XPLANE, Obama and Social Networking

Just a quick post to pass along this link to XPLANE's latest "XPLANATION." It depicts Barack Obama's success in "reinventing campaign finance" in a visual representation, with a focus on his use of his website and social networking tools.


I don't have anything particularly wise to say about this (please hold your applause), just thought I'd pass it along to folks that might be interested. XPLANE is always interested in feedback, so feel free to comment here and I'll pass it along, or contact them directly.

Birmingham, Michigan is Looking for a Forward Thinking Principal

Just passing this along to anyone who might be interested . . .

If you know of any forward thinking, visionary folks who might be interested in being the new instructional leader (principal) at Birmingham's (Michigan) district wide 3-8 school please encourage them to consider this opportunity.

Birmingham has been doing some interesting things, including a new program called !gnite! which is designed around constructivism and the TCPK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) work of Dr. Punya Mishra at Michigan State.

Apple to Apple

I finally purchased a new computer at home and I thought it might be interesting for a few folks to do an "Apple to Apple" comparison.

First, the picture. Can you pick out which one is the old computer?

Now, the specs.

G3 All In One: Purchased in late spring of 1998 (last all-in-one before the original iMac)
233 Mhz G3 processor (PowerPC 750), 66 MHz system bus, 32 MB PC66 SDRAM, 2 MB vram, 512k backside cache, 4 GB hard drive, 24x CD Rom drive. 13.8 inch screen, 1.44 MB floppy drive, 10Base-T Ethernet, ADB Mouse and Keyboard, OS 8.0, 60 lbs

Upgraded in Summer of 2001: 500 MHz G4 PPC chip, 448 MB RAM, 60 GB hard drive, 6 MB vram, 3 USB 1.0 ports via PCI slot, 2 Firewire 400 ports via PCI slot, OS 9.1

iMac: Purchased May 2008
Dual 2.8 GHz processor (Intel Core 2 Duo), 1066 MHz front side bus, 2 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 256 MB RAM on video card, 6 MB shared L2 cache, 500 GB Serial ATA 7200 rpm hard drive, Slot loading 8x SuperDrive (DVD-RW/CD-RW), 24 inch wide screen, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 mouse and keyboard, 5 USB 2.0 ports, one Firewire 400 port, one Firewire 800 port, 802.11 a/b/g/n-draft wireless, Bluetooth 2.1, built-in iSight camera, OS X v10.5, 25 lbs.

Yes, the old one still works, although there are times when I've had to hard reboot it three or four times in a row to get it to startup all the way. And I've been bringing a laptop (from grant money) home from school for the last year and a half or so as some things I just couldn't do in OS 9 anymore. But I think that's still pretty good - roughly 10 years of usable life with a little upgrade along the way. I doubt I'll make it 10 years with this new computer, but I'm trying to picture what the specs might look like in the spring of 2018 . . .

Poetry Out Loud (and read to yourself)

I meant to write this a couple of weeks ago right after National Poetry Month ended, but better late than never.

First, this story on NPR lets you hear Shawntay Henry, this year’s winner of the Poetry Out Loud contest, read “Frederick Douglass” by Robert E. Hayden.

Second, you can listen to the winners of AHS’s first iPoem contest. This was a last minute idea, so we didn’t get as much participation as we would’ve liked, but we’ll start earlier next year. First place, for the poem “Cthulu (pronounced ku-thew-lew) Converses with his Master” by Allie Fresch (Video, Text). First runner up, for the poem “Tekel” by Olyver Mycroft (Audio, Text), and second runner up for the poem “The Difference Between Life & Living” by Brittany Knigge (Audio, Text).

Finally, from the Summer 2008 issue of Mountain Rise, the International Journal of Scholarship of Learning and Teaching (published at Western Carolina University), the poem Teachers Must by Joe Mills, North Carolina School of the Arts.

