My Beauty Best Teacher

• Home | digitalliteracy.gov

  Useful website to help with digital literacy.(via Larry Ferlazzo which was sent by thingsforteachers through tumblr to me - boy it is getting hard to cite sources.)
  
  From phishing to how to set up skype. It also has a link to help you find educator tools.

  tags: education learning all_teachers bestpractices digitalcitizenship professionaldevelopment

• Randy Turner: Joplin Tornado Ends School Year for Most Inspirational Teacher

  This is a powerful post full of thoughts on teaching, inspiration, and tragedy. The most inspirational teacher at the middle school never knew it and quit. She didn't get the last day when she would hear an essay about how she was the most inspirational teacher at the school. She didn't get the last day because her house and the school auditorium where the essay would have been read and the essay itself are now all gone. Tragedy upon tragedy. We need ways for teachers to know that they are inspirational.

  tags: education learning teaching inspiration all_teachers

• Marshall Kirkpatrick, Technology Journalist » New Policy: I Will Not Blog What I Can Tweet

  A prominent blogger is now saying that he will not blog it if it can be tweeted.What do you think? In many ways this excludes the many people who are not on twitter. I think there has to be a happy medium.

  tags: education twitter blogging edu_trends

• Free Technology for Teachers: A Technology Integration Matrix with Video Examples

  Excellent write up on the uses of technology integration information from the Florida Center for Instructional Technology. This is an incredible example of how a good blogger (like Richard Byrne) can take what looks very complex and help his readers understand what they will get out of it.
  
  Of course, I could have written my own take, but since Richard does such a good job, why should I. Which brings us to another point about blogging - we give credit and don't "snarf" blogposts from others as many of the trolls out there are doing.

  tags: education technologyintegrator blogging bestpractices all_teachers

• Technology Integration Matrix

  Florida's Center for Instructional Technology has produced some very useful matrices on the integration of technology. (Hat tip to Richard Byrne - Free Tech for Teachers)

  tags: education video assessment integration techintegration edu_trends bestpractices

• Windows Phone 7 Games in Visual Basic - Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

  Some projects to make games for windows Phones in Visual Basic from Alfred Thompson of Microsoft. (The go to guy for computer science teachers.)

  tags: education programming mobile technology

• Google Reader Extension » Labs.PostRank

  Post Rank extensions for Google Chrome and Safari are cool. You have to be careful that you don't JUST read the highly ranked posts but if you have only time for a quick read, it is useful.

  tags: education learning analytics extensions edu_trends

• Karyn's erratic learning journey: Unbe-flipping-lievable

  Excellent article from Karyn Romeis (hat tip Stephen Downes) about how grades just don't quite measure the ability of children.

  tags: education teaching assessment all_teachers

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

This is Africa reporting on efforts to bolster regional integration. A bugbear if there ever was one:

Africa accounts for just 3 percent of world trade today, and just 12 percent of that is internal. Underdeveloped transport and power infrastructure, as well as cumbersome regulatory environments and corruption also make it the world’s most expensive business environment. Dominated by fragmented and small economies, the continent lags well behind the likes of Asia, Europe and North America in terms of competitiveness – and as a consequence – struggles to attract large scale private investment outside of the extractive minerals and oil and gas industries.Addressing these challenges will invariably focus attention on Africa’s regional economic communities. While each geographical part of the continent has its own REC, one has quickly emerged as a model for integration; the East African Community. Having broken up in 1977, the EAC was re-established in 1999, and has since then taken significant strides towards building an effective economic and political framework for integration across its five member states – Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda.

• PBS Teachers | PBS Teachers . Tech Integration . Research & Best Practices

  Excellent collection of research about technology integration on PBS' technology integration website.

  tags: education research edu_news

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

TED Fellow Ndubuisi Ekekwe writes in Nkpuhe:

Let us we focus on advancing technology and knowledge capital in Africans to mitigate the impacts of trade shocks across the continent. This will help the continent better prepare for the cyclical ups and downs. Let Africa build technology clusters and advance knowledge. It is a better idea of having integration when regions join resources to create Knowledge Economic Communities (KEC). If African regions are connected through technology partnerships and networks, we will realize that currency integration will evolve naturally in this already interconnected world. Our monetary structures are weak and a single currency could hurt Africa deeply since our national budgets are still deficits-prone. Greece has offered a practical lesson for African scholars of current integration and we have to plan very well.

