Educational Discourse

This is a short post to all my those who have Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind,(sorry Chris :(  ) and are ready to begin the book club.

I have a copy, finally. I will begin reading vorociously but don’t want to keep anyone back from getting going. I think that the time is ripe for us to begin discussing the book, the threads and the implications. I’ve been pondering how to do this while trying to maintain the hectic lives we all live. Check out David’s last adventure (jealousy and envy are at war within me over this!) to see how some of us spend our time.

I’ll get to the wiki this weekend, put the pages together and then let the wikiing begin. (wikiing - can we make that a verb like skiing?) I suggest that people figure out what chapter they would like to delve into, give some opening remarks or whatever and then we can explore the links and resources, discuss and dialogue about what we find, discover, agree/disagree, etc.

Have a great weekend. Btw, if you have any ideas, please share.

It’s been a very busy week and the basketball team went 0 - 3 at our tournament this weekend. We were missing 5 of which 3 are starters so the rookies ran alot. They were really tired Saturday on the drive home but the improvement in everyone’s game was very noticeable. We go into playoffs next weekend so we could be busy for the next 3 weekends or I could have some life back next weekend. I’m undecided about how I feel.

While driving home, I was able to do some thinking and reflecting about some of the things I’ve been reading this past week on different blogs. Today, I ran across two very good articles on Kimberly Moritz’s blog G-Town Talks . Her post Does Blogging Lead to Other Opportunities? covers some things that I have been wondering about myself. As I have also noticed in the last little while, there are some opportunties being offered that would not have been if I wan’t blogging.

Something interesting is starting to occur and I’m not sure how to handle it. I’m beginning to receive invitations to participate in things outside of my normal realm. For example, I’ve been invited to present at an upcoming technology conference, to participate in teacher candidate development at a local university, to write monthly on another blog, and to participate in a couple of surveys and studies. These invitations have all come about because someone noticed me through this blog.

Now, I don’t have presentation engagements but a few of the others are happening. She goes on to discuss the full life she already has and wonders about where it all fits, how does one say “NO” and the implications down the road of these sort of things. I guess I coul give you a take on this but you can read my comment on her blog. Her next post, Are We There Yet? goes on from there regarding her take on where she is. What caught my attention was

The only other direction I can imagine traveling is one that can impact even greater numbers of kids. But I don’t know what that would be and maybe that’s back to the readers’ comments on the previous post. Perhaps accepting invitations outside of my normal, comfortable work life leads in those directions.

Exactly! The greatest impact on students!

But how do we do that? Where is “There”?

I’m guessing that each of us will have a different take on that, to some degree but, from my reading and the conversations that I have had, there seems to be a serious divide between what some people are seeing in relation to the impact of technology tools (me included) and what we are still seeing in other areas (like teacher inservices and school improvement planning). We really do seem to be going in a few different directions at one time. Being Canadian, I only know about NCLB from what I read but it seems to create a serious divide among many groups involved in education.

Here in Saskatchewan, we are very involved in Assessment for Learning, using Data Driven Decision making where we are focusing most of our energies. Still adjusting to almalgamation, we are trying to find our way in many areas. Where I am an administrator, our division is also focusing on building Learning Communities and within our community, our new School Community Council is trying to decide on a direction to focus upon. So, really, my information and discussion regarding the impact and need for change in our view of technology is very much a personal endeavour although I am beginning to spread the word through afterschool pd sessions. The focus is not on what is happening around us but on looking inwards. This is where, I think, we will find our weaknesses lie. We spend so much time trying to find out what is happening internally that we aren’t aware of what is happening around us and when we look up, we find that many things have passed us by so we scramble to catch up, looking internally again and the whole sorry pictures begins anew.
I know that my blog and the blogs of others are the places that take me outside of the actions that make up my day. I reflect, discuss ideas, talk about apps or what I’ve read and how I respond to it. Some of these are directly related to what I do as an administrator. Some affect how my view of the world is changing which does not always have a direct impact on how I administrate. Having some teaching responsibilities does allow me the opportunity to work with new ideas, try them on for size and begin to invision their impact on school. It also allows me to see if what people are saying in their blogs might have a place in the classroom of regular teachers. I say “regular” because they are more likely to take a “wait until this passes” view of things given the serious amount of things that are piled on their plates. Their plate of responsibilities is so full at the moment and they are feeling overwhelmed by all that is going on. As an administrator, I have to step back and ask “What is best for students?” at junctures such as these, planning direction so that what takes place inside the school is best for the students and doesn’t overwhelm teachers into states of non-effectiveness.

This is where I wonder where “there” is located. Is there a “there”? Or are we now at a junture in society and education when there is no “there” but a continuous evolution of thinking, doing and creating? Do we even worry about getting to a “there”? Do we need to adjust our view and expectations - not a destination but a set of experiences that will be affected by how we react to the next change. Is “there” a place that no longer can be gained with change occurring faster and faster? Do we need to shorten our timelines from 5 years to 1 or 2 years even though we know that some changes seem to take FOREVER?

