Teaching for the Future

Teaching for the Future 118 (Enhanced/AAC)

2010-08-09T13:15:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

http://www.teachingforthefuture.com
http://www.badatsports.com
http://newmediator.tumblr.com
http://www.mailmeart.com/goingpostal

TftF 106: Auto Tune Our History

2009-05-13T23:16:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

Mp3 Link

Martin Luther King Sings on YouTube - MLK's I have a dream speech turned into a song using a little editing and autotune. (via zefrank & buzzfeed) I am not totally sure how educational this is, but I think anything that turns an important historical moment into a media snack is an idea worth discussing.

This podcast is more of a test for tommorrow's podcast interview with the cmdln! Feel free to check out the video stream on Ustream.tv. I didn't get the youtube video to work during the recording, but they worked fine afterward while broadcasting (which I should have seen coming).

Teaching for the Future 101 – Flannery Brothers, Fundreds, and Compujunk

2009-04-14T19:41:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

Former guest and friend of the show Dan Flannery is a grand prize winner in the John Lennon Song Contest, which means he is one of two songs that are vying for the prize in the Childrens Music Category. Dan has created all of the music for this podcast and I want our community to help support him back. Please go to www.jlsc.com/vote.

To sweeten the deal Dan is running a contest through his own site http://www.FlanneryBrothers.com,where you can win the custom album art for their next album by voting in the contest. Win a custom art prerelease of our CD if you vote 4 our song every day & email him when you do www.jlsc.com/vote flannerybrothers@gmail.com.

Super Flannery Brothers - http://media.www.mainecampus.com/media/storage/paper322/news/2009/04/06/Style/Super.Flannery.Brothers-3698091.shtml

You can also follow Dan on twitter: http://twitter.com/FlanneryBros

Kinder Art.com Mel Chins Fundred Dollar Bills - http://www.kinderart.com/drawing/fundred.shtml Help bring awareness and support to students in NOLA by creating your one Fundred Dollar Bill with your students.

Repurposing our Tech Junk Due to a personal computer melt down in my own home I have been thinking a lot about how to make old computers salvageable for educational purposes. I read Making due with Compujunk - http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/03/making_do_with_compujunk.html and I decided to experiment wit Ubuntu www.ubuntu.com on my old Dell machine to see how schools could use open source and old hardware to put computers in the hands of students.

Additional Resource -
Wired How-To Wiki - How-To Opitimize a Fresh Ubuntu Installation http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Optimize_A_Fresh_Ubuntu_Installation

Next Week: Im going to be interviewing comic artist, podcaster, and teaching artist Jerzy Drozd this week. We talk about visual literacy, comics in the classroom, and how teachers can use comic book making to turn their students from consumers into creators. Find out more about Jerzy from the links bellow.
http://mlatcomics.com/krc/
http://www.cvcomics.com/artandstory/

If you want to contribute links, stories, ideas or comments you can leave me a message on any of the sites bellow.
http://delicious.com/teachingforthefuture
http://www.twitter.com/davelamorte
http://www.teachingforthefuture.com

Teaching for the Future 100 - Autism Awareness Month

2009-03-27T22:42:00.005-04:00

Click to Play

This episode of Teaching for the Future is a newscast, where we discuss news items that address technology, education, or I find extremely interesting.

If you would like to suggest any articles, items, or ideas for an upcoming episode you can send them to me through the show's delicious page at http://delicious.com/teachingforthefuture or email me at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com.

Teaching for the Future 99 - Dan Flannery

2009-03-02T23:15:00.004-05:00

Click to Play

A number of weeks ago I sat down with the children's book author, John Lennon Song Writing Contest winner, Rutgers University Graduate, good friend and the man who produced most of the music for this podcast, Dan Flannery. Dan is a long time friend who I finally got a chance to talk to about childrens literature and music.

You can hear a sample of one of Dan's songs at the end of the show. For more music and information about Dan and his production company Flannery Brothers go to Flannery Brothers.com.

