Reflections on wifi, access, and fears.

The iPod touch – careful what you wish for! - The Online Mom

I'll have to admit, when I read this title I immediately was preparing myself for an argument against, whatever this was going to be about. As I read on, I found myself thinking and mumbling to myself about how we can't protect kids from everything, and that maybe it's a good thing that we've given kids wifi in their pockets because now we'll be able to utilize them in the classrooms more and more.
My wife is my lifeline on all things sane, I go too far to one side and she can usually reel me back in, or at least give me some perspective, but for this I'm not so sure. With our kids, we value education and teachable moments, make a mistake...let's learn from it, make a bad choice, why, and how can we make a better one next time. I know it's hippy-dippy, but hey, that's how we roll.
The last 6 months or so, I've repeated the question I heard David Warlick ask months ago, and I'll repeat it here, "What are we going to ask on our tests, when our kids walk in with Google in their pockets." Maybe the question in regards to this article is how can we educate our kids to make the right choices, in an unfiltered world wide web? I'd love to hear more thoughts, or comments, I know I don't have all the answers, I'm really curious as to what others think.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcleod/ / CC BY 2.0

Google For Admin/Badges...and more

Image from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

I love good discussions and this is one I've had in the edublogosphere (man that is a lame name for a cool group) a couple of times in recent months, so I figured I may as well capture my reflections...ehem, here, too.

My responses were here, and here, but if you read on you'll see this conversation started nearly four years ago.

As a recently indoctrinated (is that even the right word) Google For Educator,#gtaco I can say that my peers in the central office crack on me every chance they get. Much of what you said is right on, and so was @djakes honestly, but there are still valuable “connections” so to speak that come from a group going through anything, whether a teacher academy or some other group convention, training etc. I can say that as someone who has attended a number of conferences in person and virtually the two best “sustaining” conversations were this experience Colorado Learning. So, while reeking of “corporatism” there were some great connections made while I was there. And as much as I am against Big Business, I admire Google’s persistence in open source and their drive to share their work and content with developers and educators.

I think this conversation needs to happen, so thanks for bringing it back to the forefront.

Here is my response and the link to @djakes original post.

Thank you for this post. I agreed with you for much of my career. It was a post by Bud Hunt that really Challenged my thinking on this topic. His post a year later is something that I read again when GTA came through Colorado. My position as an online learning specialist and the launch of our large district employment of Google Apps made me re-think and re-evaluate my opinion. I was lucky enough to attend an “ACADEMY/BADGE” conference (#GTACO) in August. I learned some and made some good connections with great teachers that otherwise I may not have met face to face. With the explosion of twitter as a social communication/connection tool I realize that there is power in connecting like minded teachers together in a physical or virtual environment. Google, in this instance, met a need and connected teachers within my state and teachers I was excited to meet from elsewhere that I had met, followed or “tweeted” with. I would say that while it seems cliquey (great post by Ben Wilkoff on cliquishness of web 2.0, ) badges really are a connection device and in the cases I’ve seen, (MAC, DISCOVERY, and GOOGLE) it really is a conversation starter. I was and I am excited to be part of a network like the GCT, I don’t think the certificate or acknowledgment makes us better teachers necessarily, but it does connect some like minded folks in a positive way and for that I am grateful to have been chosen and given the chance.

Recipe for a Great Network

I am in the holiday spirit, knee deep in recipes and sugar cookies dancing in my head. While Mrs Wacker is the great cook in the house, that doesn't mean I haven't at least looked at some recipes in recent days/weeks. Thus tonight's post is inspired by our recipe book.

The following list is rushed, incomplete and not a true representation of the 100's of educators that I am lucky enough to learn from on a consistent basis. If there's someone glaringly missed, I apologize, this was done off the top of my head.

Note: Many of these ingredients could be duplicated throughout this recipe.

Ingredients:

1 cup of topic and passion relevance (#jeffcok12, #educon, #iste, #NSBATL, #colearning,#gtaco)

3/4 cup of people that make me think (@courosa, @bhwilkoff, @chrislehman, @davecormier, @paulawhite, @christianlong, @nashworld, @jonbecker, @mjmontagne)

1/2 cup of leaders and admin (@ehelfant,@pammoran, @scottelias, @paulrwood, @bethstill, @bengrey, @ryanbretag, @markwagner)

1/3 cup of link junkies (@riptidef, @cleversheep, @web20classroom, @rmbyrne, @wfryer, @fisher1000, @lthumann, @russeltarr, @elemenous)

1/4 cup of local flavor (@dkdykstra,@bud_t,@budtheteacher, @karlfisch, @ktenkely, @nawalnader, @heydana, @danbrooksco)

2 Tbsp Tremendous Teachers in the field (@chrislatkinson, @johnmikulski, @drezac, @teachakidd, @giadeselm, @teacherspirit, @mbteach)

1 tbsp humor (@shareski,@ransomtech, and many more)

2 tsp lurkers (not sure who you are, but we need you guys too :)

sprinkle of discussion seekers (@dlaufenberg, @smeech, @cbell619,@mctownsley,@acrozier, @beckyfisher73)

Take all of these ingredients add in a dose of humility and self deprication and you too will have a meal that will feed your professional development and drive your knowledge seeking for quite awhile

Colorado to Phase Out State Test

No CSAP?
Draft of Standards
Drafts of the Colorado Academic Standards

Draft documents tracking changes and recommendations based on State Board of Education discussions on Googledocs and individual meetings with CDE staff: (Posted December 9, 2009)

I am excited that it looks like technology will take a more prevalent role in our standards and objectives K-12. Currenly technology is actually listed physically on the botoom of the CAP and Year at a Glance Documents in my district. This doesn't mean that we don't value technology, I believe the opposite to be true, but it does send a subconscious message that instead of integration and enhancing pedagogy, technology is just something that you add if you can, not necessarily because we should.

What this does is lead to me a lot of questions.
What does this mean for us?
What happens to Growth Data?
How will teachers, admin, and central staff react to the next two years of CSAP tests?
Word initially is that the tests will be taken on computers to "speed up" the result process, I like this idea, but I wonder if it sends a message that computers are for assessment only again, which would be unfortunate for those teachers that are trying to embrace it, but often only find themselves in front of a computer for testing.