It’s time to do things a better way. By exploring. By collaborating with friends. By charting your own course. Follow your curiosity into a more engaging experience. Inkling isn’t just a book on a screen. It’s an entirely new way to learn.

Inkling allows you to highlight, create and share notes, see term definitions, and more.

Inkling books include everything from the textbook, plus integrated videos and quizzes, interactive features such as highlighting, note taking, sharing of notes, bookmarking, and advanced searching capabilities. So far, the books available from Inkling, such as Raven Biology (9th edition) are less expensive than the printed versions, and can be even cheaper if you don’t need the entire book by allowing you to purchase individual chapters.

For now Inkling only supports higher education books, with a small number available right now and more on the way. It’s only a matter of time before someone does the same for K-12 textbooks.

If you have an iPad, download the free Inkling app. You’ll get a free book (Elements of Style) to help teach you the features plus you can download one free chapter from each of the textbooks they offer.

If you don’t have an iPad, you can view several short videos on the Inkling website. Have a look. Is this the future of textbooks?

Additional screenshots

Each book has an easy to use chapter list that allows you to jump directly to the chapter or section you want.

With Inkling you can take notes at any point in the text and even share your notes with other students, your teacher, etc.

Inkling includes quizzes throughout each textbook, with instant feedback of right/wrong answers.

Navigation is easy using the Places menu. From Places you can jump to a specific page, your list of bookmarks, notes created by you or your contacts, highlights, or the glossary.

Some chapters include reviews questions at the end, with the correct answer just a click away.

After a long break away from the blog, I’m back with a new installment of the Monday Morning Roundup. Here are a few of the educational and educational technology articles I’ve been reading:

• Information Literacy

  In my opinion, information literacy is one of the most important skills we should be teaching our students. There are many (similar) definitions of information literacy, but put simply information literacy is the ability to effectively use information resources, regardless of format. In other words – how to do an effective Google search, how to differentiate good information sources from poor sources, etc. Information literacy will help students while they are in school, and will be necessary in life beyond school no matter what they choose to do. In this article, Andrew Marcinek asks:

  How many times have you encountered this response: I typed it into Google, and really couldn’t find anything.

  WHAT!

  How is this possible?

  The ability to quickly and effectively search for information on the Internet, and narrow down the results to find the best information, is a crucial skill – one that should be taught early and often, beginning in elementary school. Andrew uses Google Timeline as an example of filtering search results to a particular time period.

  This filter allowed my students to trace a specific time period – Soviet occupation of Afghanistan – and filter down credible news articles during this particular period (1979-1989). Students could filter even further and find weekly and daily news articles from various news outlets during this time period. Once students had their articles in hand they could begin reading them or even print them out. Students were now engaged with a historical time period and able to take credible news and information that relates directly to their research question and compare it directly to the reading.

  As often happens with good blog posts, the discussion continued in the comments section. Here’s one such comment:

  I have found that teachers and adults in general assume that students/kids are born with “computer skills”, but this is not so. They have to learn the skills just as adults do…

• We Need More Tech Skeptics

  Tim Stahmer wrote a short piece about teaching tech “skepticism” instead of “literacy”. It’s an interesting idea.

  I’ve never liked the whole “digital native/digital immigrant” meme, and an administrator at the University of Kansas seems to agree we need to look at how people understand “technology” in new ways.

  She says that many of those digital natives we call students, in both K12 schools and colleges, are actually technologically illiterate, at least under what she says should be an updated definition of “tech literacy”.

  I agree with both Tim and the University of Kansas administrator – we need to stop assuming all kids are computer literate (“digital natives”) and automatically know how to properly use the available technology.

• Technologically Illiterate Students

  This is the article referenced by Tim Stahmer in the previous article, and it makes some excellent points about digital literacy.

  The new technological landscape — particularly the trappings of Web 2.0 — demands that a new line of distinction be drawn, Zvacek told the audience; a line between computer users who can handle only basic programs such as word processors and search engines, and those who understand the structures and concepts that underlie modern technology, and how to think critically within them.

  Understanding the structures and concepts that underline modern technology, and how to think critically within them, is key to being technologically literate and should be required of students and teachers alike.

