Random
Learning & Leading with Technology Weblogs are featured in the September 2003 issue of ISTE's journal, Learning and Leading with Technology. Will's blog is highlighted, but it looks as if they didn't talk to him. The authors point out the potential of the medium for use by students as a journaling tool. The article is not available online.
Teachers learn new tricks as the Internet expands their professional horizons. [New York Times: Education]
Nothing new or earth shattering, but a nice overview of how some teachers are using the Internet as a communication vehicle, and as a resource for lesson planning.
The New York Times: Circuits Several interesting pieces today about technology and learning. Included is a piece called Can Johnny Blog?, which highlights the work of Will Richardson...
I am the principal at Lewis Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. I use this site mainly to make notes to myself about technology and how it can be used by teachers and students to gain a greater understanding of their world, and as a means to tell their stories...
Questions or comments can be addressed to
tim at lauer dot com
Books and Publications
"Innovative Approaches To Literacy Education: Using The Internet To Support New Literacies" (International Reading Association), Contributor, Chapter 10, Bee Stings, Wooden Blocks, and Web Browsers
Scott Foresman Internet Guide:
ISBN 0-673-62225-8
Recent Articles/Interviews
"What is a Blog? Educators Discover the Newest From of Immediate Communication",
by Craig Colgan , American School Board Journal, July 2005
“Google Maps inspire creativity”
by Corey Murray, eSchool News Online, June 15, 2005.
“How do you communicate with students who have grown up with
technology? Schools are looking to technology for the answer.” by Kevin
Delaney, Wall Street Journal, Jan 17, 2005, pp R4.
Recent Presentations
Lessons Learned: A Panel Discussion about Creating Educational Communities Online,
National Education Computing Conference - June 30, 2005
Effective Weblogs in Education: How to Create, Manage, and Communicate!
National Education Computing Conference - June 28, 2005
Remixing Wikis with Rendezvous, Web Services and SchoolTool,
O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference - March 16, 2005
Oyez! The Supreme Court, Now on MP3
Mr. Goldman, a professor of political science at Northwestern University, is taking the original audio recordings of the Supreme Court and turning them into MP3 files for free distribution on the Web.
Something else to add to my iPod playlist...MP3 files of Supreme Court arguments from oyez.com.
Liz Lane Lawley discusses a presentation by demographer Dr. Harold (“Bud”) Hodgkinson about the number of children living in poverty in the US.
Particularly striking—and distressing—were the numbers reflecting child poverty. Twenty-two percent of children in the United States live in poverty. Twenty-two percent. That’s the highest rate of any developed nation. And yet, as Hodgkinson pointed out, there’s little or no public outcry or outrage over this horrifying number... [mamamusings]
I've been playing with the Typepad beta. So far I'm pretty impressed. Very nice interface for page design, editing and such. Very easy to do things like blogrolls, and book and music lists... Take a look... http://lauer.typepad.com/weblog
I have encountered a few issues with the css layouts. (At least on my PC at home, the page doesn't load correctly in IE. ) It will be interesting to see how they price this...
Ed Tech Dev: Microsoft vs. Open Source at NECC
I think educators and the general public still largely know nothing about OpenOffice, because if they did they'd realize there is no need to purchase Microsoft Office. They may not realize that OpenOffice and other free and open source software work just fine on Windows and MacOS too. Trying open source software doesn't require immediately leaping over to Linux and dropping Windows completely.
Over at Ed Tech Dev they discuss an article from the Seattle Post Intellgencer about the large Microsoft presence at NECC. While you had to hunt to find them, Paul Nelson of Riverdale High School had a group of students there in the poster session area running a Linux Terminal Server lab. He had quite a bit of traffic, even though you really had to hike to find the room. Maybe next year we can get someone to underwrite a booth for them on the exhibit floor. Maybe right across from Apple and Microsoft... :-)
I took two teachers from my school to visit his set up and they were very impressed. The lack of the ability to run Microsoft Office did not concern them As one of them said; "A word processor is a word processor. As long as my kids can browse the web and write, I really don't need much more than that."
