Sunday, October 31, 2010

qwiki

the marriage of art and science
several million people, place and things

Qwiki at TechCrunch Disrupt from Qwiki on Vimeo.


information becomes an experience that i can watch

_______________________________________



standard...
it's about remarkable...

we can produce good.
let's go for indispensable.

remarkable is when others can't help but talk about it/you because what you have done or do matters.

indispensable people will do anything to give their art away (Godin).
people shooting for standard do their work for pay or reward.

standard = label
remarkable = useful

connections





the web affords connections we've not been afforded before.
connections afford:
1) access to all
2) personalization (topic, method, time)
3) learn from multiple voices

paraphrased from this keen insight:
1. As a form of open learning, it provides access to everyone
2. It allows learners to set their own priorities and styles of learning
3. It enables learners to be informed by many voices, thus creating a more complete and balanced picture
-- Stephen Downes


that changes pedagogy...
we can still try to get the most bang for our buck - who's the most like this...
but is that a compromise..do we expect too much, are we trying to manage too much?
can't we just trust more (people, art, thinking) and let new learning happen....

1) give resources
2) get out of the way
3) watch/facilitate self construction of learner


this all boils down to trust
we have to begin with = we all want good.
and keep flushing that out...
yet - ish.

not about competition - about choices...

___________________________

umair haque


april 30 2009

the tragedy of competition







a new kind of innovation:
behavioural innovation
reconceiving the costs and benefits that we respond to

google is always making principles... that is constantly shaping it's behavior in deeply unorthodox ways
it behaves beyond strategy
if we are always behaving strategically
and it's beyond strategy
going to be difficult to reconceive value creation

5 paths to behavioral innovation:
stewardship - not exploiting your resources
trusteeship - compete on a level playing field
guardianship - it's about the common good - (nobody is looking for the common good if they are behaving strategically)
leadership - willingness to disrupt yourself, to challenge the status quo
partnership - 



my first encounter with Haque - about a year ago...
a penny for your thoughts

Penny For Your Thoughts - Umair Haque from Sogeti VINT on Vimeo.





______________________________________________

edna sackson

who owns the learning.
not one but two incredible posts.
[and she hasn't even heard of alan november.. and she hadn't even heard of mit's kinder lab]








what kids are teaching us...

______________________________________________

dean shareski

standardization vs personalization

i think the standard is personalization
and i think we can do both..

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Saturday, October 30, 2010

sir ken robinson

answering questions from twitter

3rd one - assessing creativity -
 

can be done -because you do things when you're creative

it's a process not an event
it's about originality
it's about value - who's value is the point

judged as a practical contribution in a particular discipline... ?

an assessment is a description and a comparison (this is where the criteria needs to become clear)
___________________________

tony mihaly


i detect a little more passion in this - than in trig Tony..
bravo man.

_______________________________

megan kamrath

check out wise words in her latest post









__________________________________________



achievement...
it's about growth...

less on the labels... limits the possibilities
more on the yets...  lets everyone play

_________________________________

green about people



_________________________________

carol dweck















a valuable word.. and should be used frequently...

thank you for continuing to mold mindsets... Carol
thank you @scmorgan for the link

_________________________

darren kuropatwa



kicking it up a notch

if you want to kick it up a notch - we need to go perpendicular to all of this

let us shape how we use our tools.
social presence matters because it builds social capital
the glue that ties us together... if you don't have a really good command of pedigogy
how tech and pedigogy fit together - no tool in the world is going to make a difference.
and even then - need the connections on the other side for this to be up a notch - or perpendicular
sharism - itso
tools opened up worlds that weren't available to me in the classroom before
 it's all about the worlds

learn to be russian
learn to be ...
have kids to use these tools - not for grades... but for collaboration and independence

[this is global voices... ethan would like this i'm thinking]

wolves - careful and thoughtful with tech
russians - content - triangulating it
bundle of six - dream of pedagogy - not separated curriculum... just naturally happens

find his post on - rules to live by

cognitive presence
prof/personal presence
social presence (the glue)

if you're willing to give it a go - 
serendipity will follow


teachers (anyone) kicking it up a notch live in this intersection:















See this http://dkuropatwa.posterous.com/characteristics-of-strong-tpack-math-teachers


here is allanah's  http://blip.tv/file/4179958

Friday, October 29, 2010

seth godin


____________________________

Thursday, October 28, 2010


competition... 
it’s about choice..

we're shooting ourselves (and our kids) in the foot when we keep competing for:
best school.. best teacher.. best strategy.. best whatever...


