Snacks4theBrain!

Hey, ya’ll,

This episode features a chat I was lucky enough to facilitate this past month, July 2007, between participants of a workshop I offered for teachers at my school (University School of Nashville) and educational change advocate David Warlick. David blogs an immensely popular site called 2cents worth and hosts an educational podcast called connect-learning. The workshop participants used a blog and a wiki to archive their learning about the use of Web 2.0 technologies in the service of our children’s learning. These are packed with information so I highly encourage you to check them out and use anything you find for your own classroom. Also feel free to comment below if you should have any questions or require further info!

David has some impressively interesting things to share. I particularly like his first quality of Web 2.0 education: “Information should be participatory and inclusive.” Think about that for a minute, and if you’re anything near my own age, think about how your own schooling may or may not stand up to that principle. And what about his second quality, the one that offers a place for teachers in this brave new world, that “Education is leader-directed,” or his third, that it’s “people-connecting.” Listen to what David Warlick has to say about all of those qualities and then draw your own opionions. Again, feel free to comment at the end of this post.

I’ve brought a little music to this show in the form of a melody I worked out on a McNally Strumstick, a little three stringed instrument that was given to my son recently. It’s called “Allaboutme” and it underscores the podcast’s introduction. I also share a little mandolin ditty of mine called “Emma and Miranda are in China,” and I end the show with a song from a new compilation CD from Magnatune.com. The album’s called The Art of Persuasion, and it’s overbrimming with romantically seductive ear candy that is only available at magnatune.com. WE ARE NOT EVIL…

The sound quality of the interaction is not the best, but it’s what I call GE (Good Enough–thanks Steve Bergen at the Harlem Storefront School in New York), recorded as it was from the speakers on my Dell Inspiron laptop running Skype video and captured on my little FlipVideo device–see that at theflip.com.

Download S4theB! episode 59 right heahhhhh, or click “Links” above and listen to it on the Podcast Pickle Player!

Until next time, Seee yaaaaaaaaa…

Howdy and happy summertime, ya’ll.

As you may have learned by now, S4theB! can get a little erratic in the summertime, the victim of its producer’s schedule gone Attention Deficit as the structure offered by the academic school year’s busy calendar evaporates with the last bell of the last day of the school year.

NEVER FEAR! I have been traveling a bit, down to the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC), hosted by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), in Atlanta, Georgia. Thank the powers-that-be for acronyms, since I don’t have to type those long names anymore!

My time in Atlanta was so productive it’s taken me this long to sort out what I wanted to share from the recordings and pictures I brought back, and I’ve come up with three short snippets of three of my most favorite talks:

1) Peggy Sheehy describes part of her work with her teenagers at Suffern Middle School in New York. If you don’t know about Second Life, check out its website (after listening to the podcast!). Then google it this way, [”Second Life” education], and that will help you begin to understand the potentials this Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE)–and others like it–offer to engage the otherwise possibly unengageable student. There are some videos I took of Peggy’s presentation with more stunning curriculum description available at my own Second Life blog.

2) Kathy Schrock (previously interviewed on an early S4theB!) spoke with upwards of a thousand, maybe 2 or 3 thousands (I don’t have the capacity of the full-to capacity ballroom in which she shared her presentation) of educators about just what Web 2.0 is and what it will be. Her presentation slides (many featuring her Second Life Kathy Dryburgh avatar standing in front of an inworld podium with a presentation slide behind her–verrrry interesting) and all the resources she shared are at her website.

and 3) Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Chris Dede asks a question (you’ll have to listen to hear it!) that might keep you thinking well into next week (whatever week it is that you’re listening to this!).

The single song in the podcast this week (notwithstanding my closing “Snacks4theBrain!” “unjingle”) is from the amazingly talented Bill deRoth, a stellar denizen of the Podsafe Music Network. Go listen to more: Support him buy buying a few songs, or his wonderful album, “Liquid Light.”

If you want to learn more about my time at NECC2007 (”the conference that never ends…”), visit my personal blog and my personal Second Life blog. Also, I’ll be spending quality time with a dozen of my favorite people, my colleagues at University School of Nashville, the week of July 23-27, exploring Web 2.0 tools for education in ways they’ve seldom been explored before. Keep up with that at the workshop’s bliki (a blog with an embedded wiki!).

Listen up, right here!