Roger Ebert Speaks

Last week, I had the good fortune of stumbling across 'The Essential Man' an Esquire article that reconnected me with storied film critic, Roger Ebert. The article prompted me to locate Roger Ebert's online journal, where he seems to be saying more than he ever did 'from the balcony'.

As much as I'm glad to see this man's passionate commentary in text, this morning, I learned that Roger Ebert can now communicate using synthesized audio built from samples of his own voice. To find out how this is possible, listen to Dr. Matthew Aylett, chief technical Officer at CereProc as he explains the technology on NPR's All Things Considered.



Voices in School
While we don't have access to Ebert's voice, staff and students in my district are coming to realize that they can leverage a range of voice-augmented assistive technologies including a talking word processor. In a workshop today, for a combined group of staff and students, my colleague Pat Hammond, introduced many of these Premier literacy tools. My interview with Pat, is episode #219 of the Teacher 2.0 podcast:



I suspect it won't be long before we see personal digital language assistants adopted as universal designs for learning.

Photo Credit: .m.e.c.

An Inauguration for the World

Will you remember where were you were for the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama?

Have you considered how the world responds when major news events are 'scheduled'?

What role does the audience play in telling such a story?
What role does technology play?



Related Websites:
Today's Front Pages from courtesy of Newseum
A Composite: Global News of the Inauguration
Photosynth of "The Moment" from CNN
The Inauguration from Space
Whitehouse.gov now using Creative Commons Licensing
Whitehouse Web site changes
The inauguration through eyes of Flickr

Subscribe to Future and Past episodes of Teacher 2.0 on iTunes

Election Coverage Lessons

Election night in the United States brought us interactive websites, holographic interviews, and more data than any one person could possibly digest. None-the-less, there are a few lessons educators can learn from the news event of the decade.

Words and how they are delivered are powerful agents of change.

In the end, the most powerful part of the evening was simple... a man, a message, and the coming together of people from around the world.



Interactivity can and should be used to engage your audience.

This was the first US Election in the age of YouTube, whose Video Your Vote channel garnered attention from across the United States.

While John King is the master of the Multi-touch Collaboration Wall,the Associated Press map and the National Public Radio map let participants create their own scenarios and to drill down through state and county statistics.

The technology is only the means to an end.

Holograms are 'cool' but the wow factor fades quickly. While Obama's words are sure to live on for decades, the gaudy technologies used by broadcasters to connect with viewers, will soon be forgotten.

Eye candy can be used to tell a story, but don't let the technology fool you into believing it's any bit as important as the real story. Wasn't the story of the presidential election compelling enough? In case you missed it, apparently CNN's holograms were really tomograms.

Time at the Cottage Ain't What it Used to Be

Although in my youth, I never really had the opportunity to hang out at a cottage, I was lucky enough to spend the first week of each summer at Pow Wow Point Lodge in Huntsville, Ontario. In recent years, my family has had numerous opportunities to enjoy at least parts of our summer at 'camp' on the shore of Lake Superior; at the cottages of friends along Lake Huron; and at Northern Edge Algonquin, in northern Ontario.

Upon return from our penultimate cottage visit of the summer, I've come to realize that our family getaways have lost the rustic charm that they once had. In just the last few days, I've taken note of many ways that technology is threatening to forever alter the classic cottage vacation.


At the outset, I found it difficult to unplug from my network. Even as we hit the road, my iPhone allowed me to keep tabs on a remote conference taking place in Windsor, Ontario. Once on the beach, I fought to resist the temptation to check Twitter for updates...



The landscape of crops is joined by dozens of wind turbines that dot the landcape of Lake Huron highlands. Even land surrounding the Bruce nuclear power plant is cluttered with a small army of snow white generators. Maybe they are less noticable in the winter time?


In a small scale reminder of "I Love Lucy", the use of plastic flowers at the 'Wha Happen' cabin,means the homeowner has only a few pots to water...


Time was, an antenna in a remote camp would only be able to get one channel... likely the CBC, which coincidentally, has always carried the Olympic games in Canada. One child preferred to 'play' Olympics on his handheld rather than watch the live satellite coverage.