... it's about choice....

let's focus more on delivering & opening up choices
less on defending an irrelevant title of  "the one"

_________________________________

megan kamrath

working on global voices....















____________________________________

clarence fisher


Clarence Fisher in His Own Words:

First and most important of all, I am a teacher. I have been teaching for sixteen years and I learn something every day.

I teach full time and enjoy being involved with research to improve what we do in our classrooms. I am involved with efforts to redefine literacy and what it means to be literate in our twenty-first century, technologically advanced society.

I write articles, give presentations, and think about classrooms 2.0 and the possibilities for learning.

My classroom has been featured in several articles in Middle School Journal, Technology and Learning, and in the recent book New Literacies in Action. I have also been featured on CBC, CNET, and MSN.

I have been honoured to win one of Canada’s highest teaching awards; the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching. I have also been named an Outstanding Middle Years Educator in my province, as well as winning several other awards for the innovative integration of technology into everyday classroom life.

I live in a small rural community and think geography is irrelevent on our hyperconnected globe. This leads to the tagline of my blog: “Even From Here.”

Blog: Remote Access

email: glassbeed@gmail.com

Skype: glassbeed

delicious bookmarks: cfisher

Personal flickr page: glassbeednorth

Twitter: glassbeed

What’s up with the “glassbeed?” Read this.

 djakes: Does literacy change?
djakes: Or do the skills that contribute to being literate shift?
djakes: Isnt literacy rooted in the abilty to write, read, and communicate?

charbeck 2: how kids communicate is changing, so literacy is changing too for under 30 sometings,,,, most teachers are over 30 so there is a big gap here
Kathleen Cushman: Some kids whose voices appear on FiresInTheMind.org feel more respected in a positive way when their full name is used--this is new to me as I have been inclined to "protect" them, but their teachers say that it's good for them to have a positive digital presence

 http://www.evenfromhere.org/?p=1611 - go find out all you can about these guys - then - could you find these guys... do harm to them?
no - they were sharing a lot - but in a safe way

we have a thing about phone #'s on line - but we do have phone books

they were worried about will sharing so many photos of his kids.. but he was doing it in a safe way

steve suggests - look at srs in hs - from the vantage of colleges looking at you

2 teachers that know each other, but students don't, 16, 17, 18 - and search each other

you have to tell your own story - if you're not somebody else is telling it for you.

global issues and connecting:
global connectivity for a classroom today.. needs to be default position

had kids take off shoes and tell where they are made
use igoogle - online textbook - find 5-6 feeds online (bbc news to village in africa, etc) required reading
build a page and share it with others.
then they find other places they want to focus on
once build page - look at top - tab - that sends kids an email
 http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/06/share-tab-from-your-igoogle-page.html

PeggyG: http://globalvoices.org/ - love zuckerman
Kathleen Cushman: The biology teacher was using "The INner Life of a Cell" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpTmXz8VQF8&feature=related
Kathleen Cushman: I started a school in a semi-rural area <www.parker.org> and it took that to get them out of their cocoons

original global collab 2.0 projects -
basic project management

Kathleen Cushman: @carolteach4 send them to my blog please! firesinthemind.org (and come too, it's really for teachers but depends on kids' voices

kids won't let you down...

 it can't be in the beginning about the content
we feel we have to justify what we do... can't give them a flickr or blog and ask them to blog about weekend.. we feel guilty - but that's a good place to be

let kids find their own connections - form own networks

Heather Durnin: Flickr photo contest in the Idea Hive http://www.ideahive.org/?p=159


Cris: Dave Cormier is really into analytics -- would be good contact

glassbead: when i took up glassbeed - spelled correctly was already taken - german book 1943, herman hess, glass bead game - order of monks who play the game.