  “The digital divide used to be about the hardware haves and have-nots,” she said. “What we’re seeing now is that it’s less about who has hardware, but who has access to information; who has those problem-solving skills. And that’s going to be the digital divide that we’re going to see in the future … the ability to deal with information.”

  Critical thinking and problem solving are key to not only tech literacy, but to life.

  “It is our job to equip students with the critical thinking skills that enable them to use various technologies wisely … because people who know ‘what’ and ‘how’ will always work for people who know ‘why.’ ”

  “I want my students to be the ones people are working for,” added Zvacek.

  I agree completely. When I do technology professional development sessions, I don’t give handouts or “step-by-steps”. I want my students (who are teachers) to learn “why”, not simply how to follow a set of step-by-step instructions.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a roundup, and this one will be shorter than most. Here are just a few of the articles I found interesting over the past few weeks.

• NJ Principal Asks Parents To Ban Social Networking

  A New Jersey middle school principal sends a letter to parents asking them to ban text messaging, facebook, and other social media tools. Typical short-sighted overreaction. Sigh.

  Let me repeat that – there is absolutely, positively no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site! None.

  Sorry Mr. Orsini, but you are wrong.

• Confusing Parents

  Excellent response by Jeff Utecht to the previous article about a NJ principal asking parents to ban social networking.

  So basically I take two things away from this video:

  1. Parents are the problem and need to be told by the school how to raise their children.
  2. That because “2% of kids are going to say something” we want you to ban all social-networking sites.

  That’s funny because I’m sure that:

  2% of kids have bullied on the playground yet we’ve never banned recess.
  2% of kids have bullied on the bus….yet we haven’t banned buses.
  2% of kids have bullied at the bus stop….yet we haven’t banned bus stops.

  Do I need to continue?

• Ten Big Ideas Of School Leadership

  Excellent article by Mike McCarthy, a principal who’s been an educator for over 30 years. Pass this along to every school administrator you – Mike hits the nail on the head.

  1) Your School Must Be For All Kids 100 Percent of the Time

  If you start making decisions based on avoiding conflict, the students lose.

  All too often, school leaders make decisions based on avoiding conflict rather than making decisions based on what is the right thing to do. This needs to stop.

  8) Have a Bias for Yes

  The only progress you will ever make involves risk: Ideas that teachers have may seem a little unsafe and crazy. Try to think, “How can I make this request into a yes?”

  Since going to work in education almost 9 years ago, I’ve noticed the overwhelming reaction to new ideas is “no”. Often, someone within the organization will notice a problem or inefficiency, and propose a solution. Instead of looking at the possible solution and deciding if it will work, the initial reaction is to think up every possible reason why the solution won’t work, no matter how far-fetched. Wouldn’t it be more productive to find ways to implement a solution so that it will be successful?

9) Consensus is Overrated

Twenty percent of people will be against anything. When you realize this, you avoid compromising what really should be done because you stop watering things down. If you always try to reach consensus, you are being led by the 20 percent.

This is my favorite part of the article. I’ve seen it time and time again – good ideas sunk because the organization doesn’t want to move forward without 100% consensus. Education today seems to be more about the lowest common denominator than doing what’s best for the largest majority of students and dealing with the edge cases separately.

Ning has many features. Which features do you use most, and in what way are you using them? Specific examples will be helpful. Which features do you rarely use, and why? Please sound off in the comments or on Twitter. Once I have a better understanding how people are using Ning, I can come up with some alternatives that make sense.

A warning about hosted services

We all use hosted services: Blogger, EduBlogs, Ning, Google Apps, etc. What happens, though, when the service either shuts down or switches to a fee-based model? In the case of Ning, many users will be left stranded – losing large amounts of information, files, articles, etc. It’s a risk we take in exchange for free hosted applications like Ning.

While there are other services that replicate some (or most) of the functionality provided by Ning, it may not be the best option to simply switch to another free hosted service. If at all possible, it would be better to find an open source alternative that can be installed on your school (or district) servers. I realize this might not be possible for everyone, depending on your IT department, but if you help IT (and the administrators) understand why it’s important to host the software on your own servers you may convince them.

