My Very Own Education Circus

While spinning around the blog-globe this afternoon:

• "Now I can’t completely wrap my mind around all of the significance of this series of events, except to be amazed at the intellectual circle of connections that occurred, both above and beneath the realm of our human senses. When we can move our ideas and our experiences around and share them with people who have a logical need or interest, regardless of time and space, then what can of teacher and learning might we engineer within the new information environment." -- David Warlick, "2 Cents Worth" blog post, 1.8.06, reflections at the PodcasterCon in Chapel Hill this past week.
• "What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.  " -- quotation from Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, from a wonderfully provocative post by Tim Stahmer at "Assorted Stuff" blog.  Not only a great reminder of Postman's work, but a great chance to add "bumblepuppy" to your vocabulary!
• Great graphic shown on the "Blue Skunk" blog for those who are in the change-agent game; it comes originally from the Managing complex change post from the "pedersondesigns" blog and reminds all that the missing a single 'ingredient' leads to far less than true evolution/change.
• From the "BoardBuzz" blog, they ask: "What's next for school vouchers?"  In response, they offer the following:  "That is the multi-million dollar question now that the Florida Supreme Court has ruled the state's original, flagship school voucher program unconstitutional. As we noted yesterday, two strategies under discussion are to alter the program and make it more like Florida's tax-credit voucher program (though that too may now face a legal challenge), or to amend the state constitution and get voters to agree to make vouchers legal. The state legislature returns for business in March, so stay tuned."
• Interesting conversation regarding "hyperlocal" journalism at the "Bud the Teacher" blog:  "I've been really happy to see that my students are beginning to embrace the hyperlocal idea that I've been pushing for in regards to our school newspaper (this doesn't seem like the right term anymore - -but what do you call it?  Newsblog?  Hyperlocal Journalism Site?  Doesn't really roll off the tongue, does it?  Any suggestions?)."
• Nature vs. Nurture tackled...but from a slightly different point of view on Chris Correa's blog: "In light of this conversation, I found the recent issue of Educational Psychology to be relevant. Are children born with some intellectual capacity or is intelligence influenced by their environment?
  This is a version of the age-old “nature vs. nurture” question. For a moment, set aside your answer to this question. Instead, consider another important and closely-related question: What do teachers think?"
• When learners go underground, what will school and education do?  George Siemens offers a kick-off to this brilliant question on the "Connectivism" blog:  "Administrators, learning designers, and teachers are facing a new kind of learner - someone who has control over the learning tools and processes. When educators fail to provide for the needs of learners (i.e. design learning in an LMS only), learners are able to "go underground" to have their learning needs met."
• "Dave's Educational Blog" takes on the issue of an alternative to the expense of textbooks by diving into the Wiki-conversation: "One of those discussions that we’re hoping to have is about wikibooks. There are many schools around the world that don’t have access to updated textbooks, and one of the solutions that has been put forward has been the creation of wikibooks. The wikimedia foundation has been going on with the creation of wikibooks for a few years, here is the free high school science text: physics It isn’t finished, or particularly visually compelling, but it is a start i suppose."
• Appreciate Bret's "Doing More With Less" link to the rising costs of funding public education in the "DeHavilland Blog": "There was an interesting article in the Baltimore Sun by Andrew Rotherham of Education Sector on January 4 about the mistaken idea that we'll be able to keep increasing funding to public education like we have in the past.He notes that from 1970 to today, we have increased spending on education from $3500 to $8000 per student (those numbers are inflation-adjusted), but that we will realistically not be able to continue increasing spending for three reasons..."
• Pretty scathing report on the Jack Welch-inspired "Tweed Academy" for creating successful principals on the "EdWize" blog:  "One of the centerpieces of the Klein-Bloomberg ‘Children First’ program has been its Leadership Academy, developed to bypass the traditional ‘through the ranks’ development of school administrators. The high cost [$160,000 to $180,000 per principal] and less than sterling results [despite a highly selective nomination and interview process, the program has successfully placed in principal positions only 113 out of its first 180 candidates] has produced some critical write-ups on the Academy, including this December 20^th New York Times review of its work."
