I remember Monopoly from my youth. We called it Monotony because of the interminable length of game play and how long it took to actually make it around to where you could move. In spite of that, we had a great time playing with all the little pieces. Here’s an interesting bit of news and I think the “Wednesday” referenced was yesterday!

But when I played the new online version this morning I was free from such a driven competitor. Monopoly City Streets, a link up between game owners Hasbro and Google Maps, launches on Wednesday for a four-month period. It enables one, in theory, to buy any street in the world.

via New online Monopoly game is streets ahead | Technology | guardian.co.uk.

Go read the whole piece and maybe I’ll see you in the game.

The game site appears to be overwhelmed. Gee, I wonder why?

Posted in 688, Education, Games | 3 Comments »

I love this guy.

Class members should have seen this on their aggregators, but this is too current — too important to let slide.

My idea is simply this. How can we use an event like this, and all of the news sources that are available on a breaking, global story in our classrooms? How can we teach kids about which sources of information are valuable in the midst of swirling rumour? They must be able to evaluate the worthiness of primary information surces at a time like this. There are many different channels of information available. How can our understanding be collated and improved instead of swamped by information and rumour?

This is a real test of information literacy skills.

via Remote Access: Swine Flu and Breaking News in the Classroom.

Clarence is right. This is a real test. More than a test for his kids, it’s a test for us. We *think* we get it.

Do we?

Posted in 628, 644, Education, Resources, Technology | 5 Comments »

I’ve been a bit derelict in directing the class so here’s a step back into the river of learning with a recap of something I found last year.

Posted in 628, 644, Education | 9 Comments »

It happens again, and again, and again, and again …

John Pederson is a fellow twitterer – one of the almost 700 people I follow on Twitter – but I had to go to Remote Access to find a comment he left on one of Clarence’s posts, which brought me to THIS post on his blog.

It’s a learning project. It’s not a social networking project. It’s not a Web 2.0 project. It’s not an online community or a virtual world. Teachers need to experience and learn online learning. It’s built through a collaborative model of online learning and teaching. We aren’t building virtual schools or training more teachers. Leave that to others. This new collaborative model becomes the network around the network.

via ijohnpederson » Blog Archive » Idea.

It’s eerily similar to what *I* said just the other day about teachers and learning. An idea that’s been brewing here for a few weeks surfaced in a completely different form from a completely different vector.

This synchronicity is endemic and it’s one of the ways you know you’ve got a network.

For me, the really fascinating meta-moment here was when I remembered a post I made about a year ago about having different people pop up with the same idea almost at the exact same time.

Ironically, just a few weeks later, Will and I were talking about the same things at the same time again.

Guess what it was!

This is what we mean when we talk about having a personal learning network. It’s having ideas, and seeing them validated (or occasionally invalidated) through the serendipitous application of the network. Note that neither John nor I are saying anything radically different here than Will Richardson and I and many others were saying last March.

What’s different is that we’re refining the ideas over time. We’re constructing a common belief structure — distilling it out of experience into some stronger spirit than simple practice.

Posted in 628, 644, Education, culture | 4 Comments »

There seems to be an imperialism involved with this topic of equity. Everybody has to be equal. That’s only right, right?

Except, does equity really mean equal?

Can we all be equal but still have inequity?

I’m seeing a lot of people who seem to think that if the student doesn’t leave the classroom knowing exactly what every other student knows, then — somehow — that’s not equitable.

I left a comment on a student’s blog post about equity and peas. In it I made the point that equity didn’t mean that every student ate the same number of peas, but rather that every student had the opportunity to eat the peas he or she wanted.

Notice I’m using the term “wanted” and not “needed.” How many peas do you need, after all? One? twelve? a thousand? Sure, I’m willing to accept that in a well ordered society, we might need to put some kind of reasonable limit on how many peas you get. Beyond that number, it’s up to you to figure out how to deal with your legume habit, but up to that number, it’s pretty reasonable that you might want to have peas now and again — with, perhaps, a nice meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

Maybe we live someplace were peas aren’t really that common and we need to try to find social rules for sharing out the peas among those that like them most. Some people might be willing to trade a share of peas for some green beans — or even venture into the cruciferous and try brussels sprouts.

So is it equitable? Does everybody have to eat their allotment of peas? What about those that don’t like them? Or perhaps have an allergy?

Does this seem kinda silly?

Then when we approach things like education, why are we talking about equity in terms of making sure every student learns the same thing?

I’ve been harping on this “one size fits all” problem for awhile in variety of contexts. I see it as part of the overall picture in Education. Standards work great when you wanna plug in an electrical appliance and be sure that it will work and won’t burn the house down in the process. Standards and Education are a bit more troubling because by adopting standards you’re saying everybody has to know the same thing. Or at least some of the same things. And when you assess based on standards, what you get are measures of the things you’re looking for but not necessarily the things you need to know.

