Miguel guhlin's Public Library

20 Nov 09

Gained something in the translation « BuzzMachine

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@rpaskin tweeted this: “In a link economy, there are values from creating content and linking to content. There’s no value in just reproducing content (Jeff Jarvis).”
There is no value left over for the copiers. Indeed, online, if one copies, one is considered a thief because it’s only the thieves who copy.

19 Nov 09

Education Innovation: Essential Education: "Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom" by Alan November

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education innovation technology videos videosforpresentation

16 Nov 09

100 Excellent Open Access Journals for Educators | Online College Tips - Online Colleges

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100 Excellent Open Access Journals for Educators
The following open access journals provide top-notch scholarly information available at no cost. Most of these journals are published just once or a few times a year, so subscribe to several so you can keep up-to-date on the latest research coming out of the field of education.
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- Journal of Curriculum and Instruction. The articles here focus on research and practice relevant to pre K-12 education.
  The School Community Journal. The mission of this journal is to unite the entire community of teachers, parents, and students to work in the interest of successful education.
  Insight. This annual journal focuses on research-based articles, case studies, and innovation in teaching, learning, and assessment.
- Networks. Kindergarten through postgraduate teachers share research on classroom practices in an effort to improve effectiveness.
- International Journal of Progressive Education. Explore the possibilities of the future of education by looking at such issues as multicultural education, new literacies, and globalization.
- Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation. This journal provides scholarly articles on research and ideas about educational practices.
- Research in Middle Level Education Online. Read studies, cases, and research relevant to middle school education and young adolescents.
  The Open Education Journal. This open access journal offers information on contemporary education and learning.
- Education Next. This evidence-based journal highlights current research in education policy and school reform.
  Education Policy Analysis Archives. Available in both English and Spanish, the articles here focus on current policy in American education.
- Florida Journal of Educational Administration & Policy. Publishing peer-reviewed articles on education administration and policy, this journal invites readers from K-12 and higher education settings.
- Current Issues in Comparative Education. With voices from teachers, students, policy-makers, and academics, this journal explores contemporary educational issues.
  Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies. Examining a variety of policy approaches to education, this journal is specifically an exploration of Marxist and Left analyses of education.
- Academic Leadership. Learn about cultivating leadership in both public school and higher education settings.
- International Journal of Teacher Leadership. This peer-reviewed journal offers information on the practice and research of teacher leadership in their annual publications.
- The ALAN Review. This journal provides information relevant to teaching literature to teens.
  Kairos. This journal explores the language arts and rhetoric through the use of new media.
  Computers and Composition Online. Learn about technology as a tool to teaching and learning literacy in this journal.
- The Journal of the Imagination in Language Learning and Teaching. Aimed at teachers of language in K-12 and college, this journal examines the use of imagination in teaching first and secondary languages.
- Language Learning & Technology. This journal is specifically for teachers of second and foreign language and how teaching and learning can be enhanced through the use of technology.
- Journal of Museum Studies. Students and faculty involved in museum studies will benefit from the articles in this publication.
- Journal of Educational Technology & Society. These articles serve to unite those who design technology systems for education and those educators who implement and manage these systems to work together for the greater good of education.
- Meridian. This journal provides information on technology in middle school education.
- International Journal of Educational Technology. A joint venture between the US and Australia, this journal provides scholarly articles on technology in education twice a year.
  THEN: Journal. This journal offers a humanities-based approach to learning about research on the use of technology in education.
- Journal of Online Behavior. Read the research being done surrounding online behavior.
- Journal of Technology Education. Explore topics in technology education with this academic journal.
- Innovate. Explore the current practices and trends in online education with this journal.
  Journal of Interactive Online Learning. Read manuscripts, essays, and reviews discussing perspectives of online learning.
- School Library Media Research. Learn about evaluating and implementing successful school library media programs with the articles here.