Gumisai Mutume writes:

African countries are grappling to undo a legacy dominated by trade with their former colonial rulers rather than with each other. Senegal's biggest trading partner is France, while Gambia trades extensively with the UK. Although Senegal surrounds Gambia, trade between the two neighbours is minimal...A major critique of current regional integration efforts in Africa is that their design and objectives are driven by a preference for formal rather than informal trade. Ms. Mkhonza (Former assistant secretary-general,ACP ) views the sector as an effective means of integration from below, as small-scale trade is often conducted and driven by the needs of indigenous traders rather than governments or international agencies."There is a real economic integration going on at the informal level," concurs the non-governmental InterAfrica Group (IAG). For many years it has been recognized that many countries' real economies "have been mostly informal and much larger, more dynamic and more regionally integrated than their official economies."

Sanou Mbaye writing in Project Syndicate:

He speaks on the need to liberalize the remittance channels:

The effects of banks’ hijacking of national payment systems to service only the modern economy are compounded by the exclusive agreements that banks and money-transfer companies such as Western Union have signed with most African countries. These agreements lock out non-banking entities from the highly lucrative market for migrant remittances from the African diaspora, which remain a key engine of growth

African states must now recognize that modernizing their informal sectors by integrating them into the modern economy can be a major development tool. Yet only a few countries have started moving in that direction. Nigeria has refrained from signing any exclusive agreements with Western Union and others, and its newly consolidated banking industry is making significant inroads across the region...

Giving micro-finance institutions access to national and regional payments systems and electronic retail facilities will go a long way toward meeting the requirements of the retail and business sector in terms of banking facilities. It will also help facilitate access by the poorest to financial services, thus helping to reduce the high proportion of the un-banked population.

All of this will invariably spur development and integration of national financial systems and intra-regional trade. This will be a welcome development, because a large proportion of intra-regional trade is carried out by informal operators and small and medium enterprises that do not have access to the banking system. Moreover, economic integration and increased intra-regional trade are the best entry point into global markets for all countries.

 Tomorrow, Monday, December 7 at 7pm Eastern Standard Virginia Tech professor and his World Regions class will be interviewing Burmese resistance leader,Aung Sun Sun Kyi, via Skype. Boyer managed to turn a YouTube video  request into the interview.

I received a letter from a former student of his that tells the story very well and have decided to print this letter in entirety. I like the letter because it not only shows how his students value this but his students are using their social media knowledge to help their former professor and I want to help them and help him. We look forward to viewing the video and learning.

And thus, is great teaching in action. Great teachers are now syndicators (sp?) of content. Great teachers share. Great teachers teach us all.

A Letter About My Favorite Professor
from former student Jessy Irwin

I'm writing because I want to publicize the incredible work that one of my favorite college professors is doing with social media in his World Regions class at Virginia Tech. He is John Boyer, an instructor in the Department of Geography in the College of Natural Resources and he's an exceptionally passionate educator who thrives on engaging and communicating with his students through social media. For the third time in a row, he has successfully managed to turn a YouTube video from his super-sized class of 3,000 into a once-in-a-lifetime learning opportunity for his students.

In the past, Professor Boyer has used viral YouTube tactics to lure the likes of Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez to Virginia Tech to discuss their film "The Way", and he even convinced wine aficionado, social media guru and businessman Gary Vaynerchuk to stop through Blacksburg while on a book tour during the Spring 2011 semester. Much of that happened with little fanfare or attention from the university or the Blacksburg, VA community of which he is a member. This time, though, Boyer has turned a World Regions professor's dream into reality-- he managed to turn a YouTube video request to Aung Sun Suu Kyi, leader of the resistance movement in Burma, into an hour long Skype interview with her and his class. 

Having been recently been liberated from 30 years of house arrest imposed on her by dictator Than Shwe,  Suu Kyi recently met with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and is regularly courted by foreign media for interviews. That she could be convinced by the sheer enthusiasm of 3,000 students half a world away from her is to take the time for an interview is a poignant example of how social media and technology can enhance and enrich student experience in ways never before possible. Professor Boyer is working to open a live-feed of the Skype interview for educators and interested parties, though the event may also be live-streamed by various Asian media outlets

Professor Boyer isn't just active on YouTube-- he maintains a course website and a UStream channel through which he conducts weekly online office hours, he uses a Facebook page to announce course events to his class, and he uses his own Twitter account in addition to a backchannel Twitter hashtag to communicate with his 3,000 students. His course material even includes regular uploads of his podcasts as the Plaid Avenger, a Jon Stewart-inspired, schwingy superhero who travels the world in pursuit of international justice. Though this is a higher education example of technology integration in the classroom, more teachers need to hear about the work that he and other professors are doing with technology. At one point in his career, students were barely showing up to his class, which could be used to fulfill a university curriculum requirement for graduation-- now, he begins each semester with huge wait lists of students every semester who want to take his class as an elective but for whom there isn't enough room.