• The "EduWonk" blog opens up discussion on whether US schools can be successfully ranked via the US Chamber of Commerce: "Word is that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is going to start ranking public schools in some way. This should set off a really entertaining food fight with lots of over the top rhetoric from both sides since the ed interest groups will hate it.* Problem is, for now you're going to be hungry because the Chamber is offering no details about how they're going to do it! We have to wait six weeks for those. A lot of ways this could be misleading or at best redundant...though some ways it could be helpful, too."   They also offer the following important discussion on teacher blogs in general: "One thought, we keep hearing from the usual suspects that the education debate would be different if only people listened to teachers more. That's probably true but perhaps not exactly like they think. Getting teachers' voices out there is important and the blogging medium gives teachers a pretty democratic way to air their views. But curiously enough they all don't say what the usual suspects do! While some of it's generational, some of it is just that interest groups are sometimes misaligned with significant parts of their membership."
• The "Information Just Wants to Be Free" blog offers a charged challenge to the 'hype' of Web2.0, Library2.0, and Anything2.0 in the "Label2.0" post:  "It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No! It’s Library 2.0! What is Library 2.0? Is it all about technology? It is new? Is it just old? If Library 2.0 were an animal, what would it be?  Does any of it really matter?"
• Debate on whether kids should be allowed in libraries without an adult found at the "LIS News" blog:  "After trying several measures to deal with crowds of rowdy students after school, the Wickliffe Public Library (OH) decided that they would not admit kids under 14 years of age, unless accompanied by an adult, between the hours of 2:30-5:30 on weekdays."
• Heart surgery with virtual doctors?  Sound crazy?  Try this post on "rendered physical reality" from the "Learning for 2020" blog, and then make the obvious jump to what it continues to mean for education, or are we still worried about losing the romantic nature of teaching in every situation?  "This is what the Carnegie Mellon University researchers called Dynamic Physical Rendering - a rendered physical reality."
• Miss Frizzle asks a pretty straight-forward (but key) question on her blog: "If you were about to graduate from college and were considering teaching as a possible career, how would you enter the field?" Any thoughts?  How many of you would take the 'traditional' path?
• Curious 'conflict of interest' (or not) found on the "Pedablogue" blog:  "This is what most scholars do: produce scholarship, in the form of books and other publications. The benefits to students of taking a course by the prof who "wrote the book" on the subject would seem self-evident. The author is an authority on the subject and knows the book so well that she'd be the best person to teach from it. But is there a conflict of interest when a teacher assigns a text of their own authorship to a class, earning royalties from the sales?"
• Josh takes on the critics that think kids are not what they used to be on the "Pondering" blog:  "Really, what are we gonna do with these slackers???"  Great report on teen philanthropy included.
• Chris bravely and justly takes on the urban vs. suburban 'facility gap' question on the "Practical Theory" blog:  "I wonder what the real effects of that are. I don't know how to measure it, but it doesn't quite feel right."
• If language is your game, and terrorism is its name, try this post at the "School of Blog":  "Yesterday Bush proposed a program to teach Arabic, Chinese and Farsi to American students. I'm all for teaching kids another language (the article says only 44 percent of high school students study another language), but the reasons behind the program - called the National Security Language Program - may be a cause for some concern."
• I'll let you decide for yourself, but check out the "Rotten Apples awards 2005" found on the "Teach and Learn" blog to see how far education still has to go. But remember, it's easy to criticize.  And frankly, the 'experiment' of public education continues to still amaze after more than 200 years...even if we have a long, long way still to go.
• The request/question/plea from the young teacher who feels isolated in his classroom deserves attention, but it's really the first master teacher's response and reminder that is worth the price of admission.  All found on the "TLN Teacher Voices" blog: "...feel like I have people telling me what to do, but never coming by to see if I am doing it to the level they expect. I have people telling me to disaggregate midterm testing data and write remediation plans, which leaves little time to create in-depth, rehearsed lessons."
• Great "unsung heroes" award -- take a look at "The Essential Blog" from the CES folks: "The Public Education Network's weekly NewsBlast brings word of the ING Unsung Heroes Awards. This program celebrates innovative and progressive thinking in education through projects that directly improve student learning. Past awards have gone directly to classroom educators and school leaders."
• Fan of "Unschooling"?  Ever heard of "Unschooling"?  Wanna jump in the "Eduwonks" blog sandbox and debate it's veracity a bit?  "I didn't even know there was such a thing as 'unschooling'. Until now."
• Remember when school meant that facts were facts and it didn't matter if you liked them or not?  Well, try this post from "The Thinking Stick" blog who takes some reflection time on an international flight to re-consider content and the growing desire to control it person to person:  "People want to be in control of their content. Remember the days on long flights when there were one or two movies and a big screen that every one had to watch? Those days are coming to an end, we want to control our content, to be able to watch what we want, when we want, we want the ability to choose our content whether it’s between movies or music, or what shows up on our Google homepage. We want to be in control and those airlines or web sites that allow us to control the information are the ones that are going to succeed in the 21st century."