Just a year ago, our cabin location would have been out of cell phone range, but network expansion meant that my friend Tony, was never completely away from work. Interestingly, expanding cell coverage likely makes it easier for many workaholics to join their families on retreat!





Whatever happened to crokinole or Monopoly? The Nintendo Wii was the main source of indoor entertainment for the kids.







After growing up sunburned, I find myself reminding the kids to lather up. Is SPF50 really necessary?!






Access to wireless networking in the cottage, ensured that iPods could be loaded for beach music, hikes, and bicycle rides. Doesn't anyone enjoy the white noise of surf?




I remember collecting nightcrawlers by flashlight, but at Sauble Beach, the vending machine is the easist way to collect a dozen live worms!






Even though the technology prevented us from truly 'getting away from it all', the highlights of our getaway were the swimming, campfires, sand sculptures, sunsets, beachcombing, barbecues and cold drinks on the deck... and I have the digital photos to prove it!

The Educator's Diet

As an instructor, there is nothing more satisfying than an engaged audience; and nothing so frustrating as an indifferent one. When it comes to professional development in ICT, technology leaders are doomed to 'serving' both audiences.

Although we would rather spend our time supporting those 'hungriest' to learn; all educators need sustenance.

Consider food as a metaphor to represent engagement in learning about ICT:

1] All teachers need technological nourishment on a regular basis;

2] You can't force-feed learning about technology;

3] A rich menu, will allow educators to choose according to their dietary needs;

4] The hungriest educators, should be invited to return to the buffet;

5] Even if someone says they aren't hungry, they need to choose something to eat;

6] Occasionally a fast food meal is very satisfying, but 'fine dining' in the form of conferences, should be budgeted for on occasion;

7] It is very challenging to dine without the proper utensils;

8] Taking time to talk/network while dining, helps participants to digest the contents of a meal;

9] A balanced diet is important;

10] Dining with the entire family (staff) can be a great community-builder.

Whether or not teachers are interested and motivated, the need to learn about evolving tools will be continuous. Just as the body needs constant replenishment in order to function, so too, an educator needs intellectual nourished in order to adequately meet the needs of his/her students.

Photo Credit: stephendepolo

Cell Phones in the Classroom

How is your school leveraging cell phone technology for student learning?

In the schools my children attend, mobile phones are not welcome. The regional district school board is jamming the genie back into the lamp, even though the use of handheld technology is ubiquitous in the real world. Rather than restrict the use of this technology, educators (and their students) would be better served, if they were actually to be encouraged to use this technology in their classrooms.


How can cell phones be used for education?

First, we have to realize that many cell phones have the many embedded tools: clock, calendar, camera, voice recorder, text messaging. Some cell phones also include access to the World Wide Web and GPS technology.

Recognizing that relatively few educators already leverage tools likeGooglemaps, Wikipedia, and today's Front page news.... How will we handle it when "all of the information in the world" arrives in student backpacks on a daily basis?

The inclination is to think of the Web as one way communication, but teachers need to recognize that handheld devices encourage participation in content creation as much as content consumption. The mobile phone provides the potential to teach about copyright; content creation; protection of privacy; ethical use and much more. So how do we go about teaching students about appropriate online participation?

Documenting Learning

Field trips, experiments, and other learning experiences can be shared with a global audience with camera phones (audio and/or video). Many ideas for using mobile phones can be found at The Mobile Learner, Wes Fryer's wiki, or Thinking Machine. Evolving tools like Jott and Utterz allow automatic voice to text posting to blogs, wikis, or social networks. If you already use Voicethread, you may be interested in the untethered use of this tool:



Liberty Science Centre in New Jersey, actually has exhibits that provide audio commenting through recordings available by phone call. Can students create such content? Can you see the day when road signs, historic markers, and public buildings include phone numbers to access information? What about copying such information to GoogleMaps?