Really, we, as educators, live in a world of dichotomy - where one part of our world is moving so quickly it takes our breath away while the other side hardly seems to move at all. There we are, stuck in the middle trying to somehow bring these two together. Some people are doing a fantastic job while others are so overwhelmed that they stick with what they know, which, we are finding, doesn’t fit with our present students which is causing some serious problems.

So, where is “there”? Does it even exist anymore? How do we help our colleagues to process and handle the serious amount of different, and sometimes contradictory, information that they need to process?

I’ve spent part of this Friday evening browsing several of the finds from the GO2WEB20.net . I’ll do a commentary on some of the apps I found there in a later post. However, I cant try them all, there are just too many and some of them I don’t need right now. Earlier today I was trying out online desktops. Now, Google office has just been launched and I will give that a try as soon as I get my own site. I did give the following three a test drive this afternoon:

desktoptwo - in beta version. Has everything you could want from RSS reader to blog. It has a nice look and runs okay. I did find the word processor (OpenOffice) was a bit sluggish in opening and performing but I find that it is sluggish on my laptop.

EyeOS - is a cool desktop. I found it work very smoothly. It handled all the forms and pages fairly quickly and I was able to easily navigate around the page. Also, it had some very good skins that are different from the “usual” skins you usually find in a desktop. I still have it open now and I’ve been running it for about 5 hours. It hasn’t caused the browser to freeze and it has a couple fun games, for those who like that sort of stuff! It doesn’t have the wiki or blog option of ZOHO but what is available is very good. I think I’ll definitely give this a full test drive over the next few weeks.

Zoho - a very good desktop with a blog and wiki option. I really liked the way that this worked. I tried it for about the same amount of time as the eyeOS although I didn’t do as much work. I liked the writer and the look of the wiki. I will give it a better look tomorrow. There aren’t as many background skins as the eyeOS either, if that is important to you.

ThinkFree - it was okay. It did freeze up the browser once but after that it worked fine. I tried to install the blog plugin but the directions were not as clear as they could have been. I’ll give it a go later in the weekend. The documents work well but on a busy day it would take a fair amount of time to upload saved documents from the server. That is where the magic of the “geekstick” comes in. Just plug your USB Stick or device in and away you go.

Why am I looking at these? Well, I’m having trouble with my Mac:Office and I’m tired of it. I am trying OpenOffice and NeoOffice but I’m not really happy with them. I like using Appleworks for simple things but it doesn’t always do a great job as it lacks “tools”. I like using Pages but I only have it for another 3 days. Besides, I’m doing all this work online so I figured I’d give these a try.

As I said, I will give Google Office a try and I have some other desktops that I’m going to check out but for now I’m definitely looking at eithr Zoho or eyeOS. We’ll see how things work during the middle of the work week when there’s all kinds of stuff happening. I’ve also wondered what will happen if I’m not connected - but that is where the NeoOffice and OpenOffice will work. It’s really too bad that they are so slow. I like the OpenOffice format better and it seems to load and work better than the NeoOffice. Actually, I wish Apple would just upgrade the AppleWorks to be compatible with .doc documents and then we’d all be happy.

Book club note - things are going ahead. I believe my copy of Dan Pink’s Whole New Mind will be here Monday or Tuesday. We will then get busy figuring out what we’re going to do. I’m looking forward to getting started on this. I keep visiting the wiki to see if anyone has added anything.
If you’re wondering how I get this all done - well I’m having a bit of a sleeping problem - I can’t. So, instead of lying in bed waiting for morning, I get up and do some reading and work. It’s been 4 days now and I’ve been able to keep up with the Google Reader, get some reading done, do some planning and write to my blog. I’m not having fun

My fourth new voice in response to Miguel’s prompt is: Jeff Boulton. Jeff is in administration in the Prairie South School Division here in Saskatchewan. Jeff’s blog has a great deal of information on technical issues. I really liked his comments on the OCC2007 online conference that I also attended.

He is realitively new the to blogosphere so drop by and give his site a read.

Genographic Project - DNA map of the human journey
Synchronous Learning Software

Enjoy the reading!

Previously - Susan Funk , missprofe, Steven Michaluk

Scott McLeod and Dean Shareski are both doing a similar expose. Check out their posts.

Incredible That’s the only way I can describe the response to the book club idea.

Dave Truss and I are working on the beginning of putting things together and we’ll be up and running this week. I did get an email from Miguel who informed me that they are discussing Dan Pink’s book here. He invited us to join. Now, I don’t want to spurn Miguel as I think he is a great person with wonderful ideas but I’d like to see how this whole idea unfolds for us.

I’ve started a wiki for the club. We’d like to begin with that and see how this tool works. We have also been tossing around the idea of meeting in SL, using a discussion board or meeting in TappedIn. But, for now, we’ll go with the wiki. So, if you are interested, please leave a message in the Contact Me space with an email address where we can get messages to you plus any other information for us.

Now, I’m still waiting for the book. Might be here tomorrow but for sure next week. I can’t believe I’m so excited about a book arriving!! Let the reading begin!