But here’s a question for you – if you wanted to make one of these, whose head would you use? A personal hero? Family member? Your own? Let me know with a comment to this post. I’m curious.
(Oh, and I’m still waiting for someone to find the lie. Do you have a guess?)
If you’re someone who’s learned something while creating podcasts, or even if you just know of a good resource or how-to guide, why not go over to my wiki and add it in? Even if you do nothing more than add a link to someone else’s wiki on podcasting, it’ll still be a big help.
More on the inspiration later, but first two things: Yesterday on a whim (since it has nothing to do with my usual ed/tech/art ramblings) I posted a blog entry that included 20 things about myself … but one of them was a lie. I invited readers to guess which one is false, and at the time I’m writing this 4 people have made their guesses but no one’s gotten it right, yet. If you feel like playing along, you can go here.
Next up, I’m cross-posting this on Teachers 2.0 strictly for item three on today’s agenda. Teachers 2.0 is a much larger community, as evidenced in more than one significant way, and I really want to hear people’s feedback. You can comment here or there, although to be honest more people might read your response if you post it there.
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Ok, on to the heart of today’s episode. In the past I’ve expressed mixed feelings about high stakes standardized testing. I feel that our goal as educators should be to prepare students to be successful in the “real world,” and that teaching to the test (which seems to be an inevitable outcome of this kind of assessment) does not do this – especially if and when the test itself is not assessing skills that will be required in the real world.
People in the U.S. reading this now may immediately think of NCLB, but I was teaching before that legislation passed I recall high stakes assessment being disproportionately emphasized back then, too.
Now in the past every time I expressed this opinion, I added that while I dislike tests like this I feel I can’t complain too much because it’s difficult to think of another way to compare schools from year to year across a district, county, or nation without some sort of one-size-fits-all non-subjective bar with which we can measure student achievement.
But the other day, I put two and two together. What’s our goal again? To prepare students for the real world. So how should we assess them? How about by looking at how they perform in the real world, or at least in response to real world situations.
What if, instead of subjecting our students to tests that stress out everyone involved, we created some form of rubric to evaluate how they do after they stop calling themselves students? The rubric could include things like salary, job satisfaction, and any one of a number of variables that we apply to ourselves when we ask ourselves if we think we’ve been successful.
Of course if we adopted this system there would still be some problems. True assessment would not be able to be measured until they were no longer our students, thus keeping us from correcting discrepancies that a well written standardized test may have caught. Maybe a combination of the two? I don’t know.
I’m not saying this is the perfect solution. I’m not even saying I’ve thought this completely through yet, but it is something I’ve been mulling over, and I’d love to hear your opinion on the whole thing. What have I overlooked? Why would or wouldn’t this type of assessment be a good idea? If it was your job to create the real life rubric, what would be the core variables worth measuring?
This was inspired partially by Steve Dembo’s little trivia post, but mostly by famed webcartoonist & adventurer Ryan Estrada. Granted, Mr. Estrada’s are much more fanciful, but I still like my list. See if you can guess which one is false! And yes, I know some of these do make me sound a bit full of myself (assuming they’re true). However, I think there are some embarrassing ones in there as well (assuming they’re true). (After this we’ll return to my irregularly scheduled education / technology / art podcasts. I have one half written.)
I was born without tonsils. [TRUE! See the comments.]
I was also born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. The lack of oxygen at this crucial point may explain #19 on this list. Well, it explains a LOT of things.
There is footage of me getting attacked by a goat. [TRUE! See the comments.]
On my first real date ever I locked my keys in the car with the engine running. [TRUE! See the comments.]
An astronaut once signed my hall pass. [TRUE! See the comments.]
I once had a high school teacher tell my class “Oh yeah, my wolves came home last night.” He wasn’t joking.
I have climbed up one side of a mountain and down the other. More than once.
I once forgot to take off my glasses while cliff diving, and spent the rest of that week long vacation without them. I am legally blind without my glasses. [TRUE! See the comments.]
