2¢ Worth

Learning to Change is from the DigitalArts Alliance, of Pearson Foundation, and CoSN. A lot of it, I’d heard, and I continue to be intrigued by Stephen Heppell’s concept of the “Nearly Now!”
But the statement that really struck me was the first one, delivered by Keith Krueger, CEO of CoSN. He said that…
The […]

Image from the C|Net article, of a press conference, staged in Second Life last year, by California Democrat George Miller.

It’s SecondLife, and Illinois congressman, Mark Kirk (up for re-election), held a press conference on Tuesday, in front of a library, where he highlighted the “dangers” of the virtual world…. 1
I’m not surprised. History has […]

I’m working on a little AUP project and have been going through various examples, reading things like:
Pagers, laser pointers, cell phones, or other electronic devices not part of the instructional program will not be allowed in school.
Students are not allowed to use, wear, possess or store in their locker: cellular telephones, communication beepers, other electronic […]

It’s a book by Clay Shirky, who, after only a little research, I’m surprised that I’d not heard of before.  Here’s an excerpt from a rather long blog post by Shirky, “..a lightly editied transcript from a speech (he) gave at the Web 2.0 conference..”
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody:
I started telling […]

Page from Flypmedia (click to enlarge)

Here’s another one from the category of learnable media.  Shared by David Weinberger, via Twitter1 this afternoon,  Flypmedia is a slick and highly interactive magazine.  Leafing pages, as old as the technique is, still makes me yearn for the perfect e-reader device.  It just makes my laptop feel so behind […]

It is customary for us to suggest books for summer reading during the few weeks that many educators have to retool and re-energize.

Two books have had me almost totally engrossed over the past several weeks, preventing me from spending the time I should with more professional explorations.  They are both fairly dramatic departures from the […]

I use to write a lot about the possibilities of fully digital and networked textbooks (or what ever we’ll call them).  My ideas were largely speculative — from my own limited imagination.  But now, it seems that just about every day I run across some new web application or service that yells at me, “This […]

I’m waiting here for a Skype call from a client who wants me to talk with their art and music teachers about 21st century skills and the creative arts. While waiting, decided to scan through my aggregator and ran across this reference from Smart Mobs about two recent video blogs by Howard Rheingold, including […]

A recent report (Ready to Innovate/pdf) from The Conference Board and Americans for the Arts, in partnership with the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), reminds us that creativity, and integral part of innovation, is among the top five skills that will become more important over the next five years.  Yet, according to their survey, […]

Screen Shot of Hitchhikr

It’s sure been nice to be at home for the past week.  With only a few virtual events on my calendar last week, I’ve been retiring to and rising from my own bed for the past seven days — and this trend will continue, as May is always a slow month for […]