Lisa M Lane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game
glass bead is an idea... one puts one out... then another.. they have to play against each other.. not a competition but a collaboration.
if ideas end up going together - music at end resonates
___________________________

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

bill gates

in person vs online ed:

k-12 is about babysitting kids? - dang - how sad is that..
what if - we innovate that? what if we mesh up that so that the parents aren't looking for a place like that.. and the kids are way beyond that?
80% waking hours - silliness - i'm thinking.. the way it's being described...
now - school is life - 24/7 - ok to that.. school is learning ... learning is innovation... that we could handle 24/7..



k-9 no change - hybrid (unless - we innovate... no?. )
college needs to be less place based
200000 ed increasingly hard to get...
you're right tech can bring that down
diy u down.

no room for innovation in standard system?...what about connected adjacencies..
gosh i wish i could bend your ear..

________________________

sylvia martinez

left davidson because the math was becoming arithmetic (she only had good things to say about davidson... this comment was just in regard to what math was becoming)

 http://www.math.com/students/calculators_pre_ti/roman/compvterromanvs.htm

after math.com went into flames, moved onto video games.. because then people know what they are getting.
mathblaster..
people who make video games are intensely collaborative and learning all the time..
amazing thinkers - understood math at a level... and a lot were told not good in math in school...
most were programming games in hs and were told it wasn't valuable

kids programming games when school values it - extremely valuable

http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/10/gaming-education.html

math means so many things
games means so many things


Colin Graham (@ColinTGraham): Check out @subusrbanlion's http://www.suburbanlion.com/?p=134 REBEL math curriculum

 http://sites.google.com/site/constancekamii/

 Jo Boaler - http://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/joboaler


Moderator (Ihor): http://ciese.org/ciesemath

 Kurt Squires research on using Civilization in the classroom is really interesting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

refreshing take on school of one


fractions has messed people up - pushed down so kids could learn algebra..
when to introduce things to kids

because we don't trust kids with math - we force our math on them...
Colin Graham (@ColinTGraham): http://republicofmath.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/how-and-what-shall-we-teach/

formative assess - frequent - someone to show you what you got wrong

 http://www.gameslearningsociety.org/users/kurt-squire


 https://k12online08presenters.wikispaces.com/Sylvia+Martinez

work on the messaging about what math really is...
math is not a bunch of facts..
making it about students and student autonomy  - generation yes


___________________________________

best attribution

Seth Godin - i love #20 of
i spread your idea because

I spread your idea because 
I'm in awe of your art 
and the only way I can repay you 
is to share that art with others.
__________________________________________________________

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

women's conference

recap

via @BenVitale
______________________________________

eric brunsell

i like his post on
how to think like a scientist

___________________________________

diane ravitch


















Ed Jones: http://credo.stanford.edu/

Jenna Ream: Finland is having a national conference this week, bringing US experts for talks on how to meet the needs of impoverished children and children who do not speak Finnish.  Recent poor immigrants do not do well in Finnish schools.  The Finnish ministry of education is looking to us to figure out how to better meet their needs
http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0151010986

movement towards high stakes testing = bad consequences - cut back on choices

http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Discovered-Quality-Revolution/dp/0140165282

 http://www.thelearningweb.net/chapter12/page408.html Deming as applied to education

http://www.amazon.com/Measuring-Up-Educational-Testing-Really/dp/0674028058

chapter on mrs ratliff - her fav teacher


_______________________________

Monday, October 25, 2010

jim burke

 http://englishcompanion.ning.com/profiles/members

Measurement=Control, exactly!
Paul W. Hankins: The control is always based in the proscriptive, but we still need to be able to work out of the descriptive. And for this, I am still hopeful. Description can be inclusive, whereas proscription draws lines/separates.
Carol Jago: Learning is the antithesis of control. It can't be controlled, thank God.
Paul W. Hankins: My favorite quote of Jim's: "We can't tell the web what we want it to be. . ."

had to leave.. catch rest soon.


kids

how do we keep up with them... ?

here's lucas cranking out vocals for the opera her wrote and translated to italian...




here's cristian talking to his brothers about passion:
delaney:


brayan:



cool things happen when you let them.. no?

