ideabuffet

On Vacation

Sorry for the lack of posts. I'm on a much needed vacation. See you in a week or so.

Another Nifty Science Resource

Whoah! Check this out: ActionBioScience.

FETC Update

It's my last day at the FETC. I've been attending this conference along with a few of my co-workers. I've been a little frustrated with logging on to the free wireless service. I guess I could pay the $5 an hour/$25 a day total access but it took all I had just to get here. Anyway, enough rants. I fellow I ran into down here pointed me to ScienceBlogs. It has some pretty interesting content. I post more later when and if I can.

FETC Warm-Up

I arrived in Orlando last night along with rest of my colleagues. We’re here to attend the FETC. I’ve been anticipating this for a while. I’m hoping to learn some new tricks, make new friends, and discuss some new ideas for instructional technology. Today, we’re going to attend a class that focuses on using Fireworks, Dreamweaver, and Flash.

Uplifting Learning: Paper Airplanes and the Science of Flight

Here’s a quick way to facilitate student investigation of science (or anything else for that matter): (1) start with something learners can connect with their own experiences, a topic that they innately want to explore and (2) ask a question that’s nigh impossible to answer with an easy yes or no. In many ways, the concept of flight fulfills these requirements. After all, who hasn’t dreamt of soaring over the earth and looking down upon the land like a bird in flight? Some of the greatest minds in history have pondered the problem of flight. Dropping by Workman’s Download a Paper Airplane site is an easy way to “hook” students while introducing an essential question on the order of “What’s the best way to fly?” There is no right or wrong answer to such a query. Indeed, there are many of ways to achieve flight (both in nature—as in birds, bats, insects, et cetera—and with mechanical processes created by humans). By exploring the wonder of flight using resources like the Wright Stuff, Jes Raskin’s intriguing Coanda Effect: Understanding Why Wings Work , the Physics of Flight, and conducting offline experiments, students have a number of opportunities to call upon and hone their creative and critical thinking skills. Throw in an interesting story about an odd, flying object to maintain interest. Mix in digital imaging tools (i.e., scanners, graphic design software, cameras, and video cameras) to record student-lead inquiry, a digital audio-editing tool for collecting and enhancing spoken interviews, a word processing program to assemble written descriptions of discoveries, a spreadsheet or graphing resource to visually articulate numerical information, presentation software to illustrate key points, and pupil created web pages/blogs to share results, and you can make learning interesting and meaningful while simultaneously integrating technology.

Untangling Rich Resources: Web 2.0 Innovation Map

One of the best ways to stimulate creativity in the classroom and promote productivity is exploring what’s happening beyond the confines of school. Taking a look at innovation and creativity in action reveals intriguing ways to assimilate and use knowledge in novel ways. For example, swing by the Web 2.0 Innovation Map and see how web-based creativity and development is geographically dispersed. Each marker identifies the exciting formation and dissemination of ideas and approaches to using data in original ways. Doing so might even spark some ideas for classroom projects and procedures.

Compute With Fruit: Free Mac Resources

Anyone out there trying to do some innovative teaching using a Mac? Need some software to run the machine but have no money? You’re not alone. I’ve a few friends who’ve been given Macs (without any software) to use in their classrooms. The machines are perfectly good they just have nothing (other than the OSX operating system) in the way of applications. That’s why I’m sharing information about the Open Source Mac, a useful bookend to the Open Source Windows site. For those of you looking for resources for older Macs, don’t give up hope. You’ll be surprised how much you can retro-tech with a classic machine.

Cool Mac Hack: Running WinXP and OSX on a MacBook Pro

Here’s a nifty trick that I just came across while checking out the content at popURLs. It seems that the talented Niranjan Kunwar over at Nirlog has kindly supplied step-by-step instructions for installing Windows XP in MacBook Pro. Why would anyone even want to do such a thing? I’m willing to bet that, in a few school systems, those in charge of tech support may need to use Mac OS X for assorted activities and then switch to XP for operations that are windows only in nature. Really lucky techs may have the opportunity to boot Windows XP on an Intel duo core Mac. 

Tools For Open Source Education

 

Hmmm. If you’re serious about creating an open source educational revolution you’ll need a few resources. Open Source Windows is a wonderful place to gather the free software you’ll need for serious technology integration.

Open Learning: Opening Up A Can Of Worms?

The Open University is poised to join the ranks of MIT’s innovative OpenCourseWare and other institutions in adding resources to a growing collection of free, high quality curriculum that anyone can use, revise, or distribute through the Open Content Initiative. I love it! It’s not perfect but it’s a start.

It makes me wonder what might happen if enough parents and community activists decided to stop bothering with the rigmarole of traditional education (i.e., anxiety generated in response to inane standardized testing, ignorance of 21st Century Skills, and a lack of engaged, meaningful learning) and embrace the concept of *gasp* the Open Source Elementary School, the Open Source Middle School, and the Open Source High School. Think about that for just a second. What if all the materials (ideas, curricula, strategies for introducing and exploring) concepts necessary for facilitating a deep and rich understanding of all the concepts essential for functioning in a ecologically, socially, ethically, and intellectually healthy world were available to anyone, anywhere? What if getting an education didn’t necessarily mean going to or through a school? What if the educational process was so intuitive that any citizen could easily connect to information, people, materials, and experiences needed to learn content or skills? What would it take to make something like this happen?

I can envision groups of committed individuals meeting in person or online to collectively agree on what’s absolutely essential for their children to learn to be able to function in today’s world as well as the world that’s coming. I’m sure there’d be heated discussions about what’s important (critical and creative thinking skills?) and what’s so trivial that it can be left to repose in reference materials until called upon for use (i.e., the atomic number of Boron). Maybe, after the participating members of the cognitive community eventually decided upon the concepts to be explored, they would construct a curriculum that genuinely resulted in understanding by design. Wouldn’t that be radical? I wonder if the concept of grades (as in A+, B, C…et cetera) and grade levels would sort of dissolve into quaint memories. I wonder if the “students” involved in an open source school would be any smarter or humane than the ones currently enrolled in “real” schools.

Anyone else interested in imagineering this concept?