A short list of possible alternatives

While it will be best to get some responses about how you’re using Ning before making recommendations, I thought I’d throw out a couple now, for those who can’t wait. These may or may not meet your needs. Your mileage may vary.

• BuddyPress – BuddyPress is a free and open source social networking platform built upon the powerful WordPress platform (the same platform that powers EduBlogs). It looks to have all the features that made Ning great. They’ve also built a Ning to BuddyPress User Importer, and have a blog dedicated to help Ning users make the switch.
• elgg – elgg is a free open source social networking platform similar to Ning. You can download and install it on your own server for free, or have them host it for a small fee.
• Mahara – Mahara calls itself an open source e-portfolio system, but it has blogging and social networking systems built-in. Have a look and see if it fits your needs. Hosting does not appear to be available, so you’ll need to install it on your own server.

That’s all for now. Be sure to sound off in the comments or on Twitter with examples of how you’re using Ning, and if you’ve heard of other potential alternatives.

Update

A Google Doc has been started listing both hosted and non-hosted alternatives to Ning. You can find it here.

The good

Educational technology is about advancing student learning. Various tools can be used to advance learning, but it’s the learning, not the specific tools, that is the focus. Good educators understand this, and are finding creative ways to engage students and enhance learning. Some of these good educators attend the CUE conference, but it’s painfully obvious they are the minority.

The good news is there are a large number of educators who attend conferences like CUE with an open mind, hoping to learn how to affectively use technology to advance learning. The bad news (more on that later) is it’s a crap-shoot trying to figure out which sessions will be presented by the “good” educators, and which will be a waste of time. Most of the sessions I attended were a waste a time. Luckily, the couple that were worthwhile made up for the rest.

Getting teachers to adopt technology

One of my favorite sessions was “Getting Teachers to Adopt Technology” by Rushton Hurley. In his session, Rushton gave tips and examples for getting reluctant teachers to start using technology to engage students. Real-world solutions to real-world problems – this is the type of session that makes attending CUE worthwhile. I won’t go over the entire presentation, but here are a few nuggets that resonated with me:

• Don’t have teachers require themselves to be technology experts. (I’ve been saying this for years – you don’t have to be a technology expert to use technology with your students. In fact, your students will likely teach you a thing or two about the technology, which can be very powerful for the students. For example, say you give an assignment to create a video based on whatever topic you’re currently covering. Tell your students they have 4 weeks (for example) to finish the project. The students will not receive technical help from you. Students may work with up to 2 other students if they want, and they may opt to create a poster instead of a video. In his experience, Rushton has never had a student opt for the poster, even if they didn’t have a computer at home. The students will find a way to get it done. Every time. You don’t need to know how to make a video, only how to evaluate the videos that are submitted.)
• Do remind teachers of their expertise. (You have the subject matter expertise and shouldn’t let your lack of technology expertise keep your students from utilizing the many great tools available.)
• Don’t blanket the school with expensive hardware. (Get the technology for the teachers that want to use it, and don’t worry about the rest. It’s not about equity. Why would you try to appease those who don’t want to use the technology anyway?)

Teaching Internet literacy as a genre

Another great session was “Teaching Internet Literacy as a Genre” by Heather Wolpert-Gawron. Heather shared specific lessons and activities for teaching Internet literacy, including: reading a website, writing, socializing, collaborating, networking, researching reliably, and netiquette. Internet literacy should be taught in every school and incorporated into as much of the curriculum as possible. Knowing how to judge a good website (source) from a bad one is a critical skill. Knowing how to do a proper web search is absolutely necessary. Knowing the basic rules of netiquette, how to comment on a blog, and online ethics cannot be overlooked.

Each of my co-workers who attended the conference attended a few good/great sessions as well, so collectively we got the value we were looking for from the conference.

The bad

Educational technology is about advancing student learning. Various tools can be used to advance learning, but it’s the learning, not the specific tools, that is the focus. Bad educators don’t understand this, and focus almost entirely on the tools. Some otherwise good educators mistakenly believe that converting existing (old) practices to new tools, without updating the practices, equates to effective use of educational technology.

