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Here’s a technique I recommend people use when they have a long commute or quiet time away from others (I suggest away from others since you may feel a little silly doing it around other people.) Turn on your radio and turn to a talk or news program. Find a story or topic and listen to about five minutes on that topic. Now turn off the radio. For the next minute (you can time yourself using the car clock) talk out loud on the topic. Try to recall as many facts and details as you can while weaving your words into a cohesive and coherent oratory.

This exercise will:

• Challenge your listening skills
• Test your recall
• Force you to think dynamically
• Practice “buying yourself time” when speaking to link your thoughts together
• Encourage thinking “one sentence ahead”

Taking advantage of opportunities to push yourself out of your comfort zone as a speaker is the only true way to grow and develop. Give it a try…you may surprise yourself.

Dangerously Irrelevant: Right of refusal

Scott McLeod voices this observation:

“…can anyone else think of an employment sector other than K-12 and postsecondary education where employees have the right to refuse to use technology?

For example, a grocery store checker doesn’t get to say ‘No thanks, I don’t think I’ll use a register.’ A stockbroker doesn’t get to say, ‘No thanks, I don’t think I’ll use a computer.’ An architect doesn’t get to say, ‘No thanks, I don’t think I’ll use AutoCAD.’ But in education, we plead and implore and incentivize but we never seem to require.

In many industries, knowledge of relevant technologies is a necessary prerequisite for either getting or keeping one’s job. Sometimes the organization provides training; sometimes the employee is expected to get it on her own. Either way, the expectation is that use of the relevant technologies is a core condition of employment.”

While I don’t agree that every industry outside of education can mandate computer use effectively (try working in manufacturing administration for a while and you’ll see) I do agree with the point teachers have an exceptionally high level of autonomy when it comes to life within their classroom. Granted, their curriculum may be mandated, tests dictated, and results measured but their delivery is commonly left up to them.

There has always been a strength to providing teachers the adaptability to react to their students’ individual needs and requirements in learning. That flexibility and opportunity to innovate helps good teachers take advantage of all the tools at their disposal to assist the young minds to grow and flourish. Yes, you saw correctly, I said “good teachers”. Any teacher not continually striving to improve their ways of delivering lessons, reaching out to students, drawing them in and setting them free to explore and learn in my book is not doing their best for their audience.

If we as educators are not willing to step up to the plate and challenge the status quo what kind of example are we setting for our students? Do you want them to learn to accept what they’re given, stay comfortably within the box, and not rock the boat?  Would you rather have students that break the mold, innovate, explore, and journey to intellectual places you never imagined? Learn for their sake, not yours.  Lead by example.  Stand at the front of the boat, look out for the rocks, but let them paddle and propel you both to new and wonderful places.

The comedian Bill Engvall does a routine about how people who say stupid things should wear a sign so they can be easily identified. The next time a teacher says to you, “Oh, I don’t need to use this in my classroom. My students do just fine the way I do things now. I don’t have the time to learn this new stuff” reply to them…”Here’s your sign.”

edtechNOT.com Blog: What would my ideal education ultraportable look like?

The Best education notebook is no notebook I question the value of notebooks in schools period. It’s a crutch for a bunch of lazy kids to do little, or surf to their websites of interest.

School achievement is completely based on the desire of the individual student to do the necessary reading and study to learn. Many schools, including the one I currently work in has PC’s in every classroom, and two computer labs. But the students don’t use the Internet, or the study materials for PC’s to learn anything, or enrich their studies. they use it to find a source for a paper, many times some dumpy bogus web site, then type a paper full of grammar mistakes, misspellings, and bad formatting, and then expect an A.

If you can’t read well, have no mastery of grammar other than “txt msg 2 u”, and have no interest in the study and work of learning, then a PC Notebook in their hand is a waste. It will do them no good. If their family can’t afford a PC, then go to a library, filled with PC’s paid for by people who use a phone.

If they are overseas in poverty, then you have a whole different set of problems to deal with. But in the US today, you have a bunch of lazy kids who are addicted to pictures and music. A PC won’t change them.

This response by a classroom teacher to the concept of ultraportable notebooks for students concerns me.  Not from the standpoint of this being the best technological solution for the developing world, but the preconceived perception of failure that is being attached.

My opinion:  sell the machines to whomever wants them.  Develop the programs and curriculum to teach teachers how to use these tools.  I’m sure similar arguments were made on the side of the slide rule and the fountain pen but does it mean we must continue them?

If we want to make the greatest difference in the world, educate that teacher first.  Let the education spread through the system from the top down, not the bottom up.

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Jess has captured the essence of the question “why blog?” with an exceptional amount of eloquence an insight.

Why would I wan’t to publish my personal life on the Internet so that just anyone could read them? It’s a privacy issue for me.

However, I believe that a blog created for the purposes of academic learning and reflection is effective, interesting and perhaps not so revealing of my personal life The ability to disseminate not just information or knowledge but also thoughts, debates and commentaries on them excites me. I can see a world of possibility for interaction and growth between individual learners.

…

Blogging includes, but is not the sum of the reflections on one’s experiences or learning. Blogging is an instrument of communication, growth and learning. Even reading a social blog, you learn about the blogger’s experiences, reflecting on your learning and growing as a result. The act of reading the blog in the first place is an act of communication, furthered when you post your findings to your blog for others to read.

We in the EdTech space struggle everyday with getting teachers, parents, and administration to understand why technologies such as blogging are useful and beneficial not only in the classroom but beyond. Next time you get into this discussion, send them a link to Jess’s blog. Jess gets it.

Clarence Fisher raises the question at this very pertinent time…”Is education valued?”

We hear about businesses striking massive deals to make huge amounts of
money. We hear about conflicts raging across the globe and about those
people that are needed to fight them. Quick results are rewarded while
small, continuous movements and improvements often go unnoticed. This is why education and what is happening in classrooms often goes under the radar of society.
Learning can be a long, slow process requiring a lot of time, hard work
and reflection; things the media doesn’t find important or sexy enough
to write about.

Clarence makes some excellent points, but I think he’s missed a key one. Education is a “no-brainer”. It’s one of the things like healthcare for children, loving puppies, and being patriotic that is just expected. When the statement “Education is important!” is made too often the reaction is, “No duh!” The value of education must be compared to something else for it to be apparent. We fail to understand the value of an education is the comparison to not having one at all. What are we without it? Where are we left? What results in the future?

The great Greek philosophers were teachers in the truest sense. They would teach anyone who would listen. We cannot limit ourselves to our classrooms, our 16.5 students, four walls, and a whiteboard. Use the web and share what you know with everyone. Podcast your ideas and knowledge. Distribute your research…push your students to do the same.

Education is as air. It’s value isn’t appreciated until it’s not there.

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