__________________________________________

Sunday, October 24, 2010

colby ratzlaff



great video on his last 4 years (he's a freshman now):
RT @pgeorge: Don't miss Fireside Chat for #k12online10 today 7:00pm EDT-Colby Ratzlaff,amazing Stdnt Voices keynote http://twurl.nl/v5knpz




used google sketch up for all the room design and
sandboxgamemaker for the games

jackiegerstein: Colby - you have a better resume now than many graduating college students

none of us knew everything but we shared everything we learned.

__________________________________________________

do what you love

met a new friend on fb - Zoo
she writes:
Zoo Vankova: I have to admit that I am bullshitting myself on a daily basis, that :..''I 'd love to, but I can't now'' and many more*

and later writes:
Sitting in an office full of fools, trying hard 2 stay sane.
Day by day.

and:
Often we ask ourselves 'can I do this?' and then 'How?'
What might be a better order is to ask is 'Why will i do this?' , 'When will i do this?' and then 'How can I do this?'


i'm thinking many have these thoughts. daily.

we could change this.. yes?

let's mesh (gansky) and rework (fried) our days -
many are watching life go by with
no hunger
no relationship
no sense of real.
there's no reason to be bound to things we don't value.

yeah - the web can be bad - like all things... but it has the potential for good we all crave.

















let's go there.
individually.
together.
let's be.

___________________________________________
@courosa
"I am part of all that I have met"
~Tennyson ---
that pretty much describes me, a human mashup.

____________________________________

lisa gansky

why she wrote the mesh..


the mesh in less than 300 words by John Moore


love this interview of environment - first question she answers with:
the connection i guess is me...


notice her demeanor - great question - thank you.

used to be "cash hides all sins" - now it's sharing.

she's big on waste... she's very reworkish (fried) with things
as fried is to time
gansky is to things
neither want to waste them

i'm sure they both bleed over - that's just resonating in my head right now...

one more on the future of the internet:


the web (got social and now) is getting physical... meetups.... in a genuine community way
tech hasn't really been packaged for people... that's what's coming - now all the puzzle pieces are out and people are going to start testing some things... going to start feeling "warm"

huge: it's about finding the balance

the internet is not going to solve anything.
but we better and we can.

this is about the web getting personal - you now get to decide what you value..


ok - one more - on women in tech:


be really comfortable in your own skin...
you have to be able to stand up to your ideas
find people that will tell you you are full of it.
most of all: find someone who buys your story early and is willing to give you a chance.

awkward for a man to take orders from women..
most clever women who have a lot of power don't give a lot of orders that look conspicuously like orders..

another book review via @benvitale
___________________________________

tom kelley


__________________________________

Saturday, October 23, 2010

junto

cool jets guys...



would certainly like to find out.
actually - i think we know.. no doubt...
___________________________________

the bully project

The Bully Project Promo from Lee Hirsch on Vimeo.


by Lee Hirsch

_____________________________________________________

notice dream connect do

jim and i just met this week - determined (jim's insight) be was missing.

[if you listen with ear buds - sound is missing from :48 to 1:16]

 

follow/help/suggest more on facebook and tumblr.
_________________________________________

creative commons

Creative Commons: What Every Educator Needs to Know

Presenter: Rodd Lucier
Location: Komoka, Ontario, Canada
Link to presenter’s K12Online Ning Profile page
Presentation Title: Creative Commons: What Every Educator Needs to Know
Presentation Description: Creative Commons is the most powerful mechanism for media development you’ve never heard of. In this presentation, you will discover how learners of all ages are gaining access to millions of free images, audio files, video elements, and written materials allowing the creation of unique multimedia products.


super info super guy...