TftF 98: Topics On Fire: Episode 5, Education and New Media

2008-10-02T07:43:00.003-04:00

I was invited to take part of a round table discussion on Leslie Poston's podcast, Topics on Fire. Leslie moderated a really fun conversation about education and new media, social media and technology with myself, John Herman and E. Christopher Clark. The conversation centered around teaching philosophy, obsticles, and how technology plays into our own personal teaching practice.

I think I gained a lot of insight and I had a great time talking with Leslie, John, and Chris. We recorded the podcast live on Talkshoe which I really liked because we were able to have a live audience who could "call in" or type into a chat window.

[Direct link to the orignal file]

Upcoming:
I am putting together audio and contributed material for episode 100. If you are intrested in suggesting a topic, an artical, or contribute audio the the show write me at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com.

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, Alive in Baghdad, Julien Smith, financial aid podcast, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 97: Interviewed at Momstyle News

2008-09-04T23:14:00.002-04:00

Click to Play

Recently I was interviewed by Angeline Duran Piotrowski for the Momstyle News podcast. We discussed reluctant readers and about how to motivate children to read. Momstyle News is a great resource and news site for parents educators of any gender. I had a lot of fun doing the interview, and you can find the original interview here on Momstylenews.com.

TftF 96: Our Friends in the News

2008-08-27T21:10:00.003-04:00

Click to Play

China Says 6 Americans Detained Over Protest Could Be Held 10 Days from the Washington Post

5 Americans Are Arrested for Protest in Beijing from theNYTimes.com

While I was away at Camp Fatima it turns out that friend of the show and former guest Brian Conley of SmallWorldNews.com was amoung 10 Americans detained in Beijing by Chinese Police. Brian was documenting a protest and was deported along with another videoblogger and 8 pro-Tibet Activists. The detaines are now in the US.

The camp that lives on Love from the Star Ledger

Camp Fatima of NJ
P.O. Box 654
Harrison, N.J. 07029
or call (201) 487-8688

Camp Fatima's web address is:
campfatimanj.org

The Momstyle News Ep29: Teaching For The Future
Angeline from Momstyle News interviewed me to talk about reluctant readers and about how to motivate children to read. Momstyle News is a great resource and news site for parents educators of any gender. I had a lot of fun and I will be including the interview in the Teaching for the Future podcast.

TftF 95: On the Road Again

2008-06-22T21:08:00.003-04:00

Click to Play

"Oh, You Doll! Tweens Embrace American Girls" by CARRIE STETLER from The Star-Ledger

"The e-mail trail: Electronic messages can come back to bite the hand that typed them" by J. SCOTT ORR from the Star-Ledger

"Officials suspect pregnancy pact" from Associated Press via the Baltimore Sun

**UPDATE**
I found this while looking up the above links I found the below story on the Baltimore Sun's website.

"Mayor: No support for claims of pregnancy pact"

If you would like to contribute to the 100th episode feel free to email me your ideas or some audio to teachingforthefuture@gmail.com.

TftF 94: YouTube in the Classroom (pt. 4) Suggested Viewing

2008-05-15T18:34:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

For the last few episodes we have been discussing YouTube in theory, almost at a distance. I have even read some comments on blogs like 7 Inch Cinema saying that I'm being a little abstract. To fix this, today we are going to be looking at some YouTube videos for kids.

I will admit that YouTube was definitely not designed for kids and teachers. I know that YouTube filters content, but often I find that I'm too young for the videos. Despite all that, today we're going to get a little deeper and we're going to be looking at a few specific videos. In this episode we go over some recommended videos.

Before we get into that I continue the Better Know A Listener series with an interview with Aaron "The Art Guy" Smith. Aaron is the edu-blogger/podcaster behind on of my favorite sights, The Academic Aesthetic.com. If you are interested in technology education and/or art education you can find interesting information and web tools from Aaron.

Though this is the end of our current series about YouTube, we will continue to compile a list of recommended videos. If you have a favorite YouTube video for kids and teens, leave a link to the video and your site so that I can give you credit.