14 Nov 09

google-docs-upload - Project Hosting on Google Code

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A tool for batch upload documents to a Google Docs account with recursive traversing of directories. The tool supports PDF upload.
Total list of supported formats: csv, doc, docx, html, htm, ods, odt, pdf, ppt, pps, rtf, sxw, tsv, tab, txt, xls, xlsx.
Google Docs Batch Upload
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- Featured downloads:
  
  google-docs-upload-1.2.jar

Google Docs Batch Upload Eases Online Document Transfers - Google Docs - Lifehacker

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Windows/Mac/Linux (Java): Got a bunch of files to send to Google Docs, and don't have time for the webapp's one-by-one uploads? Google Docs Batch Upload does just what you might think, loading any folder of files into Google Docs' servers
java -jar google-docs-upload-1.2.jar /home/kevin/uploads --recursive
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- You'll be asked for your Google Docs login credentials, and then Google Docs Batch Upload gets to work. The latest version includes the ability to replicate a folder structure of sub-folders placed in your chosen upload folder, which might relieve the minds of those with a hyper-organized set of docs.
- Google Docs Batch Upload is a free download and works wherever Java does. Looking for a two-way Google Docs sync solution? Try the similarly command-line-powered GDataCopier

13 Nov 09

Free Backup software, automate backup, synchronization, and archiving tasks, JaBack

"JaBack - Automated Data Backup Software. Improve your productivity!
Backup software designed to automate all your backup, synchronization, and archiving tasks.

* Easy to use: no programming or scripting required, graphical interface
* Powerful, versatile, reliable and FREE
* Run 1000+ tasks a day"

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The Virtual Museum of Canada

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museum onlinelearning

12 Nov 09

20 Hilarious Social Media Comic Strips | Penn Olson

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comics socialmedia

The Daily Beacon

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Online courses simplify scheduling process
Robbie Hargett - Staff Writer
Thursday, November 05, 2009 issue
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- “Most of the lectures are uploaded to the Blackboard site, and students are able to download and listen to the lectures at their own schedule,” Singh said. “The participation from the students in the course is via assignments and discussion boards.”
- “The main advantage a person wants to get from an online class is scheduling flexibility,” McClanahan said.
- The issues of limited class sizes and, consequently, timely graduations are other factors that promote the usage of online courses.
  
  Singh and McClanahan both agreed that this method of learning can help students when they enter the workplace as well.
  
  “These courses introduce the students to distance learning technologies and tools and teach them how to collaborate in online environments, how to use online tools to effectively communicate, and prepares them for the distributed workplace of current and future times,” Singh said.
  
  The results of the current online courses are extremely positive. McClanahan gave her students a survey that asked whether they would choose a traditional class over one online, after experiencing both.
  
  “Sixty-five percent said they would register for the online version over the traditional one,” McClanahan said.
- “She said that after experiencing it, she had completely changed her point of view and now would like to take at least one online class per semester, because she really likes the flexibility of choosing when and where she attends a class session and simplifying course scheduling,”

11 Nov 09

BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft disconnects Xbox gamers

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Thousands of gamers may have been cut off from Microsoft's online gaming service Xbox Live for modifying their consoles to play pirated games.
Online reports suggest that as many as 600,000 gamers may have been affected.
Microsoft said that modifying an Xbox 360 console "violates" the service's "terms of use" and would result in a player being disconnected.

"All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live," Microsoft has said in a statement.
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- Many gamers modify their consoles by installing new chips or software that allows them to run unofficial programs. Some chips are specifically designed to play pirated games.
- Microsoft has not said how it was able to determine which gamers to disconnect.
- "We do not reveal specifics, but can say that all consoles have been verified to have violated the terms of use," the firm said in a statement.
  Affected gamers were met with a message during the login process. It read: ""Your console has been banned from Xbox".
- the ban does not stop the console from working and only affects a gamer's Xbox Live account.