i just read the mesh by lisa gansky.
while i know places like architectureforhumanity have benefited from cc... all the way through rod's video i couldn't stop asking - is this the mesh - is this really sharing. there are so many rules.

i wish my mind didn't always go so utopian. because i know incredible people love cc. i wish i could just live in that world.
but my head takes me to this: if we trusted more - and truly shared more... time on all these rules and finding out who used what would not be necessary.

i spent one day this week at our ad building. and i had to keep asking... all the space and all the things in the building and all the incredible people in the building... why... why are they doing all that they do.
not just there - everywhere.
how much of what we spend tons of time on is because we don't trust people, so we create rules to make us all more orderly... and then rules are broken - so we need more rules.. we've got so many hyperlinks of rules for everything. people spend there days working on rules/guidelines/management...

i wish we could just let people do things and share. and when someone messes up... we call them on it.



________________________________

Friday, October 22, 2010

100 people


1 college ed
1 computer
______________________

Chris Cuomo’s Special on Bullying

Chris Cuomo’s Special on Bullying

simon sinek

on zooming out - for the sake of peace.


______________________________

jim folkestad

discussing mapping system as a monitor of growth



____________________________________________

Thursday, October 21, 2010

the ben and ben show

bravo guys..
bravo...



take a listen on how to get things done...
______________________________________________

sheryl nussbaum-beach

connected learning communities

need to know what i know, what you know and who you know..

the community aspect is getting us to the place where we are actively a part of an authentic practice



___________________________________________________

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

natalie Jeremijenko

The art of the eco-mindshift

 

 

__________________________

robin sharma

why lead without a title? 
because your life matters...


_________________________________

ha

global wifi + noodlestorm - ish things + detox

yeah baby... happening
________________________________________

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

gary stager

ahh... thank you.
finally someone
pointing out
that we're missing an important point.

all our talks on success are centered around "achievement" of something we don't even believe in.

i feel much better.
maybe i can even sleep.

___________________________________

nancy white

ownership is best if you want to have a community

tech: designed for a group - experienced through an individual

 http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tipping_point_author_malcolm_gladwell_says_facebook_twitter_cant_change_world.php

tech steward













communities of practice are things that emerge in connectiveness
that community might not persist for a long time..

an ecosystem that we're not all experiencing the same way

1) understand our identity
2) own learning
3) increase multi-modal ways to express self

roles:
facilitators - to make easy...
community leaders
tech stewards
network weaver -  notice possibility to connections
independent thinkers
moderators

read - chris allen - group size - life with illacroty 
Chris Campbell (@bitdepth): http://www.lifewithalacrity.com

people who are comfortable involving other people definitely have an advantage

her book: digital habits

strategic, management, design, development




Moderator (john smith): http://learningalliances.net/2010/07/tech-steward-meet-tech-mentor/


jackiegerstein: Can we go another hour?  


Moderator (NancyWhite): Chris, lots of line shining. Paying attention


Moderator (Steve Hargadon):  


Moderator (NancyWhite): Mimi Ito


jackiegerstein: Useful works!


Nick Noakes: community more organic ... strategic suggests more long range planning and thus assumptions?


Liz Dorland: danah boyd and those guys


Moderator (NancyWhite): http://patternsofchange.wordpress.com/

 http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/user/5

learning about tech is not something that happens in a class

check out john smith - was moderator
__________________

Monday, October 18, 2010

peter shallard

from why what you believe gets you nowhere
I work with people to access and  
score their beliefs for “usefulness” 
not “truth”.
After all, us humans have such wildly divergent beliefs that it’s impossible to know what’s true and what’s not. Why not pick the beliefs that make life the easiest or best instead?


via @PeterShallard

__________________________________________

Sunday, October 17, 2010

save the learner

why do we stand for this?
esp in ed - when the product is our most valuable resource... learners...(kids, adults, all of us)

the ads read:
you're not successful without papers/grades/degrees as proof that you've been exposed to the things other people have determined you need to be exposed to in order to be successful.
no?

via The Mesh strategies:
vulnerable place for students - admission to uni
vulnerable place for admin - funding
opportunity - authentic learning  in these spaces via more choices

we need to quit looking at and talking about and becoming what all the ads have to say. 

what if we ousted the ads... the hype .. and we did psa's on ..
save the learner...  (like we do with other aspects of our world/environment we feel like we're losing)
giving choice back to the learner and their community   - on what success is- and facilitating their self-construction around that.