Large Scale Mobile Learning

Abiline Christian University in Texas, provides students with iPhone technology. Many other post-secondary institutions like Berkeley, Stanford, Yale, Penn State, Texas A&M, Duke, Queens, MIT... are leveraging iTunes U. Will this soon be the norm? What about iTunes HS, or iTunes Elementary?!

What are we worried about?

Students filming lessons? Students Googling to correct teacher errors? Students communicating with one another for social reasons? Whatever the concerns, the appropriate use of handheld computing technology needs to be modeled in the classroom. In preparing students for the real world, is teaching handheld technology skills more relevant than cursive writing; long division; spelling tests, the memorization of world capitals...?

More to follow on Monday's Teacher 2.0 Podcast.

Photo credit: Benjamin Golub

Excessive Computer Use Harms Learning!?

My breakfast is rarely accompanied by members of my immediate family, but almost always allows me to catch up on hometown news. The routine is pretty simple, open my web browser, click the folder that says 'daily' on my menu bar, and wait for the 12 tabs to open up.

Among a number of feeds, my daily reading includes my hometown paper, the Windsor Star, which today, had my full attention with a front page headline:"E-Learning Debate Rages". Later, I found the Montreal Gazette also ran with a catchy headline: "Cmputrs in skools make u stoopidr".

Themes in both stories can be highlighted with a few select quotes from Michael Zwaagstra the author of the 'research report':

"Excessive computer use can harm learning..." and "...students shouldn't use computers in a classroom more than once every two weeks."

Fearful that the report would be supported by select parents or worse yet, teachers looking for another excuse to abandon tools of the present in order to "get back to basics", I was pleasantly surprised at the thoughtful responses of selected school board representatives, and was happy to read in Doug Peterson's blog:

"With computers, we enable students to have access to more information, think deeper and more analytically, and view problems in ways never imagined in a traditional classroom. The challenge for us is to prove that it’s money well invested."

Following a link to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy report (thanks Doug!), I discovered that the real story of the report was missed! The study actually refers to the need for technological literacy on the part of educators:

"Computer technology is simply a tool and is only useful if teachers know how to use it effectively. Not all teachers are equally computer literate...

...School divisions need to spend more time ensuring that staff members are fully computer literate before purchasing expensive computer systems for their students."

Unfortunately both the Windsor Star and The Montreal Gazette ran with inflammatory storylines, with the Windsor Star actually gathering and publishing school board hardware budgets. Maybe next time, these newspapers might craft headlines that are in the best interests of teachers and students alike, something like:

"Teachers need to make more effective use of present day learning technologies!"

It's Time to Differentiate Support for Educators

Why don't we embrace the philosophy of differentiation in providing Internet and communications technology support to educators?

At the turn of the century (9 years ago!), I spent a lot of time learning about differentiation, specifically in attempts to develop suitable programming for the gifted students in my board. The past few years, the language of differentiation has made its way into all schools in our district. Even the ministry of education is on this tack both in professional development initiatives and in recently released policy and program documents. Maybe it's time we consider differentiating the support we provide to teachers...

Many teachers in North America are turned off of using the Internet, precisely because they find the web filters engaged by their boards to be too stringent. I know that in my board, this blog continues to be unavailable to the very educators I'd love to engage in dialogue. A differentiated approach to the filtering of the World Wide Web, where authentication of a user would grant varying permissions, is I think a logical step. Wesley Fryer sees injustice in the fact that teachers and kindergartners often have to play with the same filter rules:

"If school districts insist on blocking access to sites like YouTube, PBwiki, Wikispaces and Blogger, in my view they should NOT block that access for teachers."

With increasing numbers of forward thinking educators attempting to leverage read/write tools of the Web, school administrators face challenging times. As Will Richardson writes:

"We’re in the “Networking as a Second Language” point in teaching, this messy transition phase that is slowly gaining traction where we are beginning to understand what this means but not quite sure yet what to do about it."

