Tips by Tony

Articles I Found Interesting in the Last (Several) Weeks

It’s been a while, but the roundup is finally back! Here are just a few of the articles I found interesting over the past several weeks:

• Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

  Educators share their top 10 tools, which generates a continually updated top 100 list. Not surprising that Twitter is currently number one. Seriously, if you haven’t started using Twitter to grow your Personal Learning Network and find great resources then you’re missing out. The conversation is happening on Twitter, and it’s getting louder.

• What Everybody Ought To Know About Podcasting: Part I

  A concise explanation of podcasts, and why you should be offering them to your readers/students. As is often the case, there are some good ideas in the comments section.

  The key is that most bloggers don’t realise that they can host podcasts on their blog, to cater to their readers who prefer podcasts, while blending them with their regular blog posts…There are numerous ways podcasts can be used with students from you creating podcasts to help their learning to them creating their own podcasts. Lets collectively come up with some ideas by all sharing our ideas on using podcasts!

• I’ve Seen the Future and the Future is Us (Using Google)

  Jon Mott looks at the future of learning technology.

  As we adopt and adapt tools like Twitter and Google Wave to our purposes as learning technologists, we have to change the way we think about managing facilitating learning conversations. We can no longer be satisfied with creating easy to manage course websites that live inside moated castles. We have to open up the learning process and experience to leverage the vastness of the data available to us and the power of the crowd, all the while remembering that learning is fundamentally about individuals conversing with each other about the meaning and value of the data they encounter and create. Technologies like Google Wave are important, not in and of themselves, but precisely because they force us to remember this reality and realign our priorities and processes to match it.

• The Only Thing to Fear

  Britt Watwood responds to a post by an educator who laid out her reasons for never teaching online again. Britt pulls no punches in his response.

  Elayne Clift certainly had issues with teaching online, but it appeared to me that she attempted this course without changing any of her practices, and teaching online is fundamentally different than teaching face-to-face.

  Yet, there is no real discussion about “learning” or academic success. My simplistic view is that online is simply a mode of delivery, as are large lectures, small classrooms, and even tele-delivery to remote satellite settings. We do not burn down large lecture halls because significant numbers of students fail those classes. We instead look at best means of delivery given the context of large lecture halls. Online should be no different. Castigating online as something to fear for the future seems narrow-sighted.

• Why Our Current Education System Is Failing

  Want to know what students think of our education system? Read this blog post from a graduating high school senior.

  For reading to complement education like it needs to, the books we read must be relevant to us. Not our teachers, not our parents, but us. Each book should be likened to a puzzle piece completing our soul…So many students fail to realize their potential because a simple grade tells them they have none. They receive a D and thus feel they are worthless and have nothing to contribute to this world. This defeats the whole purpose of education. Education is meant to build not destroy.

• The Purview Project

  An ambitious project to engage educators and practicing experts in a “conversation” on successful thinking within and across each major discipline.

  Soon, new postings will appear on this blog, opening up a new “chapter” in the project for conversation. Introductory and explanatory information will be posted, and comments and/or documents related to the identified discipline will be gathered. New postings will be announced on Twitter. We need you to review each new posting and contribute ideas and suggest resources via the comments feature or via Google Docs.

Who/What I’m Following on Twitter

Added in the last several weeks: @tedtheteacher, @jkosman, @mandylindgren, @sheasmith, @Markoni1, @jcmeister, @pmacoun, @zjreyes, @MakeWayforBooks, @SandraFoyt, @candycohn, @LouCimetta, @productivity501, @mandersonUGDSB, @BelieveKids, @brooker1015

Related posts:

1. Monday Morning Roundup (8/24/2009)
2. Monday Morning Roundup (5/18/2009)
3. Monday Morning Roundup (5/11/2009)
4. Monday Morning Roundup (8/31/2009)
5. Monday Morning Roundup (5/4/2009)
6. Monday Morning Roundup (08/17/2009)
7. Monday Morning Roundup (10/19/2009)
8. Monday Morning Roundup (4/27/09)
9. Monday Morning Roundup (4/20/09)
10. Monday Morning Roundup (06/01/2009)