Suggested Viewing
Chocolate Rain (Played during the intro)

Digital Ethnography

TeacherTube on YouTube

Cry Me a Verb

TeacherTube - 50 States and Capitals cartoon song

Did You Know 2.0 (Thanks Aarron)

Signing Time
Thanks Made Loud & Freya's Mom Casey

Silent Miaow aka Amanda Baggs
see her blog at http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/

Links
7 Inch Cinema

Vid to Mp3

Teacher Tube

TftF 93: YouTube in the Classroom (pt. 3) with Dr. Scott McLeod

2008-05-04T11:16:00.001-04:00

Click To Play

In this episode I interview Dr. Scott McLeod. Scott is the coordinator of the Educational Administration program at Iowa State University and director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE). You may be more familiar with Scott's work on his blog, DangerouslyIrrelevant.org, where he discusses education and technology from the perspective of administrators and teachers.

Though it seems like I have been spending a lot of time defending YouTube, I want to make it clear that video sharing sites are not all butterflies and rainbows. YouTube has greatly effected the way interpret and interact with the media. Just think of the recent controversies in national politics. In an article in the Hartford Currant, aptly entitled "YouTube, A Blessing and a Curse". The author discusses how the permanence and the availability of video news, gives certain videos an impact they would not have had earlier. Just think of McCain's "Bomb Iran", Clinton's sniper fire, and the controversy surrounding Jeremiah Wright. How would things change if video coverage and the videos themselves were not available on demand 24 hours a day. "In past years, controversy... might have lasted a day or two before people lost interest." (Weir)

This 'on demand effect' isn't limited to the presidential campaign. What if you applied this to classroom management? More specifically issues like behavior and cheating. With little or no effort it is easy to find a ton of instructional video on how to cheat on tests and game the system. Over at his blog, Learning in Hand, Tony Vincent collected many of these interesting videos. What happens when kids have access to material that allows them to game the test and cheat their way through class? While these videos are concerning I am more interested in what I found on Scott MeLeod's Dangerously irrelevant. In this post Scott has collected videos by students taken with their mobile phones. These videos show scenes of teacher/student confrontations in class. One one hand these are an invasive look at a few bad moments in what are probably good classrooms, while on the other hand these videos could be student-citizen journalism exposing the abuses teachers. To try to make sense of all of this I brought Scott McLeod on the show to talk about his post and the changing role of YouTube in the Classroom.

LINKS:
YouTube A Blessing and a Curse By William Weir
http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hc-youtubepolitics.artapr06,0,4268424.story

How to Cheat
http://learninginhand.com/blog/2008/04/how-to-cheat.html

How can I cheat on the test? Let me count the ways…
http://www.teach42.com/2008/04/02/how-can-i-cheat-on-the-test-let-me-count-the-ways/

Cell phone cameras in the K-12 classroom: Punishable offenses or student-citizen journalism?
http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2008/03/cell-phone-came.html

TftF 92: YouTube in the Classroom (part 2) with Vanessa Van Petten

2008-04-29T23:21:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

During a session at PodCamp NYC 2 led by Christine Cavalier, I had a revelation about the way we look at YouTube. Christine's session was all about "how to raise kids in this digital world" and there were a lot of interesting ideas brought up. Christine talked a lot about becoming digitally literate so that we can speak to the digital natives in our lives. She also drew a lot from ELL education, and made the case that we should teach technology in the same way we teach children to speak and interact in an English(American) culture.

As I figured it would the conversation led to the recent controversy surrounding a staged video of a group of girls beating up a younger classmate. One of the attendees, Aldon Hynes, talked about the dangers of social networking as a tool for bullying and abuse. I don't want to misquote anyone, so I'm going to do my best to paraphrase what I heard and hopefully if I'm off base someone can come on the show and correct me or just fix and inaccuracies in the comments. Aldon talked about how a lack of proper modeling/teaching/supervision led to the assalt/video and how it had the potential to ruin the lives of everyone involved because these kids didn't understand to scope of their actions and the permanence of the Internet.

It was at the moment that I realized that most of the people in the room not only spoke a different "technological language" than many young people, but that we are not even part of the same paradigm. Aldon's comments made me realize that kids are operating under different social codes, norms, and perspectives about how to use social media/networking/the Interwebs. Which brings me back to Christine Cavalier's point about teaching digital skills and responsibility like it is a language. Just as everyone thinks and sees the world through the lens of their native language, the "digital natives" in our lives see the world through their own lens.