A differentiated approach to teacher professional development may be part of the solution. According to a March 2007 article on Canada.com, the Lester B. Pearson School Board in Montreal allocated significant funding to train teachers in making effective use of modern teaching tools:

"Ped-tech leaders were identified at each school - teachers who were willing to work with technology - and they are being used as the basis for the project. These 180 teachers have each been given laptop computers, a projector and a smart board to really crank up their efficiency. In turn, they will be expected to bring other teachers into the fold and help them become more familiar with and more comfortable with using technology in the classroom."

Teachers have diverse needs when it comes supporting the use of technology in the classroom. My fingers are crossed that some day soon, district school boards will realize that "Differentiation is an effective way to meet the needs of all types of learners... including teachers."

Teacher 2.0 Podcast: "Differentiation: for Teachers" now online.

5 Cloud Technologies to Consider

It is wireless technology that put Thomas Friedman's 'earth flatteners' on steroids. Will cloud technologies have a significant impact on education? For this to happen, school districts will have to consider what roles will be played by the following puzzle pieces:

1] WiFi Networks: For the past 5 years or so, these networks have slowly moved from dream towards reality in blanketing cities across North America and Europe (Montreal, San Francisco, London...). Will school districts seriously consider the potential of wireless, especially in light of the following realities.

2] Sub-Notebooks: These'air'computers currently include the recently released Asus EEE, and Macbook Air. These computers begin the migration from powerful adaptable hardware, to micro-machines that can take advantage of wireless technologies to do online work. These 'windows to the web' may lead the change from shrink-wrapped software purchase to online software subscription.

3] Palm technology: From cell phones to iPods to PDA's and their many hybrid cousins, these powerful networking devices offer the chance for individuals (and classrooms) to network with people and with information, anytime, anywhere.

4] Tag Clouds: Millions of taggers are teaching the machine by tagging everything with keywords. The relationships among photos, hyperlinks, blog posts, and more are becoming 'understood' by the machines that govern the world wide web.

5] Digital Publishing: Anyone can publish for a global audience via text, images, or video; and they can access pixels at low or no cost.

These are not 'future' technologies, but present day realities. It's time to think seriously about how we will leverage these tools, not only from the grassroots, but from the technologically superior offices and boardrooms that oversee our classrooms.

Top Ten Tech Tools

In reviewing the year-end posts of some of my favourite bloggers, I have encountered a few folks reflecting on the most effective tech tools they've been using, and others like Gary Woodill thinking deeply about which tools are likely to be the most transformative in 2008. That's all the motivation I need to share my favourite tools for designing within e-learning environments.

Rodd Lucier's Top Ten Tech Tools (in no particular order):

ScreenSteps: This is superior and simple to use tutorial creation utility. Great for creating software 'how to' documents as either PDFs or HTML pages.
http://www.screensteps.com/

iShowU: A simple to use, customizeable screen capture utility. Great for creating movie-style demos and tutorials.
http://www.shinywhitebox.com/home/home.html

Keynote: Oooh-la-la! Stunning graphics, transitions and exports to clickable movie files, what more could you ask for in presentation software?
http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/

G-Mail: Simple, reliable, sortable, with effective filters (including spam filters) and plenty of room for large files and archives.
http://mail.google.com

Google Reader: While I used to use Bloglines, I find the Google franchise provides a common look/feel for my daily work.
http://reader.google.com

Picturesque: This Mac-simple graphic editing tool allows the user to quickly transform photos to round-cornered, 3-D reflective images.
http://www.acqualia.com/picturesque/

Camino: As a browser on the Mac platform, it simply loads faster than any others... significantly so on my machine.
http://caminobrowser.org/

Hemera Photo-Objects: Now only available via eBay (thanks to the success of online subscription models), the 100,000 photos in versions I and II offer a fantastic variety for logo creation. (Version III is on a different interface)
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/stockphotovendors/gr/photoobjects1-2.htm

Adobe Connect: This tool is provided to Ontario educators by the provincial Ministry of Education and is an amazingly flexible user-friendly tool for hosting collaborative meetings online.
http://www.adobe.com/products/connect/

iPhoto: I love creating photobooks... and this tool does an amazing job of it. (I had to include one tool for sheer expression and creativity!)
http://www.apple.com/iphoto/

This is by no means a complete list, rather, these ten tools are ones that I enjoy using the most. I also collect links to a variety of Web 2.0 tools and keep them updated here: http://del.icio.us/thecleversheep/web2.0. If you'd like to share your own top ten list, feel free to post below, or join a number of educators who are sharing their opinions at the UK Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies.