I’m not going to call out any specific sessions or presenters, but I will never understand the value of an hour-long presentation that does little more than rattle off a list of “cool tools” without any specific strategies or examples of how to utilize those tools in education. Sadly, there’s no shortage of “cool tools” sessions at CUE. Some sessions narrowed the focus down to a single tool, but spent the entire hour showing the nuts-and-bolts of how to use the tool, without giving any indication how the tool might be used to enhance learning.

Other sessions seemed promising on the surface, but the presenters were either disorganized or unable to control the flow of the session, allowing themselves to be easily hijacked by those in the audience. I walked out of more than one session after realizing I wasn’t going to learn anything, which was disappointing given how carefully I had chosen which sessions to attend.

The ugly

Here’s where I get to really vent. As I walked around the conference, or sat in a session waiting for it to begin, I would overhear conversations that made me cringe.

For example, I heard one person telling another that he’s a “technology trainer” at his school, and when asked for some examples of the technology he’s teaching, he replied that he recently taught his teachers how to use “Text Effects” in Microsoft Word, so they could make their text look like marching ants or Las Vegas lights. I almost lost my lunch. Ridiculous text effects is not educational technology, and does nothing to enhance learning. File that overheard conversation under “missing the point entirely.”

In another session, a woman was seated in the front row and kept asking the presenter questions from the very start of the session. When the presenter put up his welcome slide that included his name, contact information, and his degrees, this woman asked where he got his EdTech degree, how did he like the program, what learning management system did they use, etc. I wanted to tell her to shut the hell up and stop wasting our time. We paid good money to attend this conference in the hope of learning something, and we don’t need our time wasted by a single person trying to pick a masters program. She hijacked the presentation several more times, interjecting her own experiences that added nothing of value to the topic.

Overall, the good at CUE 2010 outweighed the bad. Hopefully, as we move forward, more and more educators will realize that it’s not the technology that matters, but how we use the technology to enhance learning.

Here are just a few of the articles I found interesting over the past several weeks.

• MYTH BUSTED: Internet Use Doesn’t Lead to Isolation

  Stan Schroeder takes a look at a study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project that asserts online activities such as social networking, sending emails, and blogging can lead to larger and more diverse real-world social networks.

  For the most part, the study conducted on 2,512 adults simply confirms what most of us know already: people use all this new technology to get in touch with their family and friends; for example, people call each person in their circle of closes friends on 195 days in a year, but they also see each of them face to face 210 days in a year. Same goes for Facebook and MySpace, as 71% of users have listed at least one member of their core network of friends as a friend on one of these services.

• plagium – plagiarism tracker & checker

  Copy and paste some text into the box, and plagium will attempt to discover if the text has been plagiarised.

• That Quiz – Math Test Activities

  That Quiz has some online quizzes for integers, fractions, math concepts, geometry, vocabulary, geography, and science.

• What Exactly Is Differentiation?

  Steven W. Anderson recaps and discusses a recent #edchat that asked “what is differentiation?”

  Differentiation is not specific to one group. In the past I have read and been told that differentiation applies only to “labeled” students. I even have a book on my shelf called Differentiated Instruction which stresses the needs for DI in the Special Education classroom. DI is not just for Special Ed, gifted, ESL, whatever label you want to apply. Its for all students.

• Teach Your Teachers Well

  Susan Engel offers opinions on the state of teacher education programs and how to fix them.

  Our best universities have, paradoxically, typically looked down their noses at education, as if it were intellectually inferior. The result is that the strongest students are often in colleges that have no interest in education, while the most inspiring professors aren’t working with students who want to teach. This means that comparatively weaker students in less intellectually rigorous programs are the ones preparing to become teachers.

• How to Avoid Plagiarism

  While this guide was written for ESL learners, all students could benefit from these tips to avoid plagiarism.

  Text on the Internet is no different than text in a book or newspaper. Anything that another person writes, including email, is copyright protected. Internet plagiarism often involves copying text or images from websites, blogs, forums and social media sites.

Who/What I’m Following on Twitter

Added in the last week: @tlenker, @cyndidannerkuhn, @ParkerALynch

Here are just a few of the articles I found interesting over the past several weeks. Yes, I’m still getting caught up. Not sure it’ll ever happen at this point…

• Marge Beatty, Nebraska ESU 16, talks about 1:1 laptop programs

  Scott McLeod interviews Marge Beatty, chief administrator for the ESU 16 in Nebraska, about their 1:1 laptop programs. Eight of the sixteen districts in ESU 16 have 1:1 laptop programs. This is a great video interview that talks about the hows and whys of their implementation. Definitely worth a watch.

