Topical Island

Disruptive Education

2009-04-15T13:40:00.002-04:00

The quote "Industries change through disruption," is especially poignant today as we look at the auto, insurance and banking industries. On his blog, author Clayton Christensen argues that the time has come for education to fundamentally change to offer customized learning and to better control escalating costs.

So enter TweetNews

2009-01-17T08:07:00.002-05:00

Twitter is a fantastic place to find breaking news, but Twitter posts are short and sometimes ill-informed. Or even wrong. So, while Twitter is an amazing tool for finding the story, it isn’t the best place to get the whole story.

For comprehensiveness, most of us turn to traditional news outlets, such as those aggregated by Google News. But Google News relies on algorithms to rank stories, and while the algorithms are pretty good, they aren’t necessarily as fast as the news.

That’s why Yahoo BOSS engineer Vik Singh created TweetNews. TweetNews takes Yahoo’s news results and compares them to emerging topics on Twitter, in effect using what’s most popular on Twitter as an index for determining the importance of news stories.

In other words, TweetNews uses Twitter to rank stories that are so new they may not have enough inbound links for algorithm-based ranking systems to prioritize them.

The result is a search engine mashup that tracks breaking news stories ranked by Twitter search results, offering faster updates, better relevance and more in-depth coverage than either source by itself.

So really do not understand it, but if I substitute my search in this link, it works.

Katie Kouric Outdated News Format

2009-01-17T07:53:00.003-05:00

Read in the NY Times Magazine article, Multiscreen Mad Men, the following:
Rasmussen: I’m embarrassed to say that until last week, I had never watched Katie Couric in my life. So the other day I TiVoed the CBS news. And I gotta tell you, sitting in front of the TV for that long watching news was painful to me. I realized that I never get a half-hour’s worth of predigested content from one source anymore.

The interview went on to say that what was missing from the tradition news format is interaction. So much of social networking revolves around what someone is doing. I agree entirely. It would be great to know what Katie was doing, who she was interviewing to know whether I want to invest any time in watching.

I still hang onto watching the Evening News but it's not for learning the "news" as such. I hear the key headlines on NPR driving home first. It's for having Brian William's friendly persona quite literally greet me and set the stage for arriving home. I realize that if I miss the news, there is not enough there to bother watching what I prerecorded.

It's so much nicer to get the news I want: every morning I open multiple tabs and scan through the NYT, the BBC, and NPR. I have a Twitter account but have not integrated that into my life yet. Ditto, my RSS reader. Need an extended amount of free time to delve into their value as daily fodder.

Elgg

2007-04-19T06:36:00.000-04:00

Wired magazine discussed Elgg, open-source social networking software developed at the University of Brighton, has been designed specifically with academic uses in mind. It described Blackboard as an "aging" traditional educational delivery system. It's interesting how effective and forceful a word such as "aging" is even for software. Schools after several years of ineffectively trying to block MySpace and Facebook are now offered a free alternative that recognizes the inevitability of incorporating the social aspects provided by these alternatives to combat top down teaching.

Another school year, another opportunity to explore blogging in education

2005-10-05T06:26:00.000-04:00

Background information
On the value of weblogs in education:
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/why_weblogs

Read the Fearless learners, fearful schools entry in http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2005/05/17#a3576

Who is behind Weblogg-ed:
Will Richardson comes highly recommended by Alan November
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/about

The following passage highlights the choices that we face as educators:
"Most students, as with many people, are passive participants on the Internet. They read, but they don't write for the Web. Now, composing html pages and posting them to the web is technically difficult for the classroom when compared to signing up for a blog and posting text. It's certainly not quite the same experience as making choices over page design, etc., but blog posting can make them active participants by having them join in existing conversations. And in many ways it's more dynamic than creating html pages, since it's much easier to continually add fresh content."
I think this is one of the major appeals of weblogs.
"Quite frankly, I haven't found the time investment required for creating websites (using html or a WYSIWYG editor, ftp-ing, etc.) worth what my students seem to get in return."(Joe)
This is especially true now...why are we still teaching html?

My comments:
I have long advocated teaching html. It provides mental exercise, discipline and the ability to build and create that makes some students blossom. When I teach HTML first and then teach FrontPage, the students stop thinking when they start cut and pasting. The dropoff in higher level thinking is immediately apparent. However, the essential question is "what is it we are trying to teach and what tool best serves that purpose." Web construction makes sense when it has a purpose: check out my yearbook class website: http://www4.steds.org/intranet/yearbook/Yearbook/2006YB.htm (everything is in one place, accessible from everywhere – great administrative tool)

Blogs however have the potential of being totally engaging. The technology is transparent. Students can truly break out of the "writing for the teacher" mode and communicate and receive feedback in real world situations. Blogs are not a fad; students will use them whether or not school "condones" them. Are we missing opportunities to engage them in new technologies because our comfort level is lacking. Last spring, I created a private blog for faculty on Tablets http://tablettalk.blogspot.com/. Only the techiest followed the procedures to join and no one tried posting an entry. I challenge a teacher to create a class blog that would have such poor response.

