After two days of talking about research in low-incidence disability areas — blind, deaf, severe needs — I’m played. As I was sitting down to post this morning, I was immediately side tracked by a technical problem from one of the conference attendees, despite the fact that it was 6.30AM. When you “do technology support” you have to take these interruptions with a certain level of grace. But it shot the heck out of the rest of my day.
There was a lot of stuff I wanted talk about the basic tool box. And I still would like to talk about how the learner’s box is different from the teachers.
So, I’m gonna ramble here for a bit — but keep in mind that I just drove 180 miles to get here thru a snowstorm and I’m still a little – um – wired.
Adam mentioned owning a laptop. There is a LOT to recommend that. It’s hard to cough up the cash for a lot of families,but if you can find $600 or so for investing in your professional productivity, it’s a good investment. Much better than you might think. There’s nothing like having a familiar environment with you all the time.
Rachel asked if Tapped In would be considered a MOO. (Rachel? You have comments turned off so I couldn’t leave a note.) The answer is No. It actually used to be a MOO back in the early days but now it’s simply an integrated java-based chat and a content management system. MOO’s are much more responsive and flexible. But they also require that users have more knowledge to be effective. I’ll arrange a visit to a real MOO if you like.
Johnny asked why I didn’t think teachers should use PowerPoint. My rationale is that teachers use it “so they can integrate technology into their teaching” but they’re doing it in a mindless fashion in a kind of “we do it because we can” notion rather than using it for any particular pedagogical purpose. As a result, most teachers use it badly — too much information per slide — too many words per line — too much extraneous graphical distractions. Powerpoint represents a mindless application of technology for no particularly compelling reason. Now, having said that, Johnny DOES raise an interesting question about the students using it as a kind of simple storyboard to combine text and graphics. I need to think about that, but my gut reaction is to have them create web pages (that’s what I use instead of Powerpoint) to combine text and images, etc, but PowerPoint IS good for the quick and dirty… I may have to put this back in my toolbox for these kinds of purposes.
You people are definitely beginning to put together some interesting ideas.