• Google Translate & Julius Caesar

  Andrew B. Watt used Google Translate to help his international students read Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Civil Wars.

  Thanks to Google Translate, we’ve gone around the problem of the English being too difficult for the international students in our school. The original text is a public-domain text from the English version of Project Gutenberg. We stripped the carriage returns, and loaded it into a wiki page. Then we ran blocks of text through Google Translate. That produced our text in four languages now, and we’re working on a fifth — Simplified Chinese, Korean, Spanish and English (with Japanese on the way). I’m even thinking that by next year, I want to have a parallel Latin translation.

• Job Security No More

  Jen Wagner talks about how she’s shifted her focus from hoarding knowledge to striving to put herself out of a job. I have the same focus…

  You see – for many many (too many) years …I was the holder of all tech wisdom. (100% mostly for my gratification and my ego). The false sense of pride of being the “techie know it all” not only alienated and limited my staff but also was selfish to myself and the burden I placed upon myself…because of my unwillingness to share the information.

  So now I am consciously striving to put myself out of a job.

  Jen goes on to list some things she’s doing or no longer doing to help achieve her goal. I can relate to most all of her listed items. Here are just a few samples:

  • Refusing to touch the mouse when I am called in to help a teacher but letting them drive.
  • Writing up “HOW TO “ worksheets and placing them on the server and no longer hoping staff will read them, but directing staff to read them before jumping in to trouble shoot something they could troubleshoot on their own.
  • When receiving emails of “Jen, do you think this is a hoax” returning the email with “what does snopes say about it”? and other various ways of not always being the know it all.
  • No longer saying “Yes, I can” but saying “Yes, you can.”

  I’ve been trying hard to teach our teachers and staff how to fish instead of continually giving them handouts. It’s working for some, while others are struggling to get past the antiquated idea that everything should be done for them because they’re “not a techie.” Sorry folks, that excuse doesn’t cut it anymore (if it ever really did.) I will provide all the help and support you should ever need, but I’m not going continually do things for you, over and over. My goal is to teach you how to figure things out for yourself.

• Schools Can’t Change

  Michael Smith pens a brilliant piece of satire on school change. This rings so very true, but sadly some who read it will miss the satire (and the point.)

  In my estimation, progress is way overrated. Schools were good enough for my grandparents (if they attended, and some did — at least until the 6th grade), so they should be good enough for today’s students. Progress is for the next generation. It’s for the person who takes my job. (I know you’re out there.)

• How To Connect Your Students Globally

  Kim Cofino lists some good ways to get started using globally collaborative projects in your classroom, along with links to some great resources.

  The key component for me was connecting students, both face to face and virtually, from a variety of backgrounds to work together to solve a common problem. Although we might not have the luxury of bringing together diverse groups of students every day, we certainly have the capability to connect them using technology. No matter what subject you teach, I truly believe adding a global component is not only possible, but necessary to prepare students for our increasingly connected world.

• 
  Education Needs to Be Turned on Its Head

  Leo Babauta gives his thoughts on our current educational system, and how/why it should be turned on its head.

  People often grow up to be competent learners, and achieve great things, after going through the traditional school system. But this is in spite of the system, not because of it. We are pretty adaptable people, inherently curious, and we can learn without an authority, but the current school system tries to beat this down. It usually fails to some degree, but to the degree it succeeds, it harms people.

  This was certainly true of my schooling. Luckily I had a couple really great teachers that did things differently and were able to light a fire in me, enabling me to become a lifelong learner. Those teachers were the exception, though, and without them I doubt I would have become so passionate about learning new things.

  The way we need to be taught to learn is completely different. It’s this: learn about what interests you, gets you curious, gets you excited. Figure out where to get the information you need. Read about it, talk to someone about it, find out about it. Try it. Do it, make mistakes. Figure out how to correct the mistakes. Figure out how to solve the problems you encounter. Repeat.