I could go on and on and on about the work that Boyer and his assistant Katie Pritchard do. His educational use of technology to leave Virginia and pursue a career in social media + educational technology in the Silicon Valley. While this story takes place within the context of higher education, much can still be gleaned from how social media and technology integration can enhance the efforts of an effective, engaging educator and enrich a student's learning experience. At a time when so many question the effectiveness of technology adoption and whether it is making a difference in education, Professor Boyer's provides a concrete example of technology's potential and ability to positively change the classroom for the better. Alternately, while higher education is usually outside of the realm of standardized curriculum and assessments, this particular educational technology success story serves also as an example of technology-facilitated learning that may well be immeasurable within the confines of today's standardized testing.

Obiageli Ezekwesili writes:

Today, there is strong consensus among African leaders that regional integration is indispensable to unlock economies of scale and sharpen competitiveness. And promoting intra-African trade has emerged as a top priority, in recognition that the African market of one billion consumers can be a powerful engine for growth and employment.
Yet despite the introduction of free trade areas, customs unions, and common markets within the Region, the level of intra-African trade remains among the lowest in the world -- only about 10% of African trade is within the continent, compared to about 40% in North America and about 60% in Western Europe.

Kavaljit Singh writes:

To a large extent, the expansion of South-South and South-North investment flows reflects the increasing integration of developing countries into the world economy. A number of important factors including regional integration through trade and investment agreements, trade and financial liberalisation, increasing wealth as well as limited market size and resource base at home have encouraged Southern TNCs to invest abroad.

• Study reveals factors in ed-tech success « Project Red News

  Some may not have read this study , but it is an important one presented at ISTE this past year about successful technology implementation and has been called the largest scale study of technology integration of its kind.

  tags: education laptop 1to1

• Schumpeter: The wiki way | The Economist

  Review of the new book Macrowikinomics by Tapscott and Williams. This is a book that I've got to dive back into more deeply this month as we prep for another NetGenEd this spring.

  tags: education wiki

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

This is a great post from the Commentary:

Like his fans say, Obama has the wind at his back. Yet McCain can’t even turn paradisaical weather to his advantage. On its own terms, the continued success of U.S. forces in Iraq is a near miracle. Yet the man who championed the winning way from the start can’t seem to get anyone to notice, let alone care. And Obama’s rogues’ gallery of intimates–the crooks, cranks, and bombers who have been critical in shaping his career–end up looking like exaggerated footnotes once the McCain camp works them over in the press. John McCain repeats and repeats his charges against Obama, most of them valid, but instead of swaying public opinion, it comes off as white noise. He’s recounted his own astounding achievements so many times that his heroism is now taken for granted rather than marveled at.

The danger is in mistaking Barack Obama’s hypnotic talents for vision. People say this is Obama’s time because Obama says this is his time. But when you’re the one setting the clock, it’s always your time. In terms of what’s actually happening in the world, this is decidedly not Obama’s time. We’re in an economic meltdown of unforeseeable length and enormity, and Obama wants to raise taxes on small businesses and pay for everyone’s health coverage. We’re facing nuclear weapons in the hands of America’s most fearsome antagonist of the past thirty years, and Obama wants to talk to them about it. We’re finally winning a hellish five-year war of untold strategic importance, and Obama can’t wait to stop it. We’re attempting to turn around our luck in another critical war, and Obama has been threatening our most important potential ally for a year. The global economy has advanced down the inexorable path of integration, and Obama is wary of free trade. Every one of America’s fair-weather friends is telling us that U.S. dominance is a thing of the past, and Obama embraces the doctrine of American declinism.

This may not be Obama’s time–but that won’t stop him from making November 4 his moment.

Yes, technology should be in every course. Of course. 

But to be everywhere it must also be understood everywhere. The fact is that right now (particularly in the US) teachers are stressed, budgets are stressed, and to just cut technology courses and say "Oh, we're going to integrate it everywhere" without a plan is really saying "we're not going to use technology as much."