_____________________________________

Saturday, October 16, 2010

david warlick

excellent post and thinking via @dwarlick on
student vs learner

so we need to get away from the student and teacher labels.
we need to get away from all labels.
no more teacher, student, resource, gifted, male, female, black, white, old, young,...
just back to a natural state of us all being learners...

and then..
all the rules that keep taking up time to make and keep and break and rectifiy....
are no longer needed
and all the programs we've created to manage these students and these labels, like rti, pbs, etc... are no longer needed...
we could just focus on the process of learning and rules that matter
____________________________________

anyone teaching music class like this...



via @chadsansing

______________________________________________

shawn cornally

via @thinkthankthunk
bravo man
____________________

PuertoRico

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Friday, October 15, 2010

sean foote


DGREE – Sean Foote from DGREE on Vimeo.

thing about being an innovator - never ask permission
innovation provides exponential solutions
what we need in ed are innovations that are as seductive as color tv
one of the places to go to find money is one of the places you've never thought to go... graph - that ca spends 2% on ed

1/2 of everything that innovators do fails


______________________________________

carol coletta and cameron sinclair

your school design it (a student driven model) for higher ed


DGREE – Carol Coletta and Cameron Sinclair from DGREE on Vimeo.



how do you handle abundance with organization that are organized around scarcity

how does the world value something that is not a traditional degree
it's not that people with degrees learned more (although they could have) it's just how that's valued

other businesses has unbundled this.. higher ed hasn't

why don't we outsource students to specified places - rather than have a whole departments for it.. ie: architecture philosophy outsourced.. the critical part - building buildings that don't fall - leave with experts at uni

yes - put hs students into office buildings..
professional teaching math to those coming out of juvenile halls
how can we work on these hybrid places

underutilized spaces in cities...

anya's question about credited ed relating to success - was it addressed?


the ability for mass specialization

for innovation to occur - colleges need a big push
anya at wec10

Cameron in 2006 on Ted

Thursday, October 14, 2010

sir ken robinson's rsa

changing ed paradigms


economic and cultural

intellectual culture of the enlightenment

led to - we have 2 types of people... smart and not
been great for some - many have benefited from it... but more have not..

aesthetic experience - operating at peak, fully alive
anesthetic - shut your senses off, we're getting our children through ed by maintaining them

creativity - process of having original ideas that have value
divergent thinking - ability to see lots of possible answers, think nonlinear

kindergarten at genius level 98%












in school we've told kids the right answers are in the back of the book - and don't look and don't copy - that's cheating.. when in the real world - it's called collaboration....

__________________________________________

dave cormier

open and connected


who do you want to do it with

alan levines' amazing stories of openness
openness is a practice.
leads to connections

be open and then you can make those connections

_________________________________

we need help

as posted to coop friends...

and now gathering all info here.

guys..we need your expertise/wisdom/insight…
please. and thank you kindly.

1. what we’re seeking specifically is a  list of or info on uni’s that currently accept alternative means for admission, ie: eportfolios, etc.
2. and then i guess too, is #1 even a good question.

what’s going through our minds just now:
many people are doing cool things in ed.
most people are afraid to.
it appears their fears are mostly related to risk involved in changing course. (which we believe is a greater risk, no?)
so say – we have a means for all (true nclb) to be successful in life.
and we want to convince people to give it a go. seems (at least in our brains right now) that accountability/acceptance/validation measures are the big roadblocks. top questions that usually dampen the energy of the cool things happening in ed:
1) what about the mandated standardized tests (that drives a lot of hours in the day)
2) what about college admissions (that drives a lot of our standardized tests)

i’m currently reading the personalized highschool – where they showcase about 8 schools doing accountability via eportfolio.