  That’s precisely how we, as adults, learn. (At least it should be…I know plenty of adults that seem to lack this ability.) Why not help guide students down this same path?

  Three, also realize that we don’t need to be hands-off. We can be hands-on, if we’re facilitators instead of directors or dictators. We can help kids find things they’re interested in, expose them to worlds of fun (like science and math), teach them games that they might like, help them solve problems so they’ll learn how to do it on their own, guide them to resources and people who will give them mountains of information. Be there for them, as guides.

Who/What I’m Following on Twitter

Added in the last week: @djainslie, @readinator, @jstephengy

At its most basic level, social bookmarking allows you to store, organize, and retrieve your bookmarks from any computer (or smartphone) that’s connected to the Internet. The social part comes in to play when you begin to share (and discover) bookmarks with the rest of the world through the use of tags. The nice folks at Common Craft have a fantastic video that explains social bookmarking in plain English:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A comparison of two social bookmarking sites: Delicious and Diigo

Now that you (hopefully) have a better idea what social bookmarking is all about, let’s look at two of the most popular social bookmarking sites: del.icio.us (or just Delicous) and diigo. Both offer similar functionality, but with a few differences. Which one you use is up to you.

Delicious

Delicious began life as del.icio.us in 2003 as one of the first social bookmarking sites and was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. Yahoo! officially changed the name to “Delicous,” but the old URL still works.

One of the main benefits of Delicious is that it’s used by a LOT of people. More people = more opportunities to discover good bookmarks. A look at the “Popular Bookmarks” section of Delicious as I’m writing this shows 315 bookmarks added in the last minute with the most popular bookmarks saved by over 100 people each, some approaching 200. By comparison, the “Hot Bookmarks” on Diigo have all been saved by less than 50 people.

In addition to the large user-base, Delicious benefits from being owned by Yahoo! This means there’s a good chance it’ll stick around. A couple years ago, a new social bookmarking site popped up that was supposed to blow Delicious out of the water. The site was ma.gnolia. In January of 2009, ma.gnolia suffered a major server crash and all user data was lost. Ma.gnolia then went offline only to re-appear in a limited beta as gnolia.com. (Both Delicious and diigo have the ability to back up your bookmarks to your computer, so if catastrophe strikes you’ll at least have your bookmarks up until the last time you backed up.)

diigo

Diigo came onto the scene in July of 2006 and offered a host of new features to differentiate itself from Delicious and other social bookmarking sites. In addition to bookmarking, diigo allows users to highlight any part of a webpage and annotate the page with sticky notes. These highlights and sticky notes can be private or shared within a diigo group. In theory this is a great feature, but in practice its usefulness is still up in the air.

The second major new feature of diigo is the ability to take a snapshot of a page. Have you ever saved a bookmark only to go back later and find the page no longer exists? With the snapshot feature of diigo, you can take a snapshot of the page as it was when you bookmarked it, and pull it up in the future even if the page is no longer available. This is a very useful feature, but you have to remember to save a snapshot or it can’t help you.

Why should you care?

If you use social bookmarking for nothing more than organizing your own bookmarks you’ll still be way ahead of the game. The old way of saving bookmarks locally on every web browser you use, only to have the list grow to unusable and unorganized proportions, is over. With social bookmarking and tags you’ll be able to find any bookmark, no matter how old, very easily. Once you start taking advantage of the social aspects, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without social bookmarking.

Additional resources

Here are some additional resources to help you learn more about social bookmarking:

• Ultimate Guide to Social Bookmarking
  
• The Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users
• Diigo tour (video)
• Diigo Tutorials

Here are just a few of the articles I found interesting over the past several weeks:

• Cheating?

  This article is in response to another article regarding student cheating, asking if perhaps we need to redefine what is or isn’t cheating.

  While it is true that cheating has always been an issue and will always continue to be an issue, for some time now I’ve been having conversations with colleagues about the difference between cheating in school and the nature of how we get our work done. Based on the parameters of what we consider cheating to be, I think I could be accused of cheating just about everyday day of the week at work.

  Can you imagine if your weren’t allowed to reference anything to get your job done at work, but had to do it all from memory? Yet, that’s exactly what students are expected to do.