• For iPod fans, this one's for you. "50 Things to Do with Your iPod" should keep you busy for a few moments, and if not, then at least order a pizza through PiPod!.  All found on the Kotke.org site, a focus on "hyperlink" tools.
• Miguel offers a wide-arc reflection on why he entered this whole blogging-game in the first place upon his 1000th post, all found on the "Mousing Around" blog.  Hopefully he'll continue for at least another 1000 more:  "So, if I'm going to be successful, I have to go back to the original reason I began. I wanted to find out what blogs were about, to see what the excitement was about. I've done that after a few months of writing and a 1000 posts. I know what the benefits are. I may even know what the drawbacks (a friend suggests I didn't get a job I interviewed for because of this blog...but I doubt that. I also turned down several positions even while I was blogging). If I had to point to any one thing as to the benefit is that I've had a chance to be a part of the Conversation, to create a personal learning network that I read in my RSS aggregator EVERY DAY. I hate to admit it, but I'm an RSS junkie and while others are dumping extraneous feeds, I'm actually reaching out to find more. They allow me to achieve a gestalt of what's going on in a way that traditional news media do not." He also offers, for better or worse, some reflections about how most educators accept technology in the classroom in a post about "MySpace":  "A hammer in search of a nail is how educators approach technology in the classroom. "Oooo...what a great gadget" some might say, but the question is, how is it going to fundamentally change how we teach and learn? It's not? Then why bother? Technology is disruptive...slow, incremental."
• Thanks to Wes Fryer and the "Moving at the Speed of Creativity" blog, you can have a debate as to the issue of "information access" with regards to schools of the past and everything else of the future: "There is no doubt our informational environment for teaching and learning is qualitatively as well as quantitatively different today than it was 40 years ago. Yet the educational experience remains relatively consistent today as it was in the past."
• "The Speaking of History" blog offers the following thoughts about whether a student should know dates or context at the end of the day:  "This past Saturday I joined their show via conference call and at some point during our conversation the question can up about how much a history teacher should stress that students know the specific date of major history events and how it compares with the importance of knowing the context of the event."
• Very worthy post by Tom Hoffman at the "Ed-Tech Insider" blog regarding being transparent about your educational philosophies here in the blogosphere.
• Will Richardson adds his critical 2-cents worth in a post about where it's all leading, this blog-learning/communicating experience, all found on the "Web Logg-ed" blog: "It all still feels glacial, this unlearning, reinvention stage that we're in. I still wish there were more voices engaging in the conversation. And I'm not sure that 2006 or 2007 or even 2008 will bring us to the point where the system itself will be undergoing a similar transformation. But there's no doubt there is an energy around all of this right now, an urgency even. I'm feeling it in my own life, not just in the education sense but in a more global sense. What difference do I really want to make? What contribution? I've learned much since I started blogging, but what I am facing up to now is that the power and potential of these conversations and connections are making much of what I once held dear seem very disconnected. And that just makes the pull toward reinvention (once more) that much more acute. Could be an interesting year..."

• Very cool riff on Seth Godin's blog that takes a new look at bibliography entries for a student report.  Not an 'education' post, but something that has cross-over potential: "Then, when the student hands in the paper, she appends the bibliography created by the site, and there, right on top, is the web address with all the links.Now, the typical middle-school teacher is going to explain that kids need to learn to write biographies because it's part of literacy. And a college professor is going to want to keep the tradition going because no one wants to be the first to end it. And an entrepreneur is going to hesitate to build the site I described because she's worried about how hard it will be to spread this idea and how much effort will go into making it the standard resource. And no student wants to risk a grade by breaking the system."

• "Fast Company Now" blog offers an interesting take on the new Trump University -- yes, the Donald is in the education game!:  "Thinking about going back to school, but don't want to deal with all those pesky exams? Looking for a school that will teach you about the real world? Then Trump University is the place for you! Established last May on the principle of "learn by doing," Trump University is an online operation with courses in marketing, real estate and entrepreneurship."

• Tom Peters offers a shot across the horizon line as the Baby Boomers hit retirement age, and this will undoubtedly remind me to post about 'senior' universities in the next week -- promise.