clear and present conjecture

In Children of the Corn, kids murder people to satisfy their leader, "He Who Walks Behind the Rows". But HWWBtR is offended by their most recent offerings, so one boy, Isaac, decides to lower the age of sacrifice from nineteen to eighteen.

And "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" is a happy fella. And at some level, we're happy, too. Because once you put aside their murderous ways, you find yourself applaudingthese nefarious rug-rats for developing a pin-point, concrete age for sacrifice.

If only we could get, like Isaac provides, a 21st Century Learner to cite the year of their inception. I've read from a colleague that 1994 might be the exact date, although I'm curious to know the month.

But I'm not quite ready to grab that rock over there and chisel in a 21st Century Learner inception date. Additionally, I'd advise that we focus our efforts more on what's in front of us rather than playing the equivalent of the guess- how- many- jellybeans- are- in- the-plexiglass game.

Guessing the date is good ole' PETE&C fun, but it sure won't provide any of us with a forward direction that can help with creating professional development or solid instructional design.

Interest in when they arrived can't survive as an air-borne issue, but grappling with what it means to be a learner is of far greater import. We label our students and our own children as 21st Century Learners, but we're tossing the term 'learner' around their cherubic necks when they're still a nascent lot.

No overt journalisitic moment of discovery is needed to report that our students are heavily entrenched in the read-write, share and share alike web. Most come to our schools and don't need us to teach them a 'how-to'. They are adroit navigators on their own.

But are they learning from the use of these sites? Are they honing their analytical skills? Are they refining their ability to synthesize? Are they considering audience or are they just preening for one?

Remember your bedroom when you were in high school? Those posters of Farrah Fawcett or Marky Mark scotch-taped to your walls? Or over there, over your desk, the cork board replete with ticket stubs from concerts and movies and sporting events you attended...remember those?

Your room swathed in adolescent artifacts.

It was your space. You knew it as 'my space'.

Welcome to MySpace.

We're all still learning.

Say 'no' to born on dates.

bubbles on your video

Thanks to Jim Gates for this one. And remember, a vote for Jim is a vote for progress!

So, remember how I told you about the history teacher with the video project?

Yeah, well, 'dem videos about to get poppin'!

This here nifty new app, Asterpix, allows you to create interactive videos by adding embedded notes. Simple mouse-over the 'beacons' and the video will pause and a bubble will open, replete with notes and hyperlinks. Notes and such added by the video creators.

Anyhow, the history teacher always tells her students that their videos should stand on their own. Conceptually and thematically, she wants those videos to convey the mood and the issues of each event.

Now, as Dan Meyer has pointed out, creating really effective videos is a tough game. But now, Asterpix comes along and affords some textual help.

Something like Asterpix can only help increase the richness of student work, right?

will u be my optimus?

Dear Optimus,

We've never met, but I have such strong feelings for you, I can no longer sit idle as my heart yearns for your powers of transformation.

When you convert from truck to robot, or robot to truck, you inspire my soul. You prove time and time again that change is timeless and necessary. You could serve humanity at any level, even educationally.

Join me, Optimus. Grab hold of my hand when you are in ambulatory robot mode and help me create change here at my high school. Teach me the value of persistence. Show me that the Decepticons are just machines; not fleshy homosapiens that I sometimes believe them to be.

You are a true change-agent. I need you, Optimus. This school needs you. You are a boon to tech integration. You value the past, but you can make people around me see that progress does not mean having to abandon that past.

We can do great things, Optimus. Prime & Rodoff. Rodoff & Prime. Prime Rodoff. Whatever the name, our collective influence will surely, once and for all, give credence to the calculated use of technology as a tool to advance student-thinking, teacher instruction, and filmmaking.

Oh, answer me. Let my heart break no longer. I am waiting for you. I've waited for you. I cannot wait much longer. I'm about to resort to handouts.

Don't let this happen, Optimus.

Timorously waiting,

Ken

the most expensive round of drinks

Do you remember when you would send out emails to ‘select faculty’, inviting them to meet up after school at a local lemonade stand? The people you invited were the ones you wanted to be around. The group was a hand-selected lot and the selection process screamed ‘elitist’.

Do you remember going to said lemonade stand and having a really good time? You would tell your spouse that you would only be out for an hour or two and four hours later, you were well into your Friday night with a new group of friends. Good times.

Do you remember returning to school two days later and hearing the mumbles and grumbles of coworkers excluded from the invite list? They wanted to be invited. They wondered if you would send out a whole faculty email next time around.

And you did.

And come Friday, they were nowhere to found. A lemonade-less lot.

And you vowed never to send out a faculty wide invite because it was a wasted endeavor, meaningless altruism.

It’s not that I disliked the idea of a whole-faculty outing, but I knew that any real or tangible social value resided in the consistency and tightness of the group.

A greater level of selectivity is integral in fostering and maintaining meaningful relationships. Behold:

I follow 18 people on Twitter.
I read 14 blogs.
I float around in one ning.

Edtech circles should strive to remain relatively small because too many connections creates too much verbal static.

Here’s a handful of fun thoughts about these online communities:

Involvement in a ning is professional development; the place where you can sit next to select people, doodle and pass notes back and forth, and when the whim strikes you, contribute to the purpose of the gathering.

Blogging is a department meeting; a room full of people whose sole purpose is the advancement of a unified goal. Keeping a small blog circle is crucial. Remember the one about too many cooks?

Twitter is happy hour. Keep it short and sappy. Great for the social scene. Go with a select group. Have a good time. Talk shop. Vent. Keep going and next thing you know, everyone thinks you need to surrender your keys.

No one invites 300 people to happy hour. It violates maximum occupancy laws.

analyzing character intentions

Mr. Betlach, keeper of roomd2 blog, provided the above slide in a recent post and it inspired me.

So I want to answer the questions because now that I have my master's degree, because now that I have two children, and because now I have this horrid habit of crafting compound, complex sentences, I feel this innate desire to respond with depth and irreverence.

1. Who are the two characters shown in this photograph?

Simple response: Boy and Computer.

Convoluted response: Boy and Computer, but not in that order.

Esoteric & filibusterous response: You want to hear that the two dominant nouns in the picture represent some form of symbiosis, but in truth, they represent two wholly dissimilar items that have no business sharing a common space.

2. Each character has a goal. Describe each character's goal.

Simple response: They share a mutual goal set, focused solely on inquiry, creation, collaboration, and games. People create computers. Computers create opportunity. People expand critical thinking, problem solving, and harmonious existence of webkinz.

Convoluted response: Separate entities working to coexist in an every-changing geo-political landscape.

Esoteic & filibusterous response: Person is intent on destroying creation of his own doing by drowning the machine in RSS feeds, social bookmarks, and Lindsay Lohan chat rooms. Machine wants to fully expose the folly of the human race, specifically its infatutaion with Lindsay Lohan.

a 3.0 x 5.0 message

Of all the new-fangled, ooh-aah ways to request for a meeting, I have to say today's method was amusingly low-tech.



Every day, I check four email accounts, read over RSS feeds, and survey the blogiverse. But I rarely check my rectangular mail receptacle in the "Professional" "Library".

The seemingly endless talks, tweets, and blog posts about getting teachers on board with technology is great, but how many of us really work with index-card communicators?

Apparently I do, and this is why I've decided that being in a building is crucial if someone wants to truly convey to the assembled masses what it takes to really create a culture of change.

To all in the buildings, HOO-RAH!