To better explain this idea I wanted to talk to someone who understands young people, particularly teens, and the role of social media in the lives of kids. Vanessa Van Petten is a blogger, author, podcaster, and life coach who teaches parents to better understand their teens.

Who I saw at PodCamNYC 2

2008-04-29T14:05:00.002-04:00

I had a great time at PodCamp NYC even though I was only able to go for the first day. I'm going to do my best to publish the materials from the session I led about Differentiated Instruction. I want to thank everybody who went to podcamp, especially the sponsors, who made the whole thing possible.

Simon Applebaum - http://www.nowlive.com/televison
Paul Allison - http://teachersteachingteachers.org/
Susan Ettenheim - http://teachersteachingteachers.org/
Chris Cavallari - http://www.filmosity.com
Jonny Goldstein - http://www.jonnygoldstein.com/
Michelle Wolverton - http://chelpixie.com
Kroosh - http://www.kroosh.tv
Brad Pendergraph - http://www.wholelotofnonsense.org/
John Havens - http://blog.blogtalkradio.com / http://johnchavens.com/
Robin Wilensky - http://blogs.sun.com/robin/
Joe Cascio - http://joesvideoetc.blogspot.com / http://socialogic.org
Whitney Hoffman - http://www.ldpodcast.com
Cliff Ravenscraft - http://www.bitcastmedia.com
Chris Penn - http://www.christopherspenn.com
Eric Skiff - http://glitchnyc.com/
Dan Patterson - http://creepysleepy.com/
John Herman - http://gravityland.com/blog/
Christine Cavalier - http://www.purplecar.net/
Aldon Hynes - http://www.orient-lodge.com/
Laura Fitton - http://pistachioconsulting.com

TftF 91: YouTube in the Classroom

2008-04-26T13:08:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

In this episode we begin our discussion about the role of YouTube in our culture effects the k-12 classroom. YouTube allows us to have a great deal of engaging content easily accessible. Though not all of the videos are "classroom ready", YouTube is becoming a valuable resource to teachers, students, and learners of all ages.

YouTube in not just for consuming content, and a vibrant community of content creators and enthusiasts has formed on the site. In this episode we address some of the issues and concerns many teachers have about the site, and why YouTube is a factor in education even though it is not often part of the classroom.

Next Episode I speak with author, blogger, and teen life coach Vanessa Van Petten. Vanessa and I speak about why teens find video sharing so interesting to teens and how it has changed the way they interact online. You can find out more about Vanessa at her site: http://www.vanessavanpetten.com

TftF 90: Reaching Reluctant Readers (part2)

2008-04-17T14:08:00.002-04:00

Click to Play

In this we continue our two part series on reluctant readers. We talk about the many new approaches teachers, administrators, and librarians are using to get young people to read. In this episode we talk about some of the approaches teachers, librarians, and parents are taking to reach out to reluctant readers. We discuss the use of audio books, graphic novels, and alternative young adult literature.

If you are interested in being our next listener/guest for this episode you can leave a comment on Teaching for the Future.com or email me at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com.

Citations:
Corbett, Sue (2008, March, 22). Picture this: Teachers are using comics, now called 'graphic novels,' to captivate reluctant readers. MiamiHerald.com, Retrieved 2008, March, 25, from
http://www.miamiherald.com/tropical_life/story/464872.html

(2007, October, 27). Kids Spending Even More Time Playing Video Games. Kotaku. Retrieved 2008, March, 25, from
http://kotaku.com/gaming/kids-today/kids-spending-even-more-time-playing-video-games-311560.php

(2008, March, 24). Most Challenged Books Include 'Beloved' and 'The Chocolate War'. Washington Post.com, Retrieved 2008, March, 25, from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301503.html

O'Crowley, Peggy (2008, April, 1). Once upon a time, in the 21st century. NJ.com. Retrieved 2008, April, 4, from http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-13/1207028247273570.xml&coll=1