  At work, we have documents on our computers, binders full of information, the Internet, meeting notes, etc. We learn how to organize and retrieve that information quickly in order to do our jobs. In school, we don’t allow students to do the same, and punish them if they try. Odd. One of the comments on the original article had a good idea: give each student a half sheet of paper to use during the test. The act of creating the cheat sheet will involve studying. Great idea.

• Managing Social Media Risks

  Good advise for organizations looking to use social media. Also applies to individuals.

  The risks organizations face as a result of participating in social media are real, but so too are the benefits. Don’t let risk blind you from taking advantage of the transformational communication opportunities that arise from social media.

• Making the Case for Cell Phones in Schools

  An oldie but goodie about why cell phones should be allowed and encouraged in schools.

  He is incredulous that we punish the tools and not the person. That he can’t take a pair of scissors on an airplane and yet, scissors are a standard item in every classroom in schools. And yet he can take a cell phone and use it openly and freely anywhere and yet the cell phone is what is banned in most schools.

  The article goes on to list 10 good reasons why cell phones should be allowed in schools, and ideas for how to “deal” with cell phones. (Hint: just like we “deal” with scissors.)

• Building a Personal Learning Network (PLN) on Twitter

  Sandy K shares the process she went through building a PLN on Twitter. Good reflection on the process she went through and what she learned along the way.

  The Personal Learning Network (PLN) that I’ve built on Twitter over the past couple of months has become an amazing resource for learning about what’s going on in the educational technology world. I was excited when I had an opportunity last week to present using Twitter as a tool for personal learning to some of my colleagues. Although I knew I wouldn’t have time to share everything I’ve learned or done over the past couple of months with them, I wound up reflecting back in some detail on my own journey as I prepared for the presentation.

• The rise of digital textbooks

  A look at how one school district is switching to “living texbooks” as poar tof 21st century learning.

  The main reason the school wants to switch to digital textbooks is a financial one, explained Saunders. Besides not having to buy new books, “it will help with replacement costs when books are lost or damaged.”

  Saunders said digital texts will help keep items fluid as well. “Once a book is printed, until the next edition is in print, you are stuck with that current text. With technology, [textbook] items can change as quickly as a download of new information.”

• 
  Multiple Pathways: Bringing School to Life

  What is a “multiple-pathways” school> Read this article to find out.

  These two California high schools are among of a growing number nationwide exploring a “multiple pathways” approach to their curricula. The core elements of multiple pathways, and the learning principles that support them, include rigorous coursework infused with practical applications, high academic expectations, and detracking. These and other curricular, structural, and school culture elements have long been recognized as having merit in efforts to enhance student motivation and learning. What distinguishes multiple-pathways schools, however, is that they emphasize and extend student-adult relationships—both within the school and outside of it, with members of the larger community—as a way of weaving exemplary practices into a coherent school reform.

Who/What I’m Following on Twitter

Added in the last week: @tee62, @englishteach8, @FluffTheBunny, @englishraven, @SimpleCEO, @Mary_a_Myers, @mrpkup, @RussAdams, @pepepacha, @bwwojci

Here are just a few of the articles I found interesting over the past several weeks:

• Lunch Time Leaders Podcast

  Middle school students at a school in Connecticut had an idea in the fall of 2008 to interview all the local Mayoral candidates and post the interviews as podcasts. They have since expanded their podcast to interview a wide variety of leaders during their lunch period. Some of the people they’ve interviewed include: the CEO of a local hospital, the dean of the Yale University School of Nursing, the founder of Edublogs, the web editor for Popular Mechanics Magazine, and many more.

  Welcome to the greatest middle school podcast in the world! We interview leaders from around the world on their opinions about what students should do to be prepared for the future.

  We are called the Lunch Time Leaders because we actually interview all of the leaders during our lunch period which means that we have to start and finish within twenty minutes. Most of our interviews are done using skype and broadcast live on our wiki. We have have live video and a live blog on the page. Many of the questions asked are sent in from viewers around the United States. If we are lucky with scheduling and laptop availability, we sometimes do the interview with classmates contributing to the live blog.

  This is a terrific example of what can be accomplished with very little money, using mostly free tools. The students are engaged and are learning more than what can be learned from a book.

