I worry about todays generation, ok maybe all of us today. We don’t always have the ability to be private, and many of our successes (and failures) are going to be google-able. Seth Godin wrote a really nice post about how to handle the age of google. Creating a long tail so that even if the first 3 things that return on a search for yourself are “bad” then the next 10 are interesting or at least a little positive. I like the approach, don’t run from it, embrace it.

If you have a name like Jennifer Nelson, you can just hide in the multitude of jnelson’s out in the world. Or, you can try to become a little unique and answer to Jenn Nelson, only to find that other of us have adopted that same strategy. Maybe I’ll get pinned with someone else’s success instead of their drinking binge.

Talking to kids about what they post and what they don’t, is kind of like talking to them about driving. You don’t really know what happens when they leave your sight, until someone in the community sees them in your unique car. Maybe being Googled is something like that, having someone else see your child in your car out in the world.  I did call a friend recently when her son posted something a little too, wrong, (for age 9) on Facebook.  Yes, she’s doing all the right things with him on Facebook, she controls who his friends are, watches what he posts, manages his privacy levels etc. Exposing him at this age to the environment that he’ll grow up in, is a good idea. Having him delete a silly post is also wise.

At this age, his silly post is: I Hate School.

Much better than the binge drinking picture, hopefully he’ll learn the lesson before it can haunt him into job interviews.

There are a couple tools that every teacher / student should have access to in order to deliver / experience the 21st Century Education. I spoke about this at the TIES 2009 Conference in December and the more I think about it, the more important I think they are to education today.

Projector / Internet /Interactive Whiteboard in the Classroom

I’d add to this an interactive whiteboard, but bare minimum you need a way to project and create a visual classroom. This idea / requirement isn’t new so I’m not going to spend much time talking about it.

Moodle

If you have a way to collect and organize the electronic information for your students, everyone is better off. Moodle creates that extra layer of classroom tooling that makes it better than a web site. From a systemic perspective, you have a really great way of sharing materials between teachers. It spread like wildfire in my school, because the early adopters could give others what they’d created. Better than some of the social networking / web 2.0 tools out there as we can package and share between classrooms and schools. I like the idea of Ning, but it really isn’t the complete classroom tool that Moodle is for everyone.

Over the next couple days I’ll add to the list and probably talk more about the power of each tool (IWB, Moodle, Google Apps, itouch, Podcast Server, Screen Capture Software). Let me know what you think, and what 6 are on your list.

Michael Wesch was the keynote speaker at the eLearning Summit.

It was quite a treat to listen to him talk for an hour, and then again at a break out session.

He talked about…user generated content, filtering, organization, distribution, commentary and ratings.

What a great way of breaking down web 2.0 into what it means in terms of…education, life, the future, people, and culture.

His kids commented that 1/2 don’t like school, but all like learning.  What could we do with that as we move forward?  If we had the mindset that kids LIKE to learn, how could that change the way we look at our classrooms, education system, and lives?

Changing practice, offering the option of attending a staff meeting online! I thought what a great idea!

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to be at your desk, stream in the content, respond with your comments in a forum, take a short poll to weigh in on a question, and did I mention, from your desk? Or deck depending on your level of geekness? As with kids having the opportunity to take online classes (and for the most part, they stick to coming to the buildings) , it amazes me how many people enjoy being in the room, the physical room of a meeting. Maybe it takes more than an offer to start changing practice, maybe it takes people getting online a couple of times to do something such as this, maybe it is May, and as teachers we are tired and ready to be done, just like our kids.

What is rewarding is the number of people after the fact who are coming online to add comments and reviewing the links to things we shared at the meeting!

What an exciting use of simple free technology! Connecting with the composer of the piece this choir has been working on, Stephen Bachicha.  They shared a video conference call, performing for him, having him change the cords as he’s listening.  Asking him what he was thinking as he was creating, what the creation process is like..etc.

The choir conductor did a great job of prepping the kids, they had a great conversation about the music that kept the kids popping and engaged.

I’m sure this will go down as one of those remembered days in class.

Yes, another look at where we are, really well done. As we are looking at 21st Century Skills, doesn’t it just beg that this is a skill we teach kids, teachers, administrators? – the skill to create the presentation that really makes us think, and motivates us to move, not just to share facts with the audience…Its more about Story, creating and sharing that Story with others…

I got sucked into yet another interesting twitter application today, while trying to get some work done.  Interesting to see how the connections reveal themselves. Not sure if it shows the different versions of self that I twitter as, maybe I’m the one who can see them more fully as I know more about a couple people after reading their tweets that you might.

Twitter apps can suck more time from your life than youtube. Not a bad thing, just a shiny thing.

So, I’m following http://twitter.com/timoreilly.

Think about that for a while.

If you don’t know who he is…read about him for a moment.

The New York Times Caption Contest…

Made me laugh, maybe it is one of the things we could apply to education. Thinking of creativity and creating meaning out of seemingly unrelated objects…Have students creating the comics, and the captions, trading spots is the simple knock off…More on this after it bakes a little…

Another thing to get sucked into…

I’ve been reading A Whole New Mind this week, chunks at a time, then seeing what else that I run into that feed the learning…brain seems to be a new theme for my thoughts. If, as Pink speaks of, we are moving into an age of the right brain ruling our future, it begs us to look at how we are shaping the right brains of our students and children.

Projects that help create meaning out of seemingly unrelated objects / concepts. I wonder what that would look like, and how we’d be integrating them into school.