Strauss, Valerie (2008, March, 24). Author Works To Prevent Reading's 'Death Spiral'. Washington Post.com, Retrieved 2008, March, 25, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301756.html

Strauss, Valerie (2008, March, 24). Two Pros Offer Tips for Adults to Help Children Choose the Right Stuff to Read. Washington Post.com, Retrieved 2008, March, 25, from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301755.html?sub=AR

Strauss, Valerie (2008, March, 24). Question for the Ages: What BooksWhen?. Washington Post.com, Retrieved 2008, March, 25, from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301756.html

TftF 89: Reaching Reluctant Readers

2008-04-10T21:10:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

In this episode we begin the first episode of our two part series on reluctant readers. We talk about the many new approaches teachers, administrators, and librarians are using to get young people to read. In this episode we talk about some of the controversy over some of the tactics being used to entice young people to spend more time in the library.

Also I talk to Mike Mole` as part of our new 'Better Know a Listener Series'. In this short interview we discuss his experience with building accessibility into software at IBM. You can find Mike at his blog at The Fair Life of Mike Mole`. If you are interested in being our next listener/guest for this episode you can leave a comment on Teaching for the Future.com or email me at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com.

Citations:
Corbett, Sue (2008, March, 22). Picture this: Teachers are using comics, now called 'graphic novels,' to captivate reluctant readers. MiamiHerald.com, Retrieved 2008, March, 25, from
http://www.miamiherald.com/tropical_life/story/464872.html

(2007, October, 27). Kids Spending Even More Time Playing Video Games. Kotaku. Retrieved 2008, March, 25, from
http://kotaku.com/gaming/kids-today/kids-spending-even-more-time-playing-video-games-311560.php

(2008, March, 24). Most Challenged Books Include 'Beloved' and 'The Chocolate War'. Washington Post.com, Retrieved 2008, March, 25, from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301503.html

O'Crowley, Peggy (2008, April, 1). Once upon a time, in the 21st century. NJ.com. Retrieved 2008, April, 4, from http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-13/1207028247273570.xml&coll=1

Strauss, Valerie (2008, March, 24). Author Works To Prevent Reading's 'Death Spiral'. Washington Post.com, Retrieved 2008, March, 25, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301756.html

Strauss, Valerie (2008, March, 24). Two Pros Offer Tips for Adults to Help Children Choose the Right Stuff to Read. Washington Post.com, Retrieved 2008, March, 25, from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301755.html?sub=AR

Strauss, Valerie (2008, March, 24). Question for the Ages: What BooksWhen?. Washington Post.com, Retrieved 2008, March, 25, from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301756.html

Teaching for the Future, 2 years in.

2008-04-04T11:35:00.004-04:00

Two years ago today I released the first episode of Teaching for the Future. The show was created as a class project in graduate school. I wanted to use new media to demonstrate how new media could be used in the classroom. If you listen to the original 8 episodes, we began talking about how teachers can leverage the Internet to reach students.

Today we are still focused on the convergence of education, culture and technology. Each episode deals with the changing media and new media landscape, and how these changes effect the K-12. Though at times it feels like I have exhausted all of the ed-tech topics that interest me, there always seems to be something new on the horizon.

So as we look to the future, expect more from Teaching for the Future.

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 88: Thank you

2008-04-03T01:38:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

This is just a quick podcast that I did to let you know that I'm working hard in the studio on a few new podcasts. The first is a discussion dealing with literacy with a focus on reluctant readers. I am also working on an episode that addresses the present and the future of YouTube in the K-12 classroom.

I'm going to start a segment that features a different member of the audience each week called "Better Know a Listener". I hope to use this to introduce listeners to what each other are doing.

I also want to thank Mark Gura and Kathy King for all their kind words and for mentioning Teaching for the Future on an episode of the Podcast for Teachers. I must have missed this episode. Everything they said was a lie, wonderful and glowing lies about Teaching for the Future. You can find that episode of their podcast here.

TftF 87: Our Schools are a Hot Mess

2008-03-18T00:16:00.002-04:00

Click to Play

In an article in the January/Febuary issue of the Atlantic Monthly entitled "First, Kill all the School Boards", Matt Miller tries to save American education. In the article Miller explains how centralizing all education in the spirit of Horrace Mann would turn around public education. Miller looks at funding, curriculum reform, and No Child Left Behind.