I once accidentally erased my college advisor’s computer hard drive. [TRUE! See the comments.]
After an ATM machine ate my debit card, I walked several miles through over a foot of snow to get it back from the bank. [TRUE! See the comments.]
I once met former president Gerald Ford, but at the time I was too young to understand why it was a big deal. My parents still tease me for that. [FALSE! See the comments.]
I once pointed to a student’s HTML code and said “There’s your problem, you used two apostrophes instead of one quotation mark.” I was right. [TRUE! See the comments.]
After all those art classes, I still don’t hold my pencil correctly. [TRUE! See the comments.]
My father is the son of a carpenter from Nazareth. [TRUE! See the comments.]
I have taught every grade level there is in the U.S. educational system.
In college I started not one, but two international writing clubs.
I have been interviewed on the news more than once. [TRUE! See the comments.]
As a child when I fell off of my grandmother’s porch railing and broke my wrist, I was berated for misbehaving and not taken to the hospital for 24 hours. [TRUE! See the comments.]
I gave up a department chair position to teach art on a cart in not one but four schools, and considered it a step up.
I am a fourth generation teacher.
Ok, so there are the facts … sort of. Remember, one of them isn’t true. The question is, which one?
Today’s show shares some more links, for your listening enjoyment.
The Podcasting wikis that were sent to me were great, but not quite what Ineed for my presentation. I won’t be reinventing the wheel so much as changing the circumference and tread, I think.
This story led me to this story. I think it strikes home more for me because I have been stopped by security while taking photos. I lucked out though – the security guard was also an amateur photographer.
This Wired article has me questioning the parameters of the study they’re discussing.
As I announced on Pownce, this will be my third consecutive year as a presenter at MICCA. In the past I’ve used wikis as my “handouts,” but I’m not sure I should create a new one from scratch if there’s already a definitive one out there that’s ready for use.
So my question to you is this: What are some of the better podcasting wikis out there, and should I use one of those for my presentation or make my own? I’m leaning away from reinventing the wheel, but I won’t mind building one from the ground up if the wikis that exist don’t meet my needs.
Just audio this time. I have a dentist’s appointment tomorrow and I’m afraid that I will be unable to speak at all afterwards, or at least not well since my face may or may not be numb.
This is my first podcast recorded MOSTLY using Apple’s Photo Booth, a program that can record still pictures or video. It was never actually intended for podcast creation, as I found out the hard way. As much as I loved playing with the software, half the clips I recorded had no audio whatsoever. This phenomenon was totally random, so towards the end I was resorting to recording short bursts and then immediately checking to see how it turned out.
Photo Booth may be a fun toy, but from now on I think I’ll be using other software for my podcasting needs.
Oh, and today’s episode has me rambling on about how people are using Twitter and its clones in lieu of recording podcasts and posting blogs. I don’t think this is a bad thing, since any message that can be summarized in 140 characters should be presented that way – short, sweet, and to the point.
However not every idea can be made so brief, as evidenced here.
I think Twitter is a good thing because that means that we can expect blog entries to be reserved for more complex ideas, while posts that show off a new website or tell us what you had to eat can be reserved for another feed entirely.
Because it was something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and because, against all odds, it was still available, I am now the proud owner of AaronBSmith.com.
Don’t bother going there yet, for two reasons:
It takes a while (sometimes a day or two, although I have seen it work in a couple hours…) for new domain names to actually work right. It’s a little complicated.
When it does start working, all it’ll be doing is pointing here. Why? Because I don’t know what to do with it!
That’s right, I actually registered a domain with no idea what to put there content-wise. The important thing for me now is that I have the option of putting something there without worrying about another Aaron B. Smith snatching up that URL. Believe me, there’s enough of us.
But the question of what to put there is nagging me a bit. I don’t want to move content from here over to there – I’ve spread myself to thin before – but what SHOULD I do with that domain?
Okay, maybe it’s just the kid in me but I totally want to make these with or without teaching it to my students.