Getting Rid of Computer Class

Many people are going the way of getting rid of "computer class" but I have found that technology should be specifically TAUGHT kind of like we teach "handwriting" - handwriting is important enough to grade separately when there is something that must be mastered - it moves off the "report card" when it is just part of what we do. Without the grade in handwriting - this vital skill is lost.

So, as something is needed to be added to the student's toolset you have to focus on it. i.e. making videos, voicethread, wikis, collaborative writing, blogging, podcasting, editing audio, etc. and then it becomes just something you "do" like writing a paper. You're always adding aspects to it and improving it.

I know a school down the road that got rid of "computer" and put in Latin. Their reasoning was "if the kids need to know how to use PowerPoint they can come in at 7:30."  OK, well, what about global collaboration, digital citizenship, visual literacy, copyright? Oh, I see, let the Latin teacher do that? Oh, all teachers should do that? Well, they should but is it realistic?

There is what SHOULD happen and what DOES happen and all of us realists out here know that most of us have a long way between the SHOULD and the DO.

Don't we let one teacher at the elementary level FOCUS on handwriting? Shouldn't we let a teacher FOCUS on keyboarding. We reap what we sow.


Where Are We Going?
After coming back from China I realize many of us just don't get it here in the US. My students saw fifth graders doing what some of my seniors can't do -- they are controlling the stop motion camera mounted on their soccer field and capturing frames and giving feedback to the players of what they are doing! They live and breathe all kinds of media and have someone in ICT. I do think that the  International Baccalaureate Program  has an excellent framework that is influencing what I do here.



Learn from the Best.
We cannot look at those who are lagging but at those who are the best. Because of budget cuts many are settling. We cannot afford to settle at this point - I'm talking to US teachers - most likely our economy will be the second largest in the world in the next 8 years and I've seen what our children MUST be able to do.

We must move forwards not backwards. 

Sure we have to do it with less money and more sweat of the brow but goodness knows, it is time to stop blaming other people and whining. Throughout the generations tough times happen and those with great character rise to the occasion.




Be the Best.
That being said - I think most "computer classes" are hugely lacking in what they cover and often use computer software to teach what humans are better at teaching (i.e. keyboarding) and humans to teach what real-life experience can teach better (digital citizenship learning experiences, true global collaborative projects.) Sometimes we use books to teach what well designed projects would teach better (i.e. the effective use of software - point and click teaching is a WASTE of time!)

We need to follow best practices and set as our goal to be the best!


Better Your Best.
I've said a lot here and have to add that we're not perfect here either but I know where we are working towards and it is towards INTEGRATION in every class AND focused experiences to learn how to use these tools at a younger and younger age. I'd be happy if our first graders could type and make videos - but that isn't going to be possible yet so I"ll be happy w/ voicethread.


What Technology Lets You Do.
It is, however, NEVER about the technology but what it lets you do. I like Voicethread because students can easily use their voice. If they can learn to TALK in a topic sentence then when they are ready to construct paragraphs by hand - the concept is in their mind already. Anything to help bring multisensory learning and expression to differentiate and reach all students should be what we do - but it shouldn't be done some here some there.

As Chris Lehman says, technology should be like air. Ubiquitous, everywhere, invisible.

When Invisibility Happens



But it doesn't become INVISIBLE until everyone knows how to do it. Air is invisible because we all know how to breathe and it is everywhere. Technology is not invisible because it is NOT everywhere and when it is there, many do not know how to breathe it into their mode of teaching.

Time to Get Moving
Those of you who have heard me speak will recognize this - but it has to be said. The fact that you are reading a blog puts you in the minority!

You can't do it all, but you can do something.

The question is not how you compare to the teacher down the hall but how do you compare with yourself yesterday, last week, last month, last year? Are you improving yourself?

Sometimes we are too busy having a pity party to get ourselves busy and head towards that victory party!

Look at the thinking that is holding you back. Move ahead. Be creative. Let's get moving.

