My superintendent was honored yesterday by the Colorado Association of School Executives as the Colorado Superintendent of the Year. Very cool. I respect him very much, and feel he’s the right guy to win this award.
I was pleasantly surprised, too, to see that my local newspaper has begun to embed video on its site. Neat development.
I forgot just how easy it is to use a camera phone to send photos to Flickr. It took me longer to enter in the e-mail address for my Flickr account than it did for the first, and unashamedly ugly, photo to upload. Since I’ve set up the account to automatically add the "csuwp" tag to all photos that I’m sending, then my Flickr badge on the CSUWP blog is also automagically updating.
Cool. I continually forget how powerful these phones are getting.
Jay Mathews has an interesting request :
So I have asked Gardner to help me, and him, become more familiar
with this new opinion delivery system by joining me in a blog-judging
contest. I hope readers will e-mail me at mathewsj@washpost.com and Gardner at walt.gard@verizon.net
the links to their favorite education blogs — no more than five per
reader, please, and I would love you to rank them in your order of
preference. Gardner and I will look them over and reveal our favorites
in a future column. He and I have different views on some key issues
and different tastes in writing styles, so entries should not be at any
disadvantage no matter what their slant or tone.In other words, help drag two old guys into the 21st century, where I hear there is much to learn.
Please read the column — there’s a delightful story there — and then send Matthews your suggestions. Thanks to Stephen for the link.
The 2006 Edublog Awards are now open for nominations. If you’re into such things, go ahead and send in a nomination or two.
I’m not sure if I agree with Paul Allison’s statement that maybe there’s a new discipline lurking in the work that we’re engaged in online:
Like composition teachers at the 1966 conference at Dartmouth College, like social studies
teachers carving out a unique discipline alongside history and
sociology–”the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities
to promote civic competence”– perhaps those of us using digital
photography, podcasts, Google maps, webcasts, wikis, video, del.icio.us, tags, blogs, Bloglines, Google Reader, online
word processors, digital stories and poetry, and other Web 2.0
technologies need our own department, our own discipline, our own field
of study. Perhaps we need our own interdisciplinary inquiry out of
which to build curriculum and to reorganize the subjects that are
taught in secondary schools. “Web Studies” would address new literacies that are not presently being taught in the traditional, core subjects. Web Studies needs to become more central in schools.
I’m not able to simply dismiss the idea, either. It’s an honest question, but I’m not sure that the best answer to all of the change that we’re facing is to splinter off in a new direction. I’d like to join the webcast where he and the rest of the Teachers Teaching Teachers gang will be discussing the issue of a new discipline. But I’ll be in an airplane, headed for Nashville. What’s an hour or so of AirPhone time running for these days? Someone want to loan me a credit card?
Go and participate in the show for me, okay?
I’m on an ARG kick right now, based largely on the success that I’ve found with a couple of students and Cathy’s Book. We’ve really enjoyed puzzling our way through that book. Puzzles, the literacy of ARG’s, are tricky for me, but lots of fun. We took a look at this great cypher tutorial (free registration required) today, checking out some cyphers, one of the more common types of ARG puzzles. One of my students created her own. Want to take a stab at solving it?
Here’s a hint: We won’t fib you, to solve this puzzle, skip forward twice, and then walk backwards from there.
233 – 987 – 30368 – 28657, 59025 – 233 – 987 – 13 – 610 – 89393 – 4181 - 377 – 28657, 4181 – 34, 21 – 6765 – 28657, 89393 – 28657 – 34 – 21
Good luck! First one to solve it correctly wins a free one year subscription to this blog. Post your answers in the comments.
I was catching up on some poetry reading tonight. Glad I did . Here’s an excerpt:
an image of a moment in time so singular
that only words will serve
to etch it forever
on the patterns of my memory
to provide some comfort
when I am old
to give testimony to the painful beauty
that was my life
that is the experience of being human
I love Megan’s poetry. You’ve got to read the whole thing to get it, though.
This week marks both the NWP Annual Meeting and the NCTE Annual Convention. I’ll be at both — since they’re both in Nashville and at the same time. I’ll be presenting at both, too, which means it’s going to be a busy week.
Whew. Good thing I went and got sick last week instead of this one. Anyone else presenting in Nashville? Want to plug your session? Leave a comment.
UPDATE: Oops — forgot to plug my sessions. I’ll be presenting on Friday at 2:30pm with Bill Bass and Greg Van Nest. Our session’s called "The Compleatly (sic) Connected Teacher: Blogs and Related Technology for the 21st Century Teacher." Here’s the wiki. Then, I’m racing across town to join Troy Hicks for an NWP session called "The Social Web: building Interactivity Into Our Sites’ Websites." (Don’t you just love the academic colon?)
Night is about to fall on the end of the first K12 Online Conference — and they’re going out in style, with a 24-hour webcast, broken up into one or two hour sessions hosted by folks all over the world. Things get underway at 12:00 GMT, which is 5:00PM Mountain Time. Head on over to the website to figure out where to go and whom to join. I hope to drop in when I can — perhaps I’ll "see" you there?
If not, remember that as the conference ends, that means a year of regularly scheduled online conversation until the next one gets going. I’ve still got at least a week of conference presentations from this year to get through — wow. Lots of good stuff.