• Collaborative Maps

  Dennis Grice, a technology instructor at St. John’s Lutheran School, was looking for a way for his students to contribute placemarks to a Google Map. This post describes his solution in detail, including a link to a sample form he created and ideas for classroom application.

  Students can participate in this type of collaborative map by…

  • Mapping Birthplaces. It could be their own, or someone else’s. Our 5th grade is working on immigrant reports right now. This would be a fun way to share their information.
  • Historical Places. Students could work together on a class project locating and posting information about historical places around their state or country.
  • What’s The Weather Today? Classes from several different schools could pick a day and share the weather. They could even embed a picture of what it looks like outside.
  • Breakfast Around the World. The form could be shared with as many people as possible to find out what people around the world eat for breakfast. Hmmmm. This idea sounds familiar.

• Charter Schools & Spaghetti

  Using spaghetti sauce as an analogy for the charter school debate.

  Say you set out to improve your mother’s beloved spaghetti sauce recipe (treading on even more sacred ground than public education!) You try ten different variations. Despite your best efforts, three are worse than the original. Five are no better, but two are markedly superior. On average, the new batches are a little worse than your mom’s. But—would you say your experiment was a failure, or a success?

• A Challenge to Teachers: Mentor Young Teachers in Social Tech

  A fantastic post imploring teachers who are using social technology to expand their PLN to reach out and teach those who aren’t.

  So here’s what I’m calling on my fellow PLN members and ed school teachers to do: find three young teachers in your building, in your ed school, or through your PLN. Mentor those teachers. Teach them WHY they should build a PLN. Teach them what it means to participate as a professional. Don’t worry about teaching them every little gimmick and gadget that comes down the pike; just teach them what it means to be part of a network, what it means to be connected, how to use a PLN to grow professionally as a teacher.

  Furthermore, contact your local ed schools. Contact your alma mater. Tell those schools that as a teaching professional, you demand they include mandatory courses teaching and modeling the integration of social technology into classroom instruction; tell them that facility with social media should be a qualification for earning a degree.

• What I’ve Learned From My PLN (September 1, 2009)

  A look at what one teacher learned from her PLN in one particular week. It’s a snapshot of her week, but is a great illustration of the power of social technology.

  This week was about motivation–both mine and my students’. It started with an #edchat conversation on Twitter about the value of homework. Alfie Kohn (a man decidedly against homework!) shared an article from the journal Theory and Research in Education about self-determination theory as regards motivation. While the article was interesting enough, what really got me excited was discovering that ALL of the articles from the “Symposium on self-determination theory” were available for free download. I particularly enjoyed “Virtual worlds and the learner hero: how today’s video games can inform tomorrow’s learning environments.” In terms of motivation (at least from the self-determination point of view), the qualities that cause engagement in games–relatedness, autonomy and competence–can also create engagement in learning.

  Read the rest of the post to learn what #edchat is all about, and what else Barbara learned that week.

• 
  ‘A Great Man, Dumbledore’

  This article is from earlier this summer, but still worth a read. The article talks about how the character of headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter books might just be the greatest academic administrator of all time.

  Dumbledore also does the one thing the faculty members value perhaps even more than administrative support: He leaves them alone and allows them to do their jobs. In other words, to use the modern term, he’s not a micromanager. In fact, for long passages he disappears from the narrative altogether, while Professors Snape, McGonagall, Sprout, Flitwick, et al., carry on, essentially unsupervised, with the important business of teaching students.

  For an administrator, resisting the urge to meddle requires a great deal of confidence, not only in one’s colleagues but in one’s own judgment. It’s also the hallmark of great administrators everywhere, who hire the best people they can, put them in positions to be successful, and then get out of their way. Note that, during those times when Dumbledore is rarely seen in the narrative, the school still manages to function just fine, barring occasional attacks by three-headed dogs, giant snakes, or assorted other horrific monsters.

Who/What I’m Following on Twitter

Added in the last several weeks: @denabud, @teacherspirit, @readplenty, @DrDial, @kukukukuku, @kwbenson, @Gatlin_Intl, @StacyVernon, @BethLozen, @msgregson