Teaching for the Future

News:
Google Opens Dialog with Book Publishers from CNET News: Google hosts their "Unbound" event to convince book publishers that they are not their enemy. Though there has been a lot of debate over Google's efforts to digitize text and create a printed text search engine, I think that ebooks make a lot of sense. During the resent episode of Boing Boing Boing editors Cory Doctorow and Mark Faurenfelder discussed ebooks as both readers and content creators. Faurenfelder talked about the use of ebooks as the publisher of Make Magazine and how easy it is to distribute the pdf versions. Doctorow believes that a lot of the success of his print books are due to the buzz created by releasing his works electronically under a Creative Commons liscence.

The Camera Phone from Slate: This is an interesting article looking at the camera phone and how it has changed the way we communicate. The article focuses on many of the negative effects of the almost ubiquitous device in spying on our neighbors, invading other's privacy, and catching others at their worst. I think their is a great deal of truth in the quote of camera phone inventor Phillpe Khan who said in a 2000 Wired interview "With this kind of device, you're going to see the best and the worst of things." There is also a link to an Mp3 of this article available on the article page.

Gaming advances as a learning tool from eSchool News: As you are already aware there are a great deal of teachers who are beginning to integrate video games into their classroom practice. The article discusses how video games can help reach the digital natives in their classrooms. In my mind this seems that teachers are just trying to meet their students halfway and trying to address the interests of their students.

National Slowdown Week from Adbusters: Did you miss National Slowdown Week? Well so did I. This is another campaign from the folks at Adbusters. I think the video is really cute, but I'm not sure if slowing down is an option for most of us. This is a nice reminder to slow down.

Seven Reasons You Should Text Your Teen from Totally Wired: I found this post particularly interesting after sitting on the Student panel for Lesley University's Technology Institute. I was one of seven students who was on the panel that served as an introduction to social networking. Of the panel there were five undergraduate students who spoke about how they used social networking sites like MySpace and the Facebook. I could tell that a lot of the faculty were surprised by the role these sites played in their lives. It was not that they were dismissive of the technology or dismissive of it's usefullness, but they had no idea how these students were invested in social networking.

Though schools and universities are starting to examine social networking, this has been a long time coming. One technology that I think many teachers and adults do not understand the role of text messaging in the lives of teens. Where many adults use email, it does not have the convenience or the immediacy of text messaging or instant messaging. This blog post tries to explain to adults why they need to pay attention to this important moblie technology.

Anastasia Goodstein writes on teens and preteens and their relationships with technolgy. While most adults are not interested in text messaging, she gives 7 good reasons parents should be texting their teens.

1. Parents get a quick answer to their questions.
2. Kids are more apt to respond to text messages when they are with their friends.
3. You, or they, don't have to worry about tone of voice.
4. Texting allows you to enter your child's world.
5. Text messaging allows parents to compose and edit a message before pressing send.
6. Texting vs. calling gives kids more space but allows parents to keep in touch as often as necessary.
7. Text messaging can also be used to strengthen parent-child bonds, and let kids know that their parents are thinking of them.

Thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music.

If you want to help out or participate with Teaching for the Future you can leave a comment on the homepage or link to us on your blog or podcast. If you want to get in touch, feel free to email at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com or send me an audio message through Odeo

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Labels: adbusters, ebooks, education, gaming, mobile technology, podcast, slate, teaching, texting

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Posted by Dave LaMorte on Sunday, January 21, 2007 at 1/21/2007 12:03:00 AM | Permalink