i listened to Gary Stager last night talk about working with the maine youth center project – he said this:
these kids tried to keep journals, eportfolios, but these kids were deeply damaged.. so decided – every morning make a to do list.. at end of day take a picture of what you did and that’s your documentation.
he used the term detox – yeah.. detox
the documentation interfered with that they wanted to do – the meaningful stuff
kids were keeping secret portfolios – if it was their idea it was ok – Gary said his mantra is – less us more them

first quarter in the lab we did a round-about way to bypass grades. more like a check in. i wanted them to have space to self-construct.
because of some of their revelations, we are asking each one in the lab to find/clear one person to give them their grade 2nd quarter. (we have to have grades – one reason we’re going for a connected adjacency next year.)

seems accountability is not only what is keeping people from moving forward but it is the one thing that is watering down potential.
could it be so simple as a daily to do list? how do we convince college admissions to buy in to alternative measures? is that a good focus of our energy now?

i know a group at our local uni that i join weekly talks about how they can’t run a class like they want because by the time the kids get there – they need so many rules to get things done. this need for rules/instructions we think is a by-product of the standardized tests and college admissions process.

what do you, dear friends,  think/know/believe?…


what i'm hearing (thank you everyone):
eportfolios
  • william and mary - home school requirements
  • A Harvard University (MA) admissions officer said most of their home-educated students "have done very well. They usually are very motivated in what they do." Results of the SAT and SAT II, an essay, an interview, and a letter of recommendation are the main requirements for home-educated applicants. "[Transcripts are] irrelevant because a transcript is basically a comparison to other students in the school."
          from hsdla - look into homeschool requirements for school of choice might help
wow - read through the hsdla - above 
esp under a positive college experience
4 above via @chadsansing
  • Goddard College
  • Hampshire College
  • Marlboro College
  • Antioch Universities
  • Brown University
  • Prescott College
  • Naropa University
  • College of the Atlantic
  • Sterling College
9 above accept alternative transcripts  via @pushingupward
  • Goddard College is a progressive, independent college located in Central Vermont.
1 above via susan fleming (and below) :
I came to Goddard’s EDU program with 32 years in public schools and with three graduate degrees. What I can say is that the final product (undergraduate’s senior study or graduate student’s thesis) of many of our students is equal to or exceeds the work I did for my doctoral thesis at Harvard’s GSE. We are a learning community that takes our passions and challenges seriously, on an individual and collective level.

teach creativity  - via chad and kirsten
http://classroots.org/feed/
hacking the academy - via chad

University of Oregon has an open application process for homeschoolers.  Prescott College, and Naropa University are both private schools that offer clear alternate pathways but not sure if they are explicitly portfolio based.
via Scott Nine at idea

p2pu 
for innovation to occur - colleges need a big push
anya at wec10

latest from Lyndy total transcript 

via Wounded by School, Kirsten Olson, Stanford and other major uni's are now actively seeking out home/un-schooled students because of their inquisitive and self-directed style.

Melissa Techman (@mtechman) suggested looking at William & Mary’s home-schooler admissions page. Susan Carter Morgan (@scmorgan) recommended Washington College in Maryland; her niece attended after learning in a Sudbury high school.
Maybe your students could check into their favorite colleges’ home-schooling admissions requirements and work with those colleges to develop their own materials? Maybe they could also contact Sudbury and Free schools to ask how students at those schools apply to college? For example, this FAQ page from the Brooklyn Free School explains how its students create transcripts and choose which tests to take, if any.
Sounds like all of this might make for a great inquiry project.