A more 'enthusiastic' podcast version of this post will soon be available at the Teacher 2.0 Podcast, now available on iTunes.

Let's Meet Them on the Hills

I'd like to share with you a metaphor for Web 2.0 and other e-Learning tools:

The story begins in my hometown of Windsor, Ontario, where late in the summer of 2007, city workers saw the need to remove the lone hill in Memorial Park. Those unfamiliar with the geography of southern Ontario, might be interested to know that the extreme southern leg of the province is FLAT. Thanks to the same glaciation that fed the great lakes thousands of years ago, the land is flat, but fertile.

So flat is the area, that the city council had more calls in sadness and frustration at the loss of the hill, than had been experienced by elected officials in recent memory... Which is why, in the fall of 2007, the hill was rebuilt!



To me, the interesting thing about this hill, is that it drew people to the area. It is no coincidence that this photo taken shortly after the hill was rebuilt, has been christened with a picnic table (no doubt by energetic teens in the neighbourhood).

FACT #1: E-learning tools, Social Networking sites and Web 2.0 products draw people to use the World Wide Web. Whether out of curiousity, or as a meeting place, these 'virtual hills' serve important purposes, and as soon as they are built, people find them, and begin using them! It's a fact that the first reaction of 'supervisors' to new technologies is to block access; but eventually, (too often after a number of years!) the value of the tool seems to win out.

Hills seem to draw attention and people no matter how large or small. in August of 2007, the pile of dirt pictured below was added to the park across the street from my home. Within hours, young people from the neighbourhood had built a motocross challenge area. Taking the picnic table and spare planks from garages nearby, the park had a new, 'most popular spot'. Even though this park boasts a soccer field, a baseball diamond, a soccer pitch, a child's playground and tennis courts, the final weeks of summer saw young people gravitate to the small pile of dirt in far greater numbers than any of the other attractions.




FACT #2: No matter how insignificant technological learning tools appear to adult educators, young people will enthusiastically join in using these tools... Often to the point of ignoring all types of traditional learning resources.


Now that winter has come to Canada in the form of great amounts of snow, the community toboggan hill has become the recreation centre for the community. Now that the patches of dirt can no longer accommodate bicycles, the 'X-games' fans decided that hills could benefit from the addition of some creative accents.



Fact #3: The use of the Read/Write Web can be hazardous! One should not dive into using evolving e-learning tools until he/she has taken the time to use the tools... and perhaps the more basic tools that might lead one to consider newer tools. Beyond the risks teachers need to take in trying new 'tricks', these new Web tools pose perils of which we need to be aware. These hazards are often the ones that grab the most headlines, even though the rich learning opportunities afforded by these tools are worthy of their own attention.

Hills and e-Hills were both meant to be climbed. When new hills or e-hills pop up on the horizon, they will draw the attention of young people in particular. Educators need to be prepared to meet the students who attempt to scale these hills. Now that I think of it, maybe it was a teacher who chose to put that picnic table on top of the hill in Memorial Park...

The Podcast version of this story is now available in iTunes! You can also click here to access the Teacher 2.0... the audio version!

Teacher 2.0

It's about time... We've heard the phrase Web 2.0 for next generation software for the past few years and in 2007 more and more people began using the term School 2.0. I particularly like David Warlick's take on the differences between this 'new' school and School 1.0: "School 2.0’s greatest affect on teaching and learning is that it empowers both roles with a Yin and Yang affect. Teacher’s become learners and learners become teachers, and each side is empower with conversation, control over their information landscape, and connections with each other — with almost no constraints of hierarchy."

So as the year winds down, maybe this is the best time for 'individual teachers' to consider where they fit into the new paradigm... What is Teacher 2.0?