Leaders and Laggards: Recommendations

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Our analysis of the innovation gap in American education leads us to recommend the following reforms.
Empower schools and principals.
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- Develop student-based funding policies and other more flexible approaches to school funding
- Reinvent education management.
- Reinvention calls for nothing less than a seismic shift on the part of states, from micromanaging districts through bureaucratic and irrelevant funding schemes, program initiatives, and policies to creating a flexible, performance-focused management system that is loose on inputs and strict on school outcomes.
- Rethink the school day and calendar.
- Better Accountability
- Reform teacher pay and reward teachers whose performance improves student achievement.
- Develop statewide longitudinal data systems and provide better information to schools, teachers, and the public.
- Provide teachers with focused professional development on key topics such as use of data and technology. High-tech tools are of little use unless teachers in the trenches can take advantage of them.
- Support state efforts to create common academic standards linked to rigorous assessments.
- Support state reform organizations.
- Encourage entrepreneurial organizations such as Teach for America and Wireless Generation.
- the status quo needs to be disrupted for purposeful innovation to thrive. Only then will our nation's students receive the kind of education that they deserve.

Leaders and Laggards: Findings

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Among our major findings:
Rigid education bureaucracies impede quality schooling. Ninety percent of teachers say that routine duties and paperwork interfere with their teaching, according to our analysis of the 2007-2008 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), a nationally representative survey of teachers and principals administered every four years by the National Center for Education Statistics. Only about one-third of teachers approve of how their schools are run. Throughout our educational system, a traditionalist school culture limits autonomy and innovation.
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- State finance systems are opaque, inefficient, and undermine innovation. The jumbled patchwork of spending programs in each state provides schools almost no room to spend resources in more effective ways.
- The teacher pipeline fails to provide a diverse pool of high-quality educators. In some states, such as Iowa and Nebraska, almost no teachers enter the profession through alternative certification programs, which make it easier for talented liberal arts graduates and midcareer professionals to enter the classroom without conventional teaching preparation. At the same time, school leaders lack the authority to recruit the best candidates: Fewer than half of the principals in states, such as Oklahoma and North Dakota, report having a major degree of influence over teacher hiring.
- Teacher evaluations are not based on performance. State systems for evaluating the effectiveness of teachers are focused almost entirely on inputs such as training and years of experience, even though these factors have been shown to have little impact on student achievement.
- Major barriers exist to the removal of poor-performing teachers. Seventy-two percent of principals say that tenure policies are a barrier to firing ineffective teachers, according to our analysis of federal SASS data. Another 61% say that teacher unions are an obstacle. Without the ability to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom, school leaders cannot build a cohesive school culture, create an environment of accountability, and ensure that all students will learn.
- The outcome of state technology spending is unknown. Despite a systematic effort to examine the Web-based materials available from every state department of education, we found no evidence that any state had conducted a large-scale technology return-on-investment study. Instead, states collect data largely on student access to computers and the Internet. While technology has the potential to reinvent education delivery, without information on outcomes states will not know whether their investment in technology is well spent.
- State data systems provide limited information on school operations and outcomes. States have made substantial improvements to their education data systems, but they still barely skim the surface of school operations, failing to answer basic capacity questions such as the degree to which professional development improves student outcomes.
- Schools provide too little access to college-level coursework. In most cases, dual-enrollment programs (in which students attend high school while enrolling in select collegiate courses) are a win-win educational strategy. They allow high school students to take advanced coursework and gain college credit while boosting college readiness and breaking down the often meaningless boundaries between high school and college. But our research shows that fewer than two-thirds of schools report having such programs.
- In almost every state, education dollars do not follow students to the schools they attend according to their needs. Instead, funds are distributed based on factors that have little to do with students, such as the number of teachers in a school or the kind of educational programs that a school provides. Such financial practices make it nearly impossible for principals to allocate resources in new and innovative ways.
- States lack a culture of education advocacy. Innovation-focused reform will require deep reserves of political capital because entrenched interests will fight meaningful changes. But few leaders have stepped forward to create the political conditions for reform.