Each fall when the new grapes arrive,
we sift and evaluate them,
trying to determine how best
to help them be what they can be.
Some are thin-skinned and delicate,
others gruff and independent.
Some need oak, others stainless steel.
No single process works for all,
so first we must identify
the grapes for what they are, not what
we wish they were. We also must
believe that careful attention,
time, and the right environment,
can help develop character,
complexity, balance, and depth.
But, most of all, we must have faith
that even when we can’t see them
fundamental transformations
bordering on miraculous
are bubbling under the surface.

Imagine

I blogged about Pangea Day previously, but now it’s about to happen. It’s scheduled for May 10th, from 12:00 – 4:00 pm Mountain time.

Pangea Day is a global event bringing the world together through film.

Why? In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it's easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that – to help people see themselves in others – through the power of film.

. . . 24 short films have been selected from an international competition that generated more than 2,500 submissions from 100+ countries. They were chosen based on their ability to inspire, transform, and help us see the world through another person's eyes.

While they don’t have the films posted (at least not yet, presumably they will), there are fifty films listed on the site (so I’m not sure which 24 have been selected). They do have an interesting section titled Anthems, where they have six films posted created by various filmmakers, with each film having citizens of one country singing the national anthem of another country. I thought this was a really interesting idea, one which creative educators could modify and take in dozens of different directions. You can view them on the Pangea site, or I’ve embedded the YouTube versions below.

Australia Sings for Lebanon



Kenya Sings for India




Japan Sings for Turkey




France Sings for the United States



The United States Sings for Mexico


The United Kingdom Sings for Argentina

The Rise of the Rest

I heard an interesting interview of Fareed Zakaria, a Newsweek columnist and editor of Newsweek International, on NPR the other night. He has a new book titled The Post-American World and this short interview (7 minutes) discusses parallels he sees to the British Empire at the dawn of the 20th century (shades of The Presentation That Shall Not Be Named?) and compares the Boer War and how Great Britain dealt with that with the current U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But before you decide this is just more gloom and doom, he also expresses his optimism that the United States can adapt and take on a new role as “Chairman of the Board” as opposed to dictator of the world. He makes some interesting points about the “rise of the rest”, not just China and India but others as well, and how leadership in the 21st century needs to look a little different than perhaps it did in the late 20th century.

I don’t know if this holds any particular lessons for education (I’d like to find time to read the book to see if he talks about that or not), but my thoughts after listening to the interview were that, once again, we need to make sure our students are engaged on a global level. Not just for economic reasons, but in order to help solve some of the major issues facing all of us today – issues that are global in nature and therefore need input and action from citizens across national boundaries. It makes me wonder that with all the lip service that schools typically give to creating “global citizens” in their mission and vision statements, how many of us are actually actively pursuing this in our classrooms?

The Need for Textbooks

I was troubleshooting a computer today right next to a poster with our tornado instructions on it. As I was waiting on a reboot I started reading it and this paragraph jumped out at me.

If there is not time to move rooms, students should assume the duck and cover position under tables or desks in the room. If tables or desks are not available, students should hold textbooks over their heads.

Ahhh, now I finally understand the need for textbooks in K-12. Somehow, "duck and cover" and "hold[ing] textbooks over their heads" struck me as particularly appropriate descriptions of some of the issues facing education.

World Book's 21st Century Research Skills

I had a nice conversation today with an associate manager in the Digital Products division of World Book. They are in the process of developing research guides (one for teachers, one for students) to go along with a new website launch and wanted my thoughts on what 21st century research skills might look like.

At the end of our conversation I suggested that there were many folks in my learning network that World Book could tap for advice and asked if it would be okay if I blogged about it, so here it is. If you have thoughts you'd like to share with World Book please leave a comment below or, if that's just not enough room for your thoughts or resources you'd like to link to, here's a wiki page you're welcome to add to. If you have the time I would really encourage you to do so, as this will be yet another way to positively impact our students.

I Have Absolutely No Way to Become Better as a Teacher

Darren's got a great post where he pulls a page from Carl Glickman's Leadership for Learning: How to Help Teachers Succeed:


I'm basically just reposting this here so more folks read it, so please comment on Darren's post.

Poem in Your (Virtual) Pocket Day

In honor of Poem in Your Pocket Day, here's one for your virtual pocket (via a tweet from Carolyn Foote):