I really think that the many changes taking place revolve around how willing and able teachers are to make use of the e-learning tools at their disposal. After all, knowledge creation is no longer about learning for oneself, but rather, it is about moving communities of learners forward, and sharing the experience with 'outsiders'.

As classrooms continue to evolve, I believe that the changing of the blackboard has the greatest potential for engaging learners. Although interactivity is important, I'm not speaking of the use of SmartBoard technology, or even as Will Richardson reports: the evolving Wii-Mote controlled screen as created by Johnny Lee



Rather, I'm thinking about any technology that brings the world wide web to the blackboard. Tradition might say that the 'Web on the Wall' is equivalent to putting global knowledge on the wall, considering Web 1.0; but putting the Web on the Wall to me, means providing a large shared window through which your learners can interact with others around the world; and through which other global students can have virtual 'window-seats' in your classroom. Once the Web is on the wall, the interactivity and networking among global classrooms becomes the dynamic by which teaching and learning have no choice but to change.

So what are teachers to do? I contend that teachers need to commit themselves to becoming e-teachers by becoming familiar with one technology at a time. For a given school year, a teacher might focus on "How to engage presentation tools (PowerPoint; Keynote; Corel Presentations)"; or "How to leverage one of many available communication tools (e-mail; blogs; wikis...)"; or "How to have students produce content and products for a global audience (podcasting; video production; online publishing". Today's Teacher 2.0 Podcast is a brief call-to-action along this line of thinking.

Google... Now More than a Verb!

Everyone knows that Google is "The Search Engine that Became a Verb", but relatively few people are aware of the steps Google has taken to become a Webware company. Educators who have yet to discover the value of the Read/Write Web, need to become aware of Google's Tools. (That sounds funnier than I intended...) You may have heard of Blogger, YouTube, Google Maps and more, but have you actually used them. Google Documents is less well-known, but it has powerful literacy connections.

In today's Teacher 2.0 podcast-mini, I've highlighted one of these tools: Google Documents. But before educators can make effective use of these tools, they have to see their usefulness in their own work. Will Richardson's summer commentary hit the mark: "I’ve been trying of late to convince folks that until they understand the uses of these tools in their own learning practice they’ll be really hard pressed to deliver the different pedagogies that go along with them in compelling and effective ways."

In short, Google Documents is an online word processor that allows for the creation of documents (and spreadsheets, and slideshow presentations) that can be edited collaboratively. Google Docs tracks all changes to a given document over time, so a teacher can browse all draft versions of a document highlighting any one person's contributions. This is doable with paper and pen, but now it's a new RSS: Really Simple Supervision!

But wait... There's More! Google documents also provides 'one click publishing'. This is the simplest way I know of, to publish any 'document' online. Your students can have global audiences for their written work if you can find a way to share the links to their work. Any document can be posted to the web. For an overview of how simple it is to do this publishing, view this really short tutorial (What can I say, it's simple!).


Search Skills are still needed! Even though these new tools are being harnessed by new users every day, there are many, many teachers who have yet to master basic online search skills. If educators knew that they could limit their searches to PowerPoint files; or PDF files (colouring pages anyone); or today's news articles... they'd feel empowered to use the web, and would truly be able to Google for Gold.

It's still just a constantly growing sea of information for too many... Little do we realize how this information is 'self-organizing' itself to be the a 'thinking machine'. If you have yet to see Robin Sloan and Matt Thomson's future vision: Epic 2015, this would be a good time!

Maybe the day will come when a user will identify him/herself as a student or teacher, and Google will intuitively provide the most relevant search results. Some search engines already provide personalized responses... but that's another story!

Reading is Changing

No, the focus of this entry is not the 'Kindle', Yahoo's recently launched e-book reader. I firmly believe that if people have to bring something along for the ride, an actual book is a lot more convenient! No batteries, no worries about theft, no need to download anything... just bring it along.