Interactive Map: Leaders and Laggards

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Two years ago, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Center for American Progress, and Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute came together to grade the states on school performance.
In this follow-up report, we turn our attention to the future, looking not at how states are performing today, but at what they are doing to prepare themselves for the challenges that lie ahead. Thus, some states with positive academic results receive poor grades on our measures of innovation, while others with lackluster scholarly achievement nevertheless earn high marks for policies that are creating an entrepreneurial culture in their schools. We chose this focus because, regardless of current academic accomplishment in each state, we believe innovative educational practices are vital to laying the groundwork for continuous and transformational change.
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- Roughly one in three eighth graders is proficient in reading. Most high schools graduate little more than two-thirds of their students on time. And even the students who do receive a high school diploma lack adequate skills: More than 33% of first-year college students require remediation in either math or English.
- Our aim is to encourage states to embrace policies that make it easier to design smart solutions that serve 21st century students and address 21st century challenges. The impulse to either dictate one-size-fits-all solutions from the top or simply to do something--anything--differently will not address our pressing needs. Instead, this report seeks to foster a flexible, performance-oriented culture that will help our schools meet educational challenges.
- The challenge is to boost the chance that creative problem solvers will ultimately make a real, lasting difference for our nation and our children
- Too often, reformers tend to embrace only those advances that we can conveniently measure with today's crude tools, such as grades three-to-eight reading and math scores. The principal virtue of the No Child Left Behind Act, for example--a much-needed focus on outcomes and transparency--has been coupled with a bureaucratic impulse and an inflexible, cookie-cutter approach to gauging teacher and school quality.
- we should also embrace what might be called smart quality control. That means measuring the value of various providers and solutions in terms of what they are intended to do--whether that is recruiting teachers or tutoring foreign languages--rather than merely on whether they affect the rate at which students improve their performance on middle school reading and math tests.
- the need for a variety of new providers that deliver additional support to educators in answering classroom and schoolwide challenges.
- Capacity building is
- To examine the degree to which states have developed such a culture, we focused on eight areas:
- School Management
- Finance (including the accessibility of state financial data)
- Staffing: Hiring & Evaluation (including alternative certification for teachers)
- Staffing: Removing Ineffective Teachers (including the percentage of principals who report barriers to the removal of poor-performing teachers)
- Data (including such measures as state-collected college student remediation data)
- Technology (including students per Internet-connected computer)
- Pipeline to Postsecondary (including the percentage of schools reporting dual-enrollment programs)
- State Reform Environment (an ungraded category that includes data on the presence of reform groups and participation in international assessments)

How to craft a memorable key message in 10 minutes : Speaking about Presenting

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presentationdesign

10 Nov 09

Adobe - Security Bulletins: APSB09-16 Security updates available for Shockwave Player

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Security updates available for Shockwave Player
Release date: November 3, 2009
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- Critical vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe Shockwave Player 11.5.1.601 and earlier versions. The vulnerabilities could allow an attacker, who successfully exploits the vulnerabilities, to run malicious code on the affected system. Adobe has provided a solution for the reported vulnerabilities. It is recommended that users update their installations using the instructions provided below.
- Shockwave Player 11.5.1.601 and earlier versions
- Adobe recommends Shockwave Player users install Shockwave Player version 11.5.2.602 available here: http://get.adobe.com/shockwave/.

Slashdot IT Story | Malware Can Download Child Porn To Your Computer

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"The Associated Press tells the story of Michael Fiola, a former Massachusetts government employee who was arrested in 2007 after child porn was found on his state-issued laptop computer. He was eventually cleared of all charges after some digging by the defense found that the laptop was infected with malware that was 'programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute — an inhuman feat. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half. Prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the defense findings. The charge was dropped — 11 months after it was filed.'

Office of Instructional Technology---San Antonio ISD - On the Precipice of Change: 3 Obstacles to Technology Use in K-12

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On the Precipice of Change: 3 Obstacles to Technology Use in K-12
We are often stopped by obstacles that we perceive. Warren Greshes' shares that for most people, there are 3 obstacles that they just cannot get around (Source: Read More) .
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- Those obstacles include 1) Fear of failure; 2) Other People telling you that it can't be done; and 3) Old habits that keep us back. As I reflect on the question, and Warren Greshes' 3 obstacles, I had to ask myself, what are some perceptions that stop the bulk of Texas educators from integrating technology into their work? We all know that there are individual successes, but what about the rest?
- Greshes shares that fear of failure is the “single biggest obstacle to our success.” In Instructional Technology, it may very well be defined as fear of trying to use new—or even old—technologies in the classroom.
- Some might characterize these new technologies in this way:
  
  The next crop of terrorists are still at school, preparing for their SAT tests. They are probably bright, politically disinterested and easily susceptible to the ideology of the Read/Write Web. They receive a daily diet of anti-school establishment propaganda through Web 2.0 and so-called social networking websites. Young children of immigrants still at school are among those linked to guerilla conspiracies.
  