What can be done to yield the proficiency standards we have been paying for? Can we take local control of education away and give it to the federal government?

All this and more in this episode of Teaching for the Future.

"First, Kill all the School Boards" Matt Miller

Teaching for the Future 86

2008-03-07T08:43:00.003-05:00

Cuffed Kid (and Parents) to Sue City for $15 Million from The Gothamist:
Last month, a Queens kindergartener was handcuffed after a temper tantrum at PS 81, prompting his parents to threaten a lawsuit. Now a lawyer representing Dennis Rivera and his parents reveals they are filing a notice of claim against the city for $15 million.

Mind the Gap. It's a high-speed, high-def, Wi-Fi world. But not for everybody. from NEAToday:
From the article: “According to Pew Research, there are still 30 million American households that do not have a computer, mostly in low-income or rural communities. For the majority, it's a matter of dollars and cents—a few hundred dollars for a home computer coupled with a 30 or 40 dollar monthly broadband bill isn't practical when it's a struggle to keep the lights on.”

Related:

Brian Crosby is a blogger and teacher who’s classroom is featured in the article.
More about the participation gap by Henry Jenkins.

Gossip You Can't Manage from Digital Natives:
“In light of recent discussions about managing online reputations, how about something you can't really control – gossip. JuicyCampus.com is a website aimed at becoming a compendium of gossip at college campuses. The gossip posted is, unsurprisingly, is often malicious and hateful, leading to some backlash in the media.”

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

Teaching for the Future 85

2008-02-28T22:20:00.002-05:00

Click to Play

More Time for Math and Reading Equals Less for Other Subjects by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo from Education Week:

From the Article: "Most of the nations elementary schools have added at least 75 minutes of instruction time in reading and mathematics each weekand often twice that amountin the five years since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act, but many did so by skimming that time from the teaching of science, social studies, the arts, recess, and physical education."

Related Link: Wow! - 2cents Worth by David Warlick

New Report on Internet Predators from 2¢ Worth by David Warlick:

"..in spite of public concern, the authors found that adolescents use of popular social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook do not appear to increase their risk of being victimized by online predators. Rather, it is risky online interactions such as talking online about sex to unknown people that increases vulnerability, according to the researchers."

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, financial aid podcast, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

Labels: dave lamorte, education, financial aid podcast, media literacy, new media literacy, podcast, social activisim, teaching, technology

TftF 84: Financial Aid Shake Down/Give Away Your OLPC

2007-11-19T19:57:00.000-05:00

Financial Aid Shake Down: How the US Congress is trying to take away your child's financial aid.

LINKS:
Boing Boing
Hugh McGuire
News.com

Democrats in the Congress have introduced a bill that will force colleges and universities to crack down on file sharing. The bill introduces stiff penalties on colleges who do not fight file sharing in two ways. By reducing federal financial aid and by push schools to subsidize student accounts to music subscription services. Some equate these penalties to pork-barrel legislation designed to help Record Companies to stay in the black. ( HughMcGuire.net) More likely this is a sign of the times and more evidence that the RIAA is loosing direction.

Co-authors of the new legislation:

Representative George Miller of California
Representative Ruben Hinojosa of Texas

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

I think that this law is overtly classist. It's obvious that the MPAA/RIAA are angry. They're pissed off and want to hit students where it hurts, in their financial aid. It's too hard and costs too much to target/litigate each file-sharer, so targeting schools would put the accountability on universities to enforce MPAA/RIAA policy. By penalizing financial aid benefits, this law would almost completely target low income students. If aid is cut, it will be those students who can't afford school on their own who will be affected the most. Which is unfair because students from all socio-economic classes are file sharing. Part of me thinks it is easier to target poor students because they have less resources and capital to fight back, but I think it has more to do with a lack of forethought.

From News.com: "The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) applauded the proposal"... "We very much support the language in the bill, which requires universities to provide evidence that they have a plan for implementing a technology to address illegal file sharing," said Angela Martinez, a spokeswoman for the MPAA."