You find out how many peas I ate. But you don’t find out that I gave half of them to my sister who likes them better.

In the first case you find out how well I conformed to standards.

In the second you find out something about me.

Where’s the equity?

Posted in 628, Education, culture | 7 Comments »

Tim Holt is an educational podcaster who often has some interesting things to say:

What happens when a teacher comes up against a textbook company and it’s intellectual property protection clause?

In this case, the teacher is left with little help from their education “partner” and is left to fend for herself.

via Intended Consequences.

There’s an audiofile associated with this post (yes, it’s a podcast. There’s a feed). Go listen to it and see if you think this teacher should be allowed to do what she says she wants to do with Houghton Mifflin’s copyrighted materials.

This is an exercise in listening. Don’t listen to what you think she means. Listen to what she says she’s going to do.

Discuss.

Posted in 628, 644, Education | 31 Comments »

Myself, I’d never go so far as say “You all get A’s.” This guy did.

“Grades poison the educational environment,” he insists. “We're training students to be obedient, and to try to read our minds, rather than being a catalyst for learning.”

via globeandmail.com: Professor makes his mark, but it costs him his job.

My attitude is that every student starts with an A and then slowly gives up points by being students instead of learners.

But I’m that kinda guy.

Hat tip to D’Arcy Norman.

Posted in Education | 1 Comment »

Stephen Downes has this take on culture and morality. He’s linked to an “Inside Higher Ed” article by the same title.

It’s Culture, Not Morality

People often blur the distinction between legality and morality, reasoning (oddly and incorrectly, in my view) that whatever is against the law or even against the rules is also immoral. But rules do not reflect morality, they reflect culture, and culture changes with time.

If you’re not subscribed to OLDaily in your aggregators, you should be. The feed is at OLDaily

Posted in 628, Education, culture | 4 Comments »

I suppose I should take comfort in the constancy that in every semeseter, I will find students who believe in “learning styles.” The comfort comes from knowing I have resources lined up to try to help. Like this post:

Learning Styles
Several of you have referred to “learning styles” in some of your posts and comments. I know it’s fashionable, but it’s also not supported by any credible scientific evidence.

And this one:

Learning Styles, Again
In order to justify the “Learning Style” theory, that individual student MUST show sigificant improvements across a wide variety of content areas delivered in a variety of modes and therein lies the rub. Whatever design this research takes, it must somehow tease out that causal relationship between the delivery mode and the outcome that’s independent from the repetition.

I even use it as an example of non-theory here:

Theory?! What Theory?!
My problem with it is that it seems so nonsensical that the likelihood of it actually being true is too remote for me to waste spend time with it. Logically, it just lacks a level of coherence that I need in order to take it seriously.

Yes, I know. A lot of people believe in learning styles. That’s fine. I’m happy they worship at that altar.

Education isn’t something I’m willing to take on faith.

Posted in 628, 644, Education | 16 Comments »

Brian Lamb has a new post up that was inspired by meeting Dr Sugata Mitra. For those who’ve not heard of Dr Mitra’s “Hole in the Wall” project, Brian has the best links (including the TED Talk on the subject).

This is the interesting point for me:

Dr. Mitra is convinced that these methods cannot work for adults. Based on my own instinct and experience, I have to reluctantly agree with him. Why not? And what would adults need to unlearn in order to learn the way these kids do? I again find myself thinking that the teaching of skills is less important than changing attitudes – but I have no idea how best to do so.
Abject Learning: The hole in the wall: the holes in my thinking and my life.

I think this does work for adults, but perhaps we don’t recognize it. If there’s a difference between kids and adults, it’s the driver. A kid sees something new and says “Ooo, what’s this? Can I play with it?” An adult says, “Oh, great. Can I avoid this for the moment while I deal with the urgent problems of the day?”

The difference is that a kid will see how this new thing — whether it’s an idea, a device, or a process — can be adopted, adapted, or otherwise integrated into his or her life. They’ll poke at it a little bit to see if there’s anything interesting there and then make a decision. An adult will have to be shown that it’s useful before they’re willing to invest the time to learn about it. For many adults (and I’m not sure that maybe it’s “most” adults), the demands on time and attention are so overwhelming that they just can’t add another thing without dropping something. Yet, when they need to know something new, they need to know it in a hurry. How to buy a car? How to finance a house? What are the employment regulations in my new state? How can I cut calories, reduce fat, get the doctor off my case, and not want to lay down in traffic?

I’m not sure that Brian isn’t right about the dichotomy between skills and attitudes, but I also wonder if the issue is that we’re so tied up in teaching “core competencies” and “required knowledge” that we forget to teach people how to learn and how important it is to be constantly scanning the horizon for new things to learn about.

Posted in Education, Technology | 5 Comments »