  The path from adolescent dreamer interested in moblogs to flash mob radicals ready to engage in peaceful school walkouts to immigration issues and posting embarrassing videos of irrelevant teachers on YouTube can be frighteningly short. Web 2.0 guerilla-teachers are looking to groom and brainwash our children as advocates for passionate action, conflict over harmony, transparency over invulnerability, and commitment to virtual friends, and real life strangers. The teenblogosphere is without restraint.
- Yet, perched on the precipice of change, administrators and teachers have a different perception of what is keeping them from integrating technology. What is that different perception? What are the obstacles that keep schools from integrating technology?
- Mark Ahlness
- We cannot not surround and change the educational technology establishment by external force. And we do not have the time or patience to quietly play by the rules of that establishment, hoping somebody will eventually notice....
- We will not go away nor shut up. We are guerillas in their midst.
  
  Source: http://www.ahlness.com/
- It's so easy for other people, Greshen points out, to keep one down, to push you down a path that is more convenient for them. For those that find daily mind-changing exchanges too confrontational, heart-attack inducing, these 3 strategies might be more effective:
  
  Build successful instructional practices in your classroom, enabling your students to do that which will make them shine. Focus on enhancing the power of their voices, gathering work that proves they are ahead instructionally and reflects their technological expertise. Use whatever is necessary.
  Once you have a body of student work, ask if you can celebrate that work by sharing it in the hallway, online via a web page (blog or otherwise), and share it with parents via newsletters (also online and/or paper). The goal is to get their voices out there as loud as possible...once you have a "bully pulpit," then you can advocate for change.
  Fly below the radar on all projects until your students' success becomes apparent to all.
- These four points could easily translate into obstacles I could share.
- Point #1 - Inability to accomplish change in the adoption of technology innovations that impact teaching and learning.
- There seemed to be so many factors in educational settings, factors I had little control over in my “non-positional” area of authority, that I felt unable to achieve systemic change. I was the Jurassic Park mosquito caught in the amber. Or, as a venerable elementary school principal once put it, “a skeeter in a nudist colony,” unsure of where to strike first.
- How does one address the reluctance 1) on the part of district administrators to incorporate technology in meaningful ways to the scope and sequence, 2) of curriculum specialists to learn how to use technology to redesign their own teaching of adult learners, 3) of campus teachers and administrators failing to use online technology textbooks, 4) competing elements within the curriculum department that chase after technology solutions without putting a plan together to ensure successful implementation?
- Point #2 - Inability to mandate/require professional development for teachers, and provide incentives for achievement of professional development objectives, that directly impact teaching.
  
  With the inability to mandate professional development, and lacking the funding to provide incentives, professional development in the area of technology suffers.
- Point #3 - Lack of budget sufficient to establish ubiquitous access to hardware and software teachers need to redesign their teaching environments. School districts continue to use proprietary software tools to accomplish their instructional objectives, even though free open source software (FOSS) offers a powerful alternative. One teacher characterized the lack in this way: “There are tons of open-source offerings, but having the staff on hand and available to get it installed and running is a struggle when the district budget does not show any importance in that area.”
- we are on the precipice of change. How we navigate the change will be a testament to our ability to overcome our fear of failure, as well as let nay-sayers know that while they may not be able to get the job done, they don't know Texans! It's a long, tough journey, but onward, if not forward, is the only way possible. Perhaps, we need to consider what Diane Quirk writes in her blog, Technology to Empower Student Learning:
- The challenge for us as educators is to examine our practices in terms of being either obstacles or conduits to the learning of our students.

Miguel guhlin's Public Library

Gained something in the translation « BuzzMachine

Education Innovation: Essential Education: "Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom" by Alan November

Virtual School Symposium 2009 Overlay - live

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