Year3-Week7: Course Adjustments I’ve gone on record saying that you make (teaching) plans so that you can pivot and change them based on the circumstances. This was that kind of week. For the past couple weeks I had been running the ragged edge trying to roll out the three thematic curriculum programs for my six grade levels and getting this year’s robotics team up and … Continue reading Year3-Week7: Course Adjustments
We are forever flooded with images and stories about bad moms. That constant stream plus many of us having an unfortunate tendency towards being forever focused on our failings can lead us to see ourselves harshly. In the following video several moms assessed their parenting skills and then were given feedback from their kids. Enjoy. Love you, mom. Continue reading Video Tuesdays: Broken Mirrors
This one is just too cute for words… enjoy. Continue reading Video Tuesdays: Don’t Let Me Down – The Beatles, por Diogo Mello (1 ano e 11 meses)
I can’t tell you how much I love this story. I was this kid and to this day get ribbed to death by family members for trying to make things with cardboard and tape all through my childhood. Rockets, cities, clubhouses, you name I tried to build a version of it using cardboard boxes and tape. It does my heart good to see a nine-year-old … Continue reading Video Wednesdays: Caine’s Arcade
Three-year-old Howard Wong rocks out on the drums and has a good time at it. Fun. I bet the Asian characters in the title are saying something rude about stupid monolingual americans. 🙂 jbb Continue reading 明版的Howard 3-year-old drummer
I just finished updating the reading part of my course and I somehow ended up telling my own story of Possibility. At this point in the course my students have read the first nine chapters of the Art of Possibility and are finishing up their final week in my course. They are just about to begin their last month in Full Sail’s emdtms program. Thus, … Continue reading Art of Possibility Reflection: Unexpected Directions & Unanticipated Destinations
CNET’s Technically Incorrect blog, asked the question about whether makers of the following public service announcement (PSA) went too far depicting the dangers of texting while driving. If one views the video on a “surface” level, there’s nothing here that hasn’t been shown on most American televisions. My guess is that the uproar is this video presents its brief horrific narrative with no villain to … Continue reading Is the “Texting While Driving” PSA Too Graphic?
Part of my course at Full Sail is about media issues, you know, stuff like Copyright, Fair Use and Creative Commons. The “M” in our program title (EMDT) is Media and my students, who are in their ninth month of a year long Masters degree program, are expected to stare down this huge subject and come up with a reasonable approach to something that I tell them occupies the life’s work of an army of lawyers, policymakers and troublemakers. As I lay down guiding principles to understanding the moving target that is Copyright/Fair Use/Creative Commons the discussions tend to be quite lively and informative for all participants. One thing that I’ve never fully appreciated is how difficult and expensive it can be for teachers who want to follow copyright law who teach band, or theater or any of the other arts.
One teacher wrote in her class blog:
Continue reading “Roll Over Beethoven and Copy… Right!”
Around this time last year I was very excited to receive my OLPC (One Laptop per Child), called the XO-1. Having drunk the Negroponte gatorade I was endlessly frustrated with Dvorak and other tech journalists who kept their criticism of the XO-1 focused on either Negroponte’s eccentricities or the fact that the creators made it specifically to not be a Windows PC. The concept, begun at MIT’s Media Lab, that technology in education is not about training students to be little MS Office drones but to use computers to teach programming in order to teach thinking and communication seemed to waft past the XO-1’s dissenters. Leo Laporte and David Pogue got that the little green XO-1 wasn’t about attacking an untapped technology market, but was an humanitarian cause to bring the gift of technology to Third World classrooms.
In the ISTE Keynote address that I heard Negroponte introduce the XO-1 he quipped that they must be doing something right to have raised the ire of Intel and Bill Gates. Alas, maybe the joke in the end was on Negroponte when Intel promised to play fair but couldn’t resist the temptation to undercut Negroponte’s “humanitarian cause” and sell their competing kid-size ultra-light laptop, the Classmate, to the same countries Negroponte was trying to reach. So the Gospel according to Negroponte fell on deaf ears because the Win/Tel hegemony couldn’t hear the words for the vastness, opportunities and profits presented in possibility of harvesting the Third World educational/government technology nickel.
This holiday season the OLPC foundation is repeating their give one/get one campaign that I participated in last year to get my own XO-1, only this time they’re working with Amazon.com to get the word out and do the distribution. The commercials are very cute. My own XO-1 sits on a top shelf in my bedroom, part of my shrine to sentimental technology I’ve previously invested in (I really wish I had kept one of my old Kaypros to put in the shrine). I hate to think that Dvorak and the others might have been right after all.
