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Since I could’t seem to be able to upload any of my photos, this is something from Flickr contributed by Dusk Cao

“Lunch Time at Games for Change Festival”
This is the photo I was not able to upload yesterday at the conference.

I am at the Games for Change conference (festival) in New York.  I’m not sure if I’m uptown or downtown.  It’s on 12th street, just east of 5th avenue, at The New School of Design.  It’s a small/compact conference with lots of people who care.  Games for Learning is about designing and using video games as a force for social change.  It’s an area that I know little about, except conceptually, since I don’t really play video games.  I’m here to learn, and the opening keynote certainly offered lots of opportunities for that.
Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times, has writing extensively about social change, apparently focusing most [...]

Source: David Warlick

Teachers in South Georgia learning about the potentials of using GPS technology in Education.
Flickr Photo by Judy Baxter

I’m home again, and being Saturday, I’m taking walks and just geeking out.  I’ve made it a ways through my aggregator, popping in and out of things that I would normally write about.  But, today, I just feel too lazy.  This one broke through my mode filter.  Published yesterday (May 29), eSchool News reports in Gates Foundation: Teachers Trump Class Size that,
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spent billions of dollars exploring the idea that smaller high schools might result in higher graduation rates and better test scores. Instead, it found the key to better education is not necessarily smaller schools but more effective teachers.1

Some issue is made of the fact that the B&MG foundation spent so much money to find out what most of us already knew.  As L.A. Unified’s chief of staff, [...]

Source: David Warlick

Screen shot from the video

“We’re trying to help our students learn to express themselves in words and images, and moving images in particular,” says Richard Miller, Chair of the Rutgers English Department, in a YouTube’d video presentation, The Future is Now: Presentation to the RU Board of Governors.  He continues,
This is all building towards a larger vision, re-imagining the humanities for the 21st century.  Unquestionably, we are working in a world that is driven by technological advance and improvement, and some people see that as obviating the need for people who excel in spoken expression, the written word, telling stories — for some people that (technology) is the fluff of life.  But actually, that is the backbone of life.  We work in an area that is essentially concerned with the quality of living.

In this presentation, Miller introduces the university’s planned/proposed Center for the New Humanities, and he says that new [...]

Source: David Warlick

Disrupting ClassFlickr Photo by Justin Benttinen

I started Disrupting Class a few weeks ago, but have not been able to get back to it.  However, I ran across this June 2 CNN article, which partly disrupts my own anticipation of federal spending coming to education  — not to mention pointing in some directions that may be difficult for a non-marketplace industry, such as education, to re-orient itself to.
In Commentary: Don’t prop up failing schools, Christensen and Michael Horn say,

There is great danger in the sudden and massive amount of funding — nearly $100 billion — that the federal government is throwing at the nation’s schools. District by district, the budgetary crises into which all schools were plunging created the impetus for long-needed changes.1

I recommend that you read the article for all of the insights shared, but I’ll list the authors’ four suggested “criteria” for developing programs and grants for states [...]

Source: David Warlick

Flickr Photo by Ikkoskinen

I’d planned to title this entry, “Happy Vacation.”  But it is not about vacation that I want to ask you.  That said, here in Raleigh, the school year ends this week, with thousands of high schoolers graduating and going out into an uncertain but possibility-rich world.
Many of you will pack-up your classrooms and go home.  You will relax your teacher muscles and deal with the everyday issues, independent of the unique and demanding service of teaching.
You’re going to want to forget about the classroom — and you should.  But come July and early August, you will start to plan and re-plan, experiment and re-experiment, and get back into service-mode.  By that time, I HOPE to have something available to make that sort of visioning a little more fun.
For now, just to keep you focused, I want to ask, “When you return to your classroom (or other edu-workplace), [...]

Source: David Warlick

Yesterday, I asked what you hope/wish will be in your classroom, when you report back to work in August or September — that wasn’t there last year. The responses on Twitter were immediate and continued, with several people recently retweeting (RT) the request for input.
The graph on the left represents the responses, at this moment, based on my interpretations. Some tweets delivered more than one message, for instance, indicating a wish for 1:1, more computers, and netbooks, all in the same tweet. I found it interesting that only 5% of the messages seemed to directly or indirectly reference budget cuts. The rest are wishes I would have expected to see anytime.  It is also noteworthy, the number of tweets that asked for administration and fellow staff who were more willing to try new things — innovate.

From The Next Web blog entry

Anyway, I found my wish this [...]

Source: David Warlick

In 1967, my family (Dad, Mom, and we four boys) loaded into the Plymouth Belvedere wagon and drove up to Montreal Canada pulling a camping trailer — that my Dad built.  We went to the 1967 International and Universal Exposition, or Expo 67.  It was a Worlds Fair-style gathering celebrating international cooperation (62 nations participating) and technology.
The tech of the day was massive arrangements of CRT tubes, each displaying a different segment of a much larger video presentation, giving the affect of huge electronic motion picture.  What was even cooler was the fact that coinciding displays could branch off with their own video, creating picture within picture.  It was amazing to see.  You say iMovie can do that?

Click Images to Enlarge

I just got off of American Airlines flight 1975 at the O’Hare airport, after enjoying a delicious 3 1/2 inch barbecue chicken pizza in first class.  Walking down the concourse, [...]

Source: David Warlick

100+ Portraits of Iconic People of All Time

I’m sitting in the Marriott Rivercenter, in San Antonion, arriving yesterday dispite the freakish weather that diverted DFW-destined flights all over the south central U.S.  We sat in north west Arkansas, mingling with more nationalities than UN Day at Kennedy International.  You see, WalMart is just down the road.
It’s 5:00 AM now, and I have so much to do to get ready for today’s Keynote at the Texas Association School Boards summer event (Next week its Fort Worth for the rest of the state), but I couldn’t help but look at every one of these, care of Webdesigner Depot.
Today we bring you a great collection of portraits of the most iconic people throughout history.
Portraits explore the relationship between the subject and the photographer or artist and usually continue to impress the viewer years after they have been created.
The common thread running through [...]

Source: David Warlick

Oficina de blogs + educação by Ana Carmen

After speaking to one of the most hospitable audiences of education leaders ever (Texas Association of School Boards), I spent most of yesterday in airports — and eating all manner of Mexican food.  Just left a note on the kitchen count, “No Breakfast for Me!”
I sure didn’t get far into catching up on e-mail before I came up with a question for the smarter part of me — my readers.  The quesiton is this,
What are the pre-requisites for learning to establish and maintain a personal learning network?  Of course, I’m talking about the digital/distant kind of PLN.  I’m going to start things off, but if anything occurs to you, please post it here as a comment.

Computer savvy — practiced mouser; capable at opening, saving, and navigating files; accustomed with working multiple windows; able to connect to WiFi networks; and able to identify [...]

Source: David Warlick

A Mathematician’s Lament, by Paul Lockhart

I just found out about this essay from Ian Jukes, “A Mathematician’s Lament” by Paul Lockhart.  Evidently, the document has been around since 2002 and has circulated on the Internet ever since.  The Los Angeles Times called it a “Gorgeous Essay.”
A professor at Stanford University, Keith Devlin, encouraged the author to expand the essay into a book for a broader audience. 1
Here are the opening two paragraphs.
A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare.  In his dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory.  “We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.”  Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project.  Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or composer.
Since musicians are known to set down [...]

Source: David Warlick