She also was very impressed with the whole thin client set up. Each student has a login and can work from any terminal. You can even boot to it from Windows boxes and it will run in Mac OS X. This fall we are planning to set it up for her classroom and for our other 5th grade classes at Buckman.
An article in Slate by Brian Montopoli, City Wide Web - City "blog maps" enable point-and-click sightseeing, discusses the premise behind blog maps. His example, D.C. Metro Blog Map, a subway map of Washington DC which denotes "blogs" in thevacinity of Metro subway stops.
Might be interesting to so something similar with a school map. By moving the mouse over a school map, student and teacher blogs would pop up... [by way of...Smart Mobs]
We're excited to let everybody know that the hundreds of expert guides who publish topic-specific sites on About.com are now all using Movable Type to manage their sites.
This means they also have RSS feeds too...
Edweblogs: NECC 2003: Closing Comments from Anne Anne Davis posts tonight some final comments on the necc.edweblogs.org blog. It was great to be able to meet Anne and the other folks who attended NECC and were able to get together on Monday night. The great thing about the technology is that it enabled the face to face. Without our weblogs... we would never of had the opportunity to meet.
Edweblogs: NECC 2003: So much to blog, so little time... Mary Ditson, one of the folks blogging NECC, has a great post today of her reactions to the conference and what she has learned so far...
Yesterday I had the chance to attend the ISTE Leadership Symposium. Lots of mucky mucks from DOE, RTechs, Higher Ed, Corporate types, school administrators, and even a few teachers.
...the symposium will encourage participants to establish a shared vision and overcome the barriers to ensure success in achieving global educational goals.
Helped them put some of the work product from the day up on a blog. http://necc.edweblogs.org/leadership.
Now I'm off to the convention center. Wireless all around , so should be able to post some sessions here and also on the weblog we have developed for the conference. Will Richardson will be posting to that site also. Should see him later today and of course at the Edublogger meeting.
Last night I went to the Seattle Mariners game at Safeco
Field. Had a great time. It was my first time in Safeco and was very impressed.
A beautiful facility and it was a very nice night for baseball.
NECC 2003 Onsite Am about to head to the train station to catch my train for Seattle. Will see if I can post some images from the train...
Jon Udell: My conversation with Mr. Safe
Like I said, this is simple stuff, and now there are lots of tools. One guy, to make a point about simplicity, wrote a blogging tool in 30 lines of Perl. So it's not about the format, and it's not about the tools. It's about a new way of communicating, one that's defined by personal publishing and subscribing, and that empowers writers and readers as never before.
Jon Udell explains RSS and some of the political debates about the format. I think the quote above is what resonates with me. Has since I first started publishing on the web from Buckman 9 years ago. It is the power to share the work of myself, and my students, with others. To make connections with people. It's about telling our story... The web and more specifically, weblogging tools, make this process open to just about anyone. As Jon states in his piece, that is what excites people about weblogs…
Anne Davis points to a great quote by one of her students about the possibilites she sees for the use of weblogs in the classroom.
I particualarry like her comment about PowerPoint...! :-)
I am so excited about learning about blogs and how to use them in my classroom, particularly as I was not very familiar with them before now. Everything we discussed in class today seems universally applicable to most classroom situations. This is very refreshing because most people just say to use PowerPoint to meet county mandates about incorporating technology into the curriculum. As we have already established, I hate PowerPoint. I can't wait to apply ideas such as publishing students' work, communicating with parents, and communicating with other classes by using blogs into my own classroom. This is all very intriguing and I want to learn more.
While trying a coast to coast audio iChat (with good results), Tim Lauer pointed out Eric Baumgartner's weblog. Eric is a friend of a several of my friends and colleagues... [Tuttle SVC]