I believe the skill of reading is changing none-the-less. I know in my personal life, much of my reading is done reading text from my computer screen (PDFs, Web content, blogs...). My children also spend much of their time reading online text (albeit much of that written by their friends and classmates). With the sheer volume of text to be reviewed in a given day, it is proving to be necessary to be a different type of reader, than we were taught to be in school. With the explosion in content sure to continue, we need to prepare young people to be learners who are able to scan for keywords and topic sentences; to be researchers who are efficient at extracting key ideas; to be documentarians who can track their hyper-learning; to be judges, able to critically consider the validity and relevance of content.

While tools like 'Google Notebook' are available to help develop these skills, I'm not convinced that a wide cross-section of today's teachers is currently able to demonstrate these skills... Let alone, qualified to teach them. Although it's a number of years old already, Alan November's story "Teaching Zach to Think" is still very relevant, as is the November Learning "Websites to Validate" activity.

On the topic of Reading and Change:
Thanks to Wes Fryer (and others) for promoting the free e-books available from the MacArthur Foundation. From Moving at the Speed of Creativity: "If you’re looking for some holiday reading related to digital learning, check out this great set of free ebooks from MIT Press Journals and the MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning."

Why "The Clever Sheep"

For starters, find Harold, the clever sheep at two minutes in to this Monty Python Sketch:



It's an easy metaphor to apply to schools. Many teachers and students take the easy route in complying to the demands of their 'keepers'. Rather than simply following, the 'clever sheep' is prone to ask "Why are we doing this?".

David Warlick in a recent post makes reference to the importance of discernment, which is rarely the focus of the flock: "I think that if we want our students to become discerning consumers, we need to make them discerning learners. ..and I do not think that we can do this simply by teaching lessons on evaluating content. I think that we have to work as discerning teachers. Put those textbooks and other packaged teaching materials away, and teach from the real world of content."


The clever sheep in the Python sketch knows his plight, and is 'set on the idea'r of escape'. I think our cleverest students are the ones who challenge us to ensure our lessons are relevant; while our cleverest teachers are those that challenge the status quo by engaging evolving technologies.

Whether teacher or student, all 'sheep' benefit by exposure to rich, relevant learning experiences. My hope is that this blog will expose educators to an ever-changing menu of e-learning tools, inspiring the 'cleverest sheep' among us to fly!

Networks over Nodes

A few hours with Will Richardson spread over the past few days in London, helped me feel for the first time in a long while that "I'm not alone!"

In my work as an e-learning teacher and consultant, I was already aware of del.icio.us, Twitter, WetPaint, blogs, wikis and the many GoogleTools we tabbed through to consider the salient points of building networks; New to me was the fact that these many tools could be networked themselves, drawing upon common content courtesy of RSS.

Even so, what stood out most powerfully for me, was the fact that so many present in the room had so few questions about the relevance of what we were doing. Even Will's 'wait time' failed to illicit many questons or comments, due in large part to the fact that so many of us were on the same wavelength. I was physically immersed in a community who not only 'got it', but seemed to agree that we had to do what we could to connect with one another, and to bring others along for the ride in harnessing the tools.

Will's blog post of today put it very well I think:

It’s different now, somehow, than it was a year ago. It’s more immersive. It all feels deeper, closer somehow. Even more important. Maybe it’s just the glow of the prospect of being home for a month. Or the buzz of spending a couple of days with some folks who seemed to, on some level, get the fact that this really is about more than learning the tools. It’s about creating connections, intellectual connections, for sure, but potentially more.

In a year that I've traveled a fair bit in promoting e-learning across southern Ontario, I appreciated the fact you took leave of those closest to you, to assist others in strengthening their own professional and personal networks. You may not have been the first to state that "The network is more powerful than the node." but you were the first in a long while to engage this learner in high level thinking about the collaborative use of the read-write web!

School S___s

What could the title be??

Truth is, when kids used to say to me "School Sucks" I took it personally as a challenge on more than one level. One, the language was vulgar. Two the implication was that as a teacher, I was 'school', and so the student was making a comment about me!

Now that I've got over 20 years experience in education, I have come to agree that "School Sucks", but I've started this blog to expend the thought: "School Sucks: WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT !"