Michael Wesch: What killed their souls? from Palomar5 on Vimeo.
Wesch early on mentions his admiration for Neil Postman. Postman needs to be read more widely ... again: "We are, after all, talking about achieving a high degree of freedom from the intellectual and social constraints of one's tribe. For example, it is generally assumed that people of other tribes have been victimized by indoctrination from which our tribe has remained free. Our own outlook seems 'natural' to us, and we wonder that other men can perversely persist in believing nonsense. Yet, it is undoubtedly true that, for most people, the acceptance of a particular doctrine is largely attributable to the accident of birth....Each of us whether from the American tribe, Russian tribe, or Hopi tribe, is born into a symbolic environment as well as a physical one. We become accustomed very early to a 'natural' way of talking, and being talked to, about 'truth'. Quite arbitrarily, one's perception of what is 'true' or real is shaped by the symbols and symbol-manipulating institutions of his tribe. Most men, in time, learn to respond with favor and obedience to a set of verbal abstractions which they feel provides them with an ideological identity. One word for this, of course, is 'prejudice'. None of us is free of it, but it is the sign of a competent 'crap detector' that he is not completely captivated by the arbitrary abstractions of the community in which he happened to grow up." from Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Digital Dossier
An idea for having students create their own idea of what their digital dossier looks like.
Alan Sitomer: Technology and Project-Based Learning in an Urban Environment - English Companion Ning
Alan's TED-style video introduction
Book Glutton: How it Works
We were having a discussion on Carol Jago's blog about DailyLit in her comments, and I thought you all might like to see how Book Glutton works. I haven't tried it much yet, but I think it has some interesting classroom implications.
Pecha Kucha: Get to the PowerPoint in 20 Slides
Let us now bullet-point our praise for Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein, two Tokyo-based architects who have turned PowerPoint, that fixture of cubicle life, into both art form and competitive sport. Their innovation, dubbed pecha-kucha (Japanese for "chatter"), applies a simple set of rules to presentations: exactly 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. That's it. Say what you need to say in six minutes and 40 seconds of exquisitely matched words and images and then sit the hell down. The result, in the hands of masters of the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate clich into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art.
The duo — Dytham is British, Klein Italian — invented pecha-kucha four years ago to help revive a struggling performance space they owned. The first presentations were such a hit that they began hosting monthly pecha-kucha events, boozy affairs at which Tokyo architects and designers showcased their streamlined offerings to crowds of hundreds. Now there are pecha-nights in 80 cities, from Amsterdam and Atlanta to San Francisco and Shanghai. Why? Dytham believes that the rules have a liberating effect. "Suddenly," he says, "there's no preciousness in people's presentations." Just poetry.
The duo — Dytham is British, Klein Italian — invented pecha-kucha four years ago to help revive a struggling performance space they owned. The first presentations were such a hit that they began hosting monthly pecha-kucha events, boozy affairs at which Tokyo architects and designers showcased their streamlined offerings to crowds of hundreds. Now there are pecha-nights in 80 cities, from Amsterdam and Atlanta to San Francisco and Shanghai. Why? Dytham believes that the rules have a liberating effect. "Suddenly," he says, "there's no preciousness in people's presentations." Just poetry.
Shorty caught on camera - The Shorty Awards Blog
We tried to keep the Shorty Awards in true Twitter form (140 character acceptance speeches, votes as tweets, etc.), and we thought of taking it to the logical extreme: holding the awards ceremony over Twitter.
Here’s what it would have been like:
Here’s what it would have been like:
Shorty caught on camera - The Shorty Awards Blog
Missed the Shorty Awards? Our generous supporters at the Knight Foundation were kind enough to record highlights from the night including Shaq’s video message to Twitteronia:
Truth Happens
This is actually an ad for Linux, but the message is clear: the world continues to change and advance--we have to keep learning and changing to keep up with it all.
This would be a great video to show on the first day of class.
This would be a great video to show on the first day of class.
A Portal to Media Literacy
Dubbed "the explainer" by popular geek publication Wired because of his viral YouTube video that summarizes Web 2.0 in under five minutes, cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch brought his Web 2.0 wisdom to the University of Manitoba on June 17. During his presentation, the Kansas State University professor breaks down his attempts to integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter, and other emerging technologies to create an education portal of the future. More importantly he not only talks about the technologies but how he encourages extraordinary participation and collaboration from his students by engaging them in meaningful learning activities.
Although the video is 66 minutes long...pour a coffee, iced tea or glass of wine and enjoy this dynamic presentation from a master teacher.
Homeboyz book trailer
Comments by Alan Sitomer, the author of Homeboyz.
First off, consider the audience. I teach at an inner city Title I school that boasts a near 50% drop-out rate -- and we are not alone by any stretch. Philly, Oakland, Atlanta, Detroit -- there are scores of schools facing the same issues we are in our classrooms. So how does this relate? Let me see...
1) Kids are disengaged from schoolwork.
2) Kids have exceptionally low literacy levels.
3) Kids overtly boast that they hate to read.
4) Kids are dying to be asked to tap their creative talents and use technology in the classroom -- which we are rarely, if ever, doing.
5) Violence, gangs, guns and drugs deeply impact their community.
6) They read the book, put their own words and images to the text in a "new" manner, brought literary elements such as tone, mood, symbolism and characterization to the table and did so on their own time outside of class -- demonstrating great work ethic and lots of fantastic attention to detail. (i.e. the person who authored this cared about their work.)
7) Lots of homework gets assigned -- especially over the summer. Lots also gets blown off.
8) About 10 zillion extended conversations can now be opened in the "text-to-world" arena. (Really, how many venn diagrams could be assigned? Or how about extending it into an expository composition on poverty or gangs or self-esteem or violence in American society?
9) Digital literacy is an element we are all wrestling with yet their fluency in being able to construct this type of composition certainly represents a "literacy skill of the 21rst century," no?
10) Engagement is a HUGE problem in American education today. Students WANT to compose projects like this. It validates their interests, their creativity and their individuality. A one size fits all approaches to reaching today's students doesn't work. Let kids choose their own book and explore the connection -- of which so many are so evident.
But that's just off the top of my head.
Created using a site called Animoto, which has a free teachers site
First off, consider the audience. I teach at an inner city Title I school that boasts a near 50% drop-out rate -- and we are not alone by any stretch. Philly, Oakland, Atlanta, Detroit -- there are scores of schools facing the same issues we are in our classrooms. So how does this relate? Let me see...
1) Kids are disengaged from schoolwork.
2) Kids have exceptionally low literacy levels.
3) Kids overtly boast that they hate to read.
4) Kids are dying to be asked to tap their creative talents and use technology in the classroom -- which we are rarely, if ever, doing.
5) Violence, gangs, guns and drugs deeply impact their community.
6) They read the book, put their own words and images to the text in a "new" manner, brought literary elements such as tone, mood, symbolism and characterization to the table and did so on their own time outside of class -- demonstrating great work ethic and lots of fantastic attention to detail. (i.e. the person who authored this cared about their work.)
7) Lots of homework gets assigned -- especially over the summer. Lots also gets blown off.
8) About 10 zillion extended conversations can now be opened in the "text-to-world" arena. (Really, how many venn diagrams could be assigned? Or how about extending it into an expository composition on poverty or gangs or self-esteem or violence in American society?
9) Digital literacy is an element we are all wrestling with yet their fluency in being able to construct this type of composition certainly represents a "literacy skill of the 21rst century," no?
10) Engagement is a HUGE problem in American education today. Students WANT to compose projects like this. It validates their interests, their creativity and their individuality. A one size fits all approaches to reaching today's students doesn't work. Let kids choose their own book and explore the connection -- of which so many are so evident.
But that's just off the top of my head.
Created using a site called Animoto, which has a free teachers site
David Pogue "I Got You Tube"
They say we’re young, don’t watch TV
they say the Internet is all we see
but that’s not true, they’ve got it wrong,
see all our shows are just two minutes long.
Hey, I’ve got YouTube.
I’ve got YouTube.
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