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seth godin










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connections

late to the game...

how have i been so immersed in connections and so immersed in the new the web is allowing (connections) and not made this connection:

what's lacking is creativity (steve jobs) and leadership (dave logan)
both come from connections.
connecting people and info and things.



















i have so much to learn....
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connections - mash up







dave logan saying #1 key to tribal leaders - they take one person from one tribe and one person from another and introduce them.

with







Steve Jobs article: Psychologists have spent years trying to discover the answer to the question: "What makes innovators different?" In one of the most thorough examinations of the subject, Harvard researchers spent six years and interviewed 3,000 executives to find out. According to the Harvard research, the No.1 skill that separates innovators from noncreative professionals is "associating"—the ability to successfully connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas from different fields. The three-year Harvard research project confirms what Jobs told a reporter 15 years earlier:
"Creativity is just connecting things."

so - who can zoom and see what might work really well together... that's it.

and jackie - i like your question... if you learn creativity from someone else - are you really being creative..
i'm thinking regardless - today - we need to learn permission at least... we need to detox/reprogram/allow ourselves to zoom out, do our own thing, not follow the rules..

via jackiegerstein To Unlock Creativity, Learn from Steve Jobs http://bit.ly/axAzUc If we need to learn HOW to be creative from someone else, is that creative? - which got me to the steve jobs article...


more on the article: jobs doesn't see things differently from the rest of us - he sees things differently
he says
to see things through these lenses, you must force your brain to make connections it otherwise would have missed.











 i need to work on some connections here
and we can all connect here - starting right now.. how cool..
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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

gary stager

https://www.nationalstemcentre.org.uk/elibrary/signin
http://climeconnections.blogspot.com
http://web.mac.com/ihor12/files/stager/
http://nrich.maths.org/stemnrich

http://web.mac.com/ihor12/files/stager/
maine youth center project with papert

when people visited - they met kids who were interesting and polite and were engaged in interesting work - so they never asked for test scores.. they just walked out thinking - this is how school should be

phd in math and science... had self esteemed crushed by math teachers from 8th grade on
2 kinds of kids -
1) good at arithmetic
2) good after 8th grade
tested into unified math in 7th grade - smart kid math class - would be together through 12th grade
by end of 8th grade hated teacher and ended up in lower track
ended up in alg 2 with computer programming - loved it
12th grade - math for liberal arts - let me see if i can help you understand the math my colleagues failed to teach you... 3/4 had started with him in the high flying class. - how did that happen

most great mathematicians are drop outs...
a lot of kids are made to feel really badly in math

these kids tried to keep journals, eportfolios, but these kids were deeply damaged.. so decided - every morning make a to do list.. at end of day take a picture of what you did and that's your documentation.
he used the term detox - yeah.. detox
the documentation interfered with that they wanted to do - the meaningful stuff
kids were keeping secret portfolios - if it was their idea it was ok -

less us more them

50% of math was invented since ww2 in 1989... so much more now
yet not represented in curric

papert - idea aversion

carolcarruthers: Seneca College, Toronto, Canada - pilot program that has been hugely successful

milogardner: new ideas bridge subjects ... 10 years ago chemistry, physics and biology were combined into one subject ... at the surface of water ... where photothesis takes place with UV light from sun .. per http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVBEwn6iWOo

Moderator (David Weksler): http://open.senecac.on.ca/HPtabletproject/

2004 spent time with papert in australia - seymour was really agitated about the need for reform in math ed
140 diff reasons why critically important to do something about the way math was taught
if you look at all the major school reform efforts of the last century - not one had a good affect
lack of change means - regardless of what other interventions and reform efforts - you're reintroducing cohersion into the system
maybe the math we're feeding them is noxious - toxic

http://algebra.org/
thos: I'm trying to do this with RealWorldMath.org

carolcarruthers: Move past calculators (old tech) and get to learning objects - take a look at http://hoodamath.com/

Moderator (David Weksler): http://scratched.media.mit.edu/
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will richardson

super article/interview of will

Will comments in the article:
I have no doubt that the best teachers they’re going to have in their lives are the ones that they find

i'm thinking the reason we're not moving - we can't get out of the mindset blindfire states... who says the outcome is standards based testing and who says the teacher should pick the content..

i love will's quote about about kids finding teachers.

i also love what james bach says


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zenhabits

smile, breathe and go slowly

7 habits

1. do what  you love....


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