Via Professor Michael Wesch’s blog. I am a fan of the Office and thought this was hilarious the first time I watched it. But as I watched it a second time I was more reflective. Watching the “teacher” move from writing on the white board with a marker to presenting with a PowerPoint, distributing content on 3.5 inch floppy disks, or using Skype to display his image, doesn’t really change the instructional delivery. Still teacher [...]

Don Tapscott discusses the future of education at TEDxToronto. [20:55] Selected quote: “I heard a definition of the lecture. It’s the process by whereby the notes of the lecturer go to the notes of the student without going through the brains of either.” About TEDx In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.  At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video [...]

Experts practice common habits. Among them are… Asking good questions Breaking problems into parts Looking for patterns Relying on evidence Considering other perspectives Following hunches Using familiar ideas in new ways Collaborating with others Welcoming critique Revising repeatedly Persisting Seeking new challenges Knowing yourself Looking at this list, I can’t help but ask if we are explicitly teaching these habits to our students? How do you teach these in your professional position?

A colleague asked me how to delete every second row of data in an Excel spreadsheet that contains thousands of rows. Manual deletion in this case (holding the CTRL key on a PC) while selecting every second row would take too long. A quick search turned up this tip in the Excel Forum. Insert a “helper” column to the left of the first column. Enter this formula: =mod(row(),2) Copy down the formula to the end [...]

If you were using GMail lately, you may have noticed a new link and icon beneath your Inbox link, Google Buzz. Buzz lets you “go beyond status messages to share updates, photos, videos, and more. Start conversations about the things you find interesting.” Want to know more? Watch this video!   What do you think of this tool? Share your thoughts?  

Back in June, when the Iranian government was cracking down on dissent, I finally understood the power of Twitter. Just wanted to share a few Twitter resources that I have come across. Nine Reasons to Twitter in Schools 25 Ways to Teach with Twitter by Sonja Cole Twitter Handbook for Teachers An overview of Twitter and ways of using it in education. A Twitter primer with reasons, stories and resources. Created by Tomaz Lasic. I [...]

You may have noticed the “Suggestions” box on the right side of the web page. I recently added a Skribit widget to Teachers. Technology. Transformation. that allows blog visitors to suggest topics for what they would like me to write about on this site. If you have a suggestion, please click the link and share it with me. Thanks!

Are teachers integrating digital media resources in the classroom? Yes, is the answer from the annual Grunwald survey for PBS. Read the press release, “New Research Reveals PreK-12 Educators Increasingly Value and Use Digital Media” and access the free report, “Digitally Inclined.”

This article was first published in the August issue of T.H.E. Journal, and I thought it might be of help to someone looking for some open source software: THE APPS BUNDLED with Edubuntu are just the tip of the iceberg of open source programs for education. The open source apps used by Indiana’s Affordable Classroom Computers for Every Secondary Student program alone include: Blender: (Also in Ubuntu.) A 3-D computer animation program. Supports modeling, animation, [...]

On Friday (February 5, 2010), I first heard about this online tool from the network administrator. It seems that a teacher had requested that he unblock this site from our Internet filtering software, and wanted to know if I knew anything about it. This was the first I had learned of the site so I took a peek. Wallwisher is “a notice board maker,” according to the site. You can post announcements, keep notes, ask [...]