Hintonblogger

This started out as an email to my brother about something I had mentioned to him earlier, but I soon realized that I needed to blog about this and he could read it there.
I don't know if you create a lot of off-line documents (I do, especially training guides) but today I wanted to classify/save a document two ways, one as category and the other as a specific date 2006-07 and wondered what folder to create to put it in - just the category or to nest the category(folder) inside of a 2006-07 folder, etc. A little conundrum. Obviously tagging my document in much the same way I would a blog post would be one potential solution, but I didn't know how I could easily (or if at all) do that. I figured somebody else had to have problems with this so I googled "tagging files with metadata categories" to see what solutions to the problem I could find.

I attended a session on creating Online Communities for Novice Teachers and decreasing Teacher Dropouts. One key point that was shared was that if teachers did something 3 times, they would be much more likely to do it and do it well the fourth time.

Another element they discussed was Tapped In. I'm not very familiar with it, but from what I understand is that it is a flexible synchronous and asynchronous community that teachers can participate in. I just wonder what advantage it provides over tools that have a discussion forum/chat - is it because it is a hosted solution that varied groups can participate in with very little advance planning?

The New Story presentation that David Warlick is sharing is compelling, but it seems there must be some intermediary steps in order to get there.

One of the best examples is that the road to the New Story about education has to accommodate some of the institutionalized aspects of Industrialized education, at least initially. So the question is how we can begin the new story in education, defined by flexibility, communication and collaboration, and authentic learning while the social limits brought by our industrial society.

Here are some examples of what I mean.

School Day
The rigidity of the school day has long been based on the bell structure originated in industrial factories. How can we accommodate the fact that schools must take care of children during the work day, while breaking from the rigid structure that seems inconsistent with the flexibility required by the information society we are transforming into.

Nicholas Negroponte gave the principal keynote at NECC 2006 and spoke about the $100 laptop. He started off by talking about the types of education throughout the world and some of the challenges they face.

*No power
*No Teachers
*No roads sometimes

He gave some economic details about how the laptop was going to be made. He also commented briefly on the criticism he had received from Microsoft and Intel about the laptop. The crowd generally gave him an ovation whenever he mentioned that criticism. Which leads me to ask why people insist on berating Microsoft in particular, especially in the education environment? Most of the people in the room were doing to Microsoft what many in the press have done to Mr. Negroponte, they were berating an idea without understanding the details behind it. The people in that room were booing Microsoft without a clue as to why, because Mr. Negroponte offered no details of their criticism. Could it possibly be that the Microsoft and Intel simply have a different idea of what will work and are different ideas so wrong? Consider what Mr. Negroponte is saying or proposing with his idea? It really is transformational and a potential game-changer. Why should we expect (or disapprove) of companies that see someone threatening their "turf" and react to it, don't we do the same thing in our own lives?

Back to Blogging with Gusto! I'm back at NECC and loving my first day of sessions and activities. I was fortunate enough this year to be able to present at NECC on Strategies for using Moodle effectively in the classroom and it was an awesome experience. I'll blog a little more about that later. Now about my first day at NECC:

I was nervous about presenting, but decided I needed to take advantage of being here and planned a full schedule for today. The first session I attended was about Virtual Schools and really looked at the concept of online learning and virtual schools from an institutional perspective. It was presented by people from the Southern Regional Education Board. For me the biggest impact was the reminder that online courses, learning, and teaching is expanding and not going away, in fact, as the presenters shared, it is a viable learning option for students. I started feeling a little panicked (and not because I was presenting next). The reason is that I want to be a part of this great new learning opportunity and I feel like I'm somewhat unprepared and I don't want to be left behind.