So instead of trying to find a way to change they way they do business, record companies are trying to legislate their way back on track. I understand that file sharing is illegal, but I don't understand why record companies want to attack low income students. This is like docking pay checks to the mailroom because the CEO was found guilty of a crime. It's sad that our legislators are more willing to fight for the lumbering giants of the record industry over kids who are trying to earn a degree.

For REP. GEORGE MILLER OF CALIFORNIA:

George.Miller@mail.house.gov
1333 Willow Pass Road
Suite 203
Concord, CA 94520
(925) 602-1880
Fax: (925)674-0983

3220 Blume Drive
Suite 281
Richmond, CA 94806
(510) 262-6500
Fax: (510) 222-1306

For REP. RUBEN HINOJOSA OF TEXAS:
U.S. House of Representatives

2463 RayburnHouse Office Building
Washington, D.C . 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2531
Fax: (202)225-5688

Edinburg Office
2864 West Trenton Road
Edinburg, TX 78539
Phone: (956) 682-5545
Fax: (956) 682-0141

Beeville Office
107 South St. Mary's Street
Beeville, Texas 78102
Phone: (361) 358-8400
Fax: (361) 358-8407

For SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID:
Bruce R. Thompson
Courthouse & Federal Bldg
400 S. Virginia St, Suite 902
Reno, NV 89501
Phone: 775-686-5750
Fax: 775-686-5757

Lloyd D. George Building
333 Las Vegas Boulevard
South, Suite 8016
Las Vegas, NV 89101
Phone: 702-388-5020
Fax: 702-388-5030

600 East William St, #302
Carson City, NV 89701
Phone: 775-882-REID (7343)
Fax: 775-883-1980

Washington, DC
528 Hart Senate Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-3542
Fax: 202-224-7327
Toll Free for Nevadans:
1-866-SEN-REID (736-7343)

BUY 2 DONATE 2: Why you don't need to buy an OLPC to your computer collection

LINKS:
OLPC Twitter Feed: http://twitter.com/olpc
Give One Get One Campaign: http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/index.php

This is the bulk of the show, but I don't have the energy to write it all up. I hope you forgive me.

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, financial aid podcast, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 83: Screenwriters on Strike/Call to Action

2007-11-06T21:50:00.000-05:00

Screenwriters on Strike Over Stake in New Media from NYTIMES.com

Hollywood writers are now officially on strike over issues surrounding how the revenues from new media and repurposed media will be shared with writers. This is more than just a strike over workers rights and compensation, this is a large part of the main stream media refusing to produce content.

Highlights from the article:

"[C]ompanies were prepared to use alternative programming like reality shows, reruns and movies to fill broadcast and cable networks during a walkout that might last," [..] "9 or 10 months. Late-night talk shows have immediately turned to repeats, but most prime-time comedies and dramas have about half a dozen episodes already filmed."
"The guild said the companies had dug in their heels by, among other things, refusing to grant the unions jurisdiction over most writing directly for new media, and insisting on the right to offer promotional showings of movies and television shows in new media and elsewhere without paying an additional fee."
"The companies have also insisted on pegging residual payments for downloaded movies and shows at the same rate historically used for DVDs and videocassettes — a formula writers have regretted almost since the moment they negotiated it two decades ago. In effect, the sides finally got down to what they were really fighting about: who will get what from the media of the future. "

What does this mean to you the media consumer?

1. Cultural Shifts:
a. Entertainment/Fictional media is a huge part of American culture.
2. More Reality TV:
a. With out writers entertainment will focus on reality television, where often people who do not share our values are elevated to star status.
3. oppourtunites for new media producers:
a. More focus on independant content producers
b. A chance for you to become a content producer.

MY CHALLENGE TO YOU:
In the comments post any links to content you are going to be watching or creating to fill the media void. The content does not have to be educational, but it should be work safe.

Make sure to post your name and write a sentence or two about the link so that I can sort through the links and give you credit for the link. I will discuss some of the shows in the next episode of Teaching for the Future, and I will put the rest of the links in the show notes.

