This time around I play with a new toy (a digital video camera), lament (sort of) on spending so much on tech, and talk about redefining education. Don’t like the video? I have an audio only version if you prefer.
I’ve recently fallen in love with the podcasts that National Geographic is rolling out on a regular basis. In one of them they’ve posted an interview with John Wood, an ex-Microsoft employee who got the idea of collecting books for impoverished schools in Nepal and Vietnam (and more countries?) after a vacation to the Himalayas. He founded an organization called Room to Read and has started over 3,000 libraries already, saying he wants to set up more libraries than Starbucks has coffee shops. But enough…Continue Reading “Room to Read”
Today’s ‘cast is all about groups and a legitimate concern or two voiced by Bud the Teacher. (I’m cross-posting it on the Next Gen Teachers group partially to check out how well it handles podcasts.) (UPDATE: Looks like it works just fine.) Shownote links: Bud’s post on groups DEN Seedlings Next Gen Teachers Teachers 2.0
I just spent over 2 hours chatting with a 16 year old student in Poland who found me on Skype and wanted to practice his English skills. We talked about popular culture, politics, school, and anything else he could think up. He had only been learning English for two years, but he was good enough to get by in most English speaking countries, I think. The cool part is that this was a kid who decided on his own that he wanted some practice, so…Continue Reading “His English was better than my Polish”
(Taken from Dangerously Irrelevant) All education bloggers are hereby invited and encouraged to… complete the short and completely unscientific, but hopefully interesting, education blogosphere survey; forward the URL of said survey to all other known education bloggers to ensure decent representation of the education blogosphere; and publicize said survey URL on their own blogs to foster greater participation in this most noble endeavor. Survey results received by Sunday, January 14, shall be posted in the town square on Wednesday, January 17. Those solicited who choose…Continue Reading “Hear ye! Hear ye!”
Chris Craft (a man who is quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers) wrote a post yesterday that I find difficult to sum up in an introduction. He had a few insights that spoke to me, partially because art and foreign language are both lumped outside that tightly knit group of “core” subjects. (I continue to believe that a “core” subject should be any subject that prepares you for the real world. For me, my art classes were some of the most important core classes…Continue Reading “Academic Aesthetic Netcast 121”
I’m giving up. That’s right, I’m giving up on Audacity. It’s a solid program with some nice features, but it just can’t top my copy of GarageBand. Purple tracks extending across the screen, how I missed you! In any case, I recently received an email from Lance Rougeux of the Discovery Educator Network. He was inquiring about how many DEN members would still be attending the PETE&C Pre-Conference in Hershey, PA. I must admit, I thought about it for a while. As you may recall…Continue Reading “Academic Aesthetic Netcast 120”
This longer than normal ‘cast starts off as more or less a summary of my last blog post, but then I get into something entirely new – a new online education community! Links Mentioned: Technology Education Network (Name is a work in progress) Drupal, Mambo, and Plone Art Club Netcast Chris Craft‘s many, many web sites. Washington Post’s news story on the fiasco.
The following is a response to a recent email I received concerning a decision the higher-ups at the Discovery Educator Network recently made. I tried joining in the forum discussion for this very topic, but for some reason (perhaps their server is overworked at the moment?) I could not. So instead, I’m posting it here. Be warned, this isn’t exactly a positive posting. Part of me is worried about what this could do to my permanent record, but then I think of how friends of…Continue Reading “DEN takes a huge step backward”
You’ll notice that this edition of the Academic Aesthetic is not part two of the workshop I recorded a couple of weeks ago. The truth is that I have a few topics I would like to discuss, so I’m postponing the rest of the 3 hour workshop until whenever, or until people start asking for it. If I keep uploading recordings from the same workshop I think I’ll start to get lazy(er), and nobody wants that, right? I’ve noticed a lot of time shifting trends…Continue Reading “Academic Aesthetic Netcast 117”