midst and on the horizon. What risks are involved with each of these, and how much of that ‘risk’ is just plain over-exaggerated, false and driven by fear that our students will do something ‘wrong’ with them? I would tend to say we are probably just as bad at determining the sorts of risks involved here as we are in determining whether a gun or a swimming pool is more dangerous. (BTW…a swimming pool is more dangerous.)

The most interesting section of the book is the one on parenting. “What things make a child do better in school, and what things don’t?” After regression analysis of a study done by the government in 1990 (the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study), Levitt and Dubner find this:

Factors correlated (positively or negatively) with test scores:

  1. highly educated parents
  2. high socioeconomic status
  3. mother older than 30 when having first child
  4. child had low birth rate
  5. parents speak English
  6. child is adopted
  7. parents are involved in the PTA
  8. many books in the home

Factors not correlated with test scores:

  1. an intact family
  2. neighborhood
  3. mother working before child enters kindergarten
  4. child attended Head Start
  5. child regularly goes to museums
  6. child regularly spanked
  7. child frequently watches television
  8. child is read to every day

So what do they make of this? The things that matter most are what the parent IS. The things that don’t are what the parent DOES. Certainly interesting and thought provoking.

Posted by Randy on 11/06 at 06:37 PM
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Sunday, September 04, 2005

The World is Flat

I just started reading this book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Thomas Friedman, but I wanted to quote a paragraph from the first chapter. I think this book, while not directly referencing our educational system, provides a theory for a technological future that educational policy makers would do well to attempt to understand.

“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. As I detail in the next chapter, we are entering a phase where we are going to see the digitization, virtualization, and automation of almost everything. The gains in productivity will be staggering for those countries, companies, and individuals who can absorb the new technological tools. And we are entering a phase where more people than ever before in the history of the world are going to have access to these tools—as innovators, as collaborators, and alas, even as terrorists.”

Why is the world flat? “Everywhere you turn, hierarchies are being challenged from below or transforming themselves from top-down structures into more horizontal and collaborative ones.” Very much like what David Weinberger suggested in his NECC keynote: The New Shape of Knowledge.

Posted by Randy on 09/04 at 02:27 AM
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