Gary Latman's Blog (11)

Tim Stahmer offers his take on the state of education in his recent blog Not Asking the Right Question. It's a quick read, but it does imply that educators and policy makers need to sit down and look at what we want 21st century education to look like and then develop methods to get there.

I had a refurbished Dell P3 Latitude laptop that was running so slow, it was almost worthless. I was going to toss it, but instead, I used a copy of Ubuntu (a free CD is available at the Ubuntu web site) and completely blew my system out. It runs much faster now, finds wi-fi quicker, and is now a fully functional laptop. There are a number of programs that come with it, but are not installed, but doing so requires putting a few checkmarks into boxes and then okaying the installation. Today, I… Continue

Classroom 2.0

Ning in Education

The Global Education Collaborative

English Companion

Digital Directions

Making Curriculum Pop…

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I just found a Classroom 2.0 web site that has potential for collaboration and fun. It's called Wallwisher and it's like the old fashioned bulletin board in the village square or coffee house where you can post a stickie and get feedback. But this site provides a web site address and lets you post links to sites and videos. I've used it to jump on my anti-Arne Duncan soapbox, once again.

False prophet is what I'd call Arne Duncan. I am uncertain about the specifics of his plan to "scale up" NCLB, but that’s the type of phraseology that has caused many teachers in Chicago to lift a skeptical eyebrow. Those of us who worked in the Chicago Public Schools, who were in the trenches, did not find that Mr. Duncan was an Apostle of Reform. Instead, we see him as anti-union and pro-privatization, a school CEO who was a political pawn of our mayor. As head of the school system, he was… Continue

I finally got around to watching "Inconvenient Truth". Al Gore offers the most cogent argument documenting the progression of global warming and its consequences I have ever seen. This is a must-see video that should be shared with friends, colleagues, and students.

During this approaching week, the Illinois Computing Educators Conference, the big Midwest tech conference for teachers, administrators, technologists, and tech vendors will be taking place at Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, IL. I've attended this conference for the past 5 years, last year being the exception, when I was back in the classroom and very much out of the tech loop. This is a 4 day event, but Thursday and… Continue

The Breast Cancer Site is real and money paid by site advertisers does indeed go towards providing free mammograms. When a visitor clicks on the "Fund Free Mammograms" button on the site, another page opens that contains banner advertisements from site sponsors. All of the fees paid by these sponsors are used to fund free mammograms.



I must admit that initially I thought this was a hoax, but I checked it at several urban legend… Continue

Obama Links Ed Tech to Economic Growth reads the December 3, 2008 Digital | Directions article. Those of us involved with education and technology have been chanting an ed-tech mantra for quite some time, having identifed it as the hook to engage and challenge 21st century students. We have experimented with various applications in our classrooms, trying to involve our students with their own education, and ultimately… Continue

I was reading Chris Sessums' blog post Driven to Distraction: Notes on Young Adults Living and Learning with New Media and felt compelled to add my 2 cents worth:



Chris,



You raise some interesting questions in your article, but you also wonder "...how we can "measure" self-directed learning in this new media context?" and that's where the problem lies; we educators must justify what we establish in our learning… Continue

CLASSROOM2.0 Workshop - November 7, 2008



DigitalVaults is a site suggested by Lucy Gray, who organized this conference.



The guest speaker was Steve Hargadon, who created Classroom2.0 for educators to use as a social and collaborative network. The theme of this conference is using… Continue