Drape's Takes

In spite of Wordle being so overplayed, I think it's still useful for occasionally getting a quick visual on what seems to be currently occupying the thoughts of those who write. For example, here's a quick Wordle built from the U.S. National Educational Technology Plan.

In fact, I'm not sure how other - normal - people do it.

I'm grateful to be in IT and know that the things that I do on a daily basis affect kids and the kind of learning they're able to experience. I'm grateful to be able to help teachers. Teachers work sooooo hard and it's such an emotionally draining profession; I'm grateful to be in a position to suggest methods and procedures that really can make their load lighter.

I'm grateful to know that we're impacting our future. Kids matter. Learning matters. And how we support teachers in making learning better. faster. easier: matters.

As far as I'm concerned, there's no better job in the world.

Wikipedia:

Chatroulette is a website which pairs random strangers for webcam based conversations. Visitors to the website randomly begin an online stranger chat (video and text) with another visitor. At any point, either user may leave the current chat and initiate another random connection...

The site was launched in November 2009 by Andrey Ternovskiy, a 17-year-old high school student in Moscow,^[1] and gained popularity in February 2010 after being featured on “Good Morning America,"^[2] the New York Times^[1] and New York Magazine.^[3]

The site receives about 500,000 unique visitors per day and there are about 35,000 people on Chatroulette at any given time.^[4]

• Limited to a local network, maybe just to connections within your school or district
• Controlled to eliminate whack-jobs - tie all access to managed (local?) teacher accounts
• Channel rooms toward specific topics, subjects, or essential questions

Several months later, and I'm ready to shift dissertation gears back in to high, but have felt - for some time now - that a change in topic is most likely imminent.

It's not that I've lost interest in the the topic of open professional development, but rather that because the creation of a new school district doesn't happen every day, I feel strongly compelled to evaluate what has taken place as we've experienced the birth of the Canyons School District. The ride has been wild, affected a large number of people, and remains a highly charged, politically vibrant, emotionally taxing controversy to this day.

Over the last few days, I've been able to scratch out an outline for what I hope will actually work; and I'd love to hear what you think:

• Is this dissertation do-able?
• Does the study have merit?
• Is the study too large/small/fast/slow for a dissertation?
• How would you recommend that I control for bias?
  

And can that purpose be realized in other - perhaps better - ways?

George Siemens:

Anytime someone provides a list of steps to achieve complex tasks, my reaction is to turn and run. Lists are generally only useful for the people who make them. Situations and contexts change rapidly. What works now in one organization will likely not work in the future in another organization. But, complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty are difficult to manage. So we turn to little techniques and ploys that provide us with a pseudo-sense of what’s really happening. Consider this article: The 10 Stages of Social Media Integration in Business. This is exactly how not to implement social media…at least if you’re looking for the transformative impact the author cites early in the article. If you make lists for managing social media, you’ve misunderstood social media.

An interesting piece of interestingness was put out there a few weeks ago by Dean Shareski and John Pederson.


While I love the first sentence and the possibilities that it brings, here's my reaction to the second:

An important question has been posed by our district’s Superintendent that has heavily occupied my thoughts over the last few days. My initial take follows (complete with an ample supply of cutting-edge, 21st Century, digital-age buzz).


What is the purpose of IT in preparing students for college success?

• To assist all educators in the task of teaching students to learn how to learn.
• To assist all educators in the task of teaching students to effectively function in the same kinds of technologically rich learning environments found on and around college campuses.
• To provide access to knowledge and information outside of the immediate school environment, while enabling teachers to understand best practices in empowering students with that access.
• To provide functioning technologies that can improve the learning process, while supporting teachers in empowering students with these technologies.
• To facilitate communication and collaboration between all members of Canyons District learning communities.

• Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity
• Design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments
• Model digital-age work and learning
• Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility
• Engage in professional growth and leadership

• Provide visionary leadership
• Facilitate a digital-age learning culture
• Promote excellence in professional practice
• Enable systemic improvement
• Model appropriate examples of responsible digital citizenship