And until it becomes like air and we integrate it everywhere -it is going to take time. And when it becomes like air and is integrated everywhere remember that you'll still have transfer students! ;-)

This post is extracted from a conversation I've been having with Michael Rhodes, Director of Technology of High Meadows School in Roswell, Georgia through the MISBO buying consortium. I'm very happy that my small school has joined MISBO. This nonprofit group that I found out through a chance seat on a plane trip from ISTE last year has helped us buy technology at DRASTICALLY reduced rates. It is a buying consortium for small schools or independent schools. I highly recommend it and NO, they don't pay me. ;-)

Nicholas Kristof's Africa, Andrea Bohnstedt writes in the Star

Kristof tells a story of ‘Africa’ firmly through the lense of a humanitarian NGO fundraiser – there is little notion of a continent turning itself around in this succession of people whose condition improves from wretchedness to bare survival thanks to Western-funded charities. He could have come to Kenya: there’s a good bit of wretchedness here, too, what with the famine in the Horn, and Kibera is a tried and tested (in fact, internationally famous) showcase for urban poverty. But Kristof and his travel mates could have also met up with Martin Oduor Otieno to hear a bit more about KCB’s regional expansion, with Airtel’s team to hear about their pan-African plans, with Vimal Shah to learn about a regional agricultural and agroprocessing firm. Maybe visited the NSE? Chatted to Stella Kilonzo about regional capital market integration, or asked Suzanne Kilolo Kedenge about digital investor relations management, or perhaps listened to Isis Nyong’o talk about mobile advertising? Kenya has some kickingly capable women and no, they don’t all excel at grinding millet. As it stands, the article is one neatly executed piece of pan-continental character assassination.

Stephen Thomsen has just published a paper(PDF) on the increasing level of private investment in Africa:
"...Private capital flows to Africa in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI) are growing. While in the past much of this investment was limited to the raw materials sector, the current wave involves firms from more countries and sectors than ever before.
• Foreign investors, including from within Africa itself, invested almost $50 billion in Africa during 2000–03. While this represents only a small share of global flows, the more relevant comparison is with the size of the African economy. By this measure sub-Saharan Africa attracts almost as much FDI as Southeast Asia.
• Although Europe remains the principal source of investment, a rising share is coming both from Asia and from within Africa itself.
• Investors have been influenced by improvements in governance, most notably with respect to the business climate, where the desire to attract foreign investors can provide a strong incentive for African governments to reform their policies and practices. Although much remains to be done, some countries have nevertheless made great progress in areas such as political and economic stabilization, privatization and simplification of cumbersome regulations.
• This foreign investment also has implications for patterns of trade and integration. Many African exports are channelled through multinational enterprises, helping to integrate African countries both with one another and with the global economy.
Via Owen.org

Ethan Zuckerman writes:

For Africa to succeed economically, Birdsall(director of the Center for Development Economics) suggests, nations need to trade with each other more, creating larger, more attractive markets and reaping economies of scale. It makes very little sense for each state in Africa to build their own garment industry… and even less sense for each country to protect their industry against their neighbors with tariff barriers - if trade between countries was easier and cheaper, nations could specialize in sectors of the economy, begin trading to neighboring states, then grow and trade with the wider world. But at present, Sub-Saharan African nations levy tariffs on average of 17% on trade with each other; OECD nations have dropped these tariffs to an average of under 4%.

G. Pascal Zachary writes :

The problem of course is that Congo, as a political entity, is an illusion. The country is too large, diverse and riven by durable differences to be managed from a single center. It is time to explore a truly federalized Congo that might over the next 10 to 20 years peacefully “devolve” into a several nation-states. Eastern Congo would be especially well-served by “devolution,” since the region – today the least stable in the current Congo – has natural economic, social and geographic links to neighboring Uganda and Rwanda. If Scotland can engage in a process of “devolution” from Britain, why cannot eastern Congo engage in the same process? Colonial maps cannot forever burden the serious and expensive efforts to develop regional integration, whether in East Africa or the sub-Saharan generally. The double-standard – whereby European countries can split themselves apart based on democratic processes but African countries are eternally bound by the borders of their former European masters — ought to end. That European governments often quickly oppose any talk of redrawing African are examples of both hypocrisy and stupidity. European governments spend billions of dollars holding together unwieldy African countries and in the end sustain only the fiction of real sovereignty. The Congo is perhaps the best example of this. Congolese elections, which cost European donors a hefty sum, accomplished the little more than to highlight the folly of holding this vast territory together under a single political rubric. Maintaining the fiction of the Congo, in short, is dangerous and ultimately futile.

Yao Graham of the Third World Network writes in Pambazuka:

...in the face of the global crisis many African governments are looking only outwards towards their ‘development partners’ rather than exploring the opportunities for deepening regional and continental cooperation and integration. The IMF is offering its pernicious advice that not much needs to change and there seem to be many in African leadership ready to listen. Meantime in the global North, pages are being torn from the rulebooks by which African economies have been run from Washington...[continue reading]