Are we as educators the problem or the solution? Are we as techies, stressing traditional software training? What is the role of technology is a modern education? Is it enough to teach academic subjects as they have always been taught?

Would it be reasonable to hope that as a minimum level of technical competency, faculty (and parents?) at least have experienced current technologies - chatting, blogs, webs, podcasts, RSS feeds, wikipedias, video conferencing etc.? What is the baseline for informed decision-making?

Taking responsiblity for our country

2005-09-04T19:32:00.000-04:00

Andrew Rasiej, candidate for New York public advocate states that "The traditional model is that we elect a public official and they're going to solve all our problems.I don't believe that model works anymore. I don't believe that one politician can solve the problems of eight million New Yorkers. I do believe that eight million New Yorkers can solve their own problems."

He thinks that the Internet can help people organize and share ideas, and that the public advocate should make it possible for New Yorkers to use it. He has ideas aplenty about how that high-speed Wi-Fi could look.

For instance, Mr. Rasiej has begun a Web site (www.wefixnyc.com) where people can e-mail pictures of potholes with their locations, which become part of a photographic map.

As I read the above quotes, the analogy to levee problem was clearly evident. The people need to participate to a level that ensures that politicians have some strength stand up to Federal pressures.

Freedom of Speech

2005-02-05T06:45:00.000-05:00

During the past week, the results of a recent study of student views on First Amendment rights was released and has produced some thought provoking material for faculty notice and classroom discussion. Notably, students were largely unaware of what rights were protected and, when informed, believed that these rights were too broad. Have the years from 9/11 distorted our fundamental beliefs? In proclaiming Homeland Security is the US rewriting the First Amendment? How to you believe adults would have reacted to the same questions?

Personally, this report is a red flag, a call for educators to take responsibility for putting Freedom of the Press into a historical perspective. In wartime and emergencies, it may seem expedient to limit personal freedoms. For a democracy to continue we must assure that in the long run, the constitutional foundations remain in place and represent a commonly held vision of our united beliefs.

On How Students Interpret the First Amendment

From a USA Today article by Greg Toppo (1/30/2005): "U.S. students say press freedoms go too far," reports a survey of First Amendment rights commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and conducted during the spring of 2004 by the University of Connecticut. It questioned 112,003 students, 327 principals and 7,889 teachers.

The students stated that: "36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion. Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little."
Link to USA Today

While based on the same study, CNN provides a different emphasis on its interpretation of the data.
Link to CNN

The UN declares Freedom of the Press a basic human right

2005-02-05T06:41:00.000-05:00

Lesson Plan

This lesson plan for 7-12th graders addressing the topic "The United Nations has declared that freedom of the press is a basic human right (Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights)" from the FrontLine service of PBS offers educators a structure for class discussion.

Link

A personal comment I would add for discussion is from an observation made while part of a small group of teachers invited to train Armenian educators in ways to integrate the Internet in their teaching. As we were brainstorming to identify a common topic of interest, we selected their constitution which had been translated into English. This allowed us to highlight and discuss its articles while actually pointing at the Armenian page for our viewers. The teachers response was very enlightening. They asked why we did not have our Constitution translated into Armenian for them. They spoke with reverence that ours was over 200 years old and was what they needed to use for instruction, rather than theirs which was in continual change. The point is that while the world recognizes the value of our rights and is teaching those principles to their citizens, are we somehow losing sight of our greatest rights as United States citizens.

Taking Technology's Impact on the News to an Extreme

2005-02-05T06:39:00.000-05:00

Epically Speaking: A Video

This very interesting (and frightening) short video on the future of how technology might impact the news appeared on a librarian's listserv, entitled: Epically speaking...8-min of your time...
Link

Two librarian's comments to foster discussion:

Shonda Brisco. Re: Epically speaking...8-min of your time...
Link

Jacqueline Henry. Re: Epically speaking...8-min of your time...
Link

What is meant by "Fourth Estate"?

"Technology happens." Like the inevitable snowball, once in motion it's up to us to direct it, because we surely are not going to stop it. Are we all really guilty because technology provides us with the ability to "only see the sports or entertainment section." Is it so different than only reading those sections of the paper in print when pressed for time. Is the lesson that we need to take time to read "The Week in Review." Customization is the key element of e-content delivery in today's world and will undoubtedly continue. How does this tie into the topic of Freedom of the Press? Could the factionization of our most recent election be a byproduct of a citizenry increasingly able to view the news from exclusively from it's own viewpoint.