Web video content I recommend:
Rocketboom.com: Internet Culture and News.
System: A do-it-for-yourself and hacker podcast
BoingBoing.tv : Internet Culture and News (Possilbly Not Safe for Work)
Galacticast:
Something to Be Desired
Drive Time: Internet Culture and News
Epic-FU: Internet Culture and News from the team behind the JetSetShow. (Possilbly Not Safe for Work)

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 82: PodCamp Boston 2

2007-10-31T23:22:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

News:
PODCAMP BOSTON 2: PodCamp was a lot of fun and I know that I am going to need to get it out of my system before I can move on. There are a few things that happened at PodCamp that I think directly relate to my practice here at Teaching for the Future.

Here's what happened:

I met Neil Gorman.
I complained about the nerds on Wikipedia with Andrea Mercado.
I met teen podcaster Kabren Levinson and found out that kids and adults are equally clueless about new media.
I had a discussion with Whitney Hoffman and Greg Demetrick about the differences and similarities between urban, suburban, and rural students.
Mark Frydenberg created real relationships through education technology.
I won a Roland Edirol from the good people at FoneShow.

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

Teacher Resigns over Comic Book

2007-09-24T20:53:00.000-04:00

Recently a high school teacher in Guilford, CT has resigned because of a controversy that has arisen over his decision to give a student a comic book as part of a class assignment. The teacher decided to resign because of complaints made by parents that the comic was offensive. So offensive in fact that according to a New Haven Register article the student's father described it as "borderline pornography". (Scarborough King 2007)

The comic that caused the controversy is a graphic novel by Dan Clowes called Eight Ball #22. Clowes is the creator of Ghost World and is know for dealing with very adult topics in his work. The parents of the student were offended by how Clowes address topics of sexuality, rape, and murder in his story. Clowes is well regarded in mainstream media and has even begun to do a comic for the New York Times. (MacDonald 2007)

I found this so interesting because I am putting together a lesson plan about zines and most of my exemplars are independent comic zines. As I'm reading this article I'm collecting comics to bring into my own class. For a moment I pause to think about whether I should change the focus of our next project.

This scenario in Connecticut my worst nightmare, getting fired for trying to make my class engaging. I am always a bit nervous about what I bring into the class. I like to use a lot of contemporary art work that deals with serious societal issues. My exemplars deal with issues of racism, sexism, identity, and the role of the artist in society and there are some many ways images and ideas can be interpreted and offend. But I get permission for anything that I'm unsure of and I deal with the images in the controlled* environment of the classroom. (*as controlled as it can be)

In my opinion this teacher made two big mistakes. One, he did not clear the book with anyone else. An administrator or a department head could have suggested he used something else or even been able to discuss the book or warn parents before there was any conflict. Secondly, he allowed the book to go home where the student would be left without someone to guide them through the material.

One could argue that the parents are behind the times, but I thing the teacher was being unrealistic about the reality of public schools.

For More Info:
boing boing
THE BEAT

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, Dan Clowes, comics, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 81: A Facebook Emergency!

2007-09-11T20:46:00.000-04:00

PodCampEDU!

There is a new PodCamp unconference devoted to the use of new media and education called PodCampEDU. PodCampEDU will be held at American University in Washington DC on November 10, 2007 from 9:00am - 5:00pm.

From the PodCampEDU site:
"You do NOT need to be a podcaster to attend a PodCamp. If you're interested in podcasting or blogging, if you're a podsafe musician (or want to be), or just someone curious about podcasting and new media, then please join us -- and bring a friend or colleague."

Facebook Opens Up To Public Search

According to a recent Techmeme post by Om Malik Facebook has made your and my information public. This means that now your Facebook profile is now available through any search engine, such as Google. Now more than ever it is a good idea to decide whether to make your profile private or keep it public. What worries me is that now

Uniforms... So Necessary.

DISCLOSURE: I'm not sure if this is even necessary, but just want to mention a few things. I am pro-New Jersey schools because:

I grew up in NJ and went through an excellent public school program.
I was born in Elizabeth, NJ.
I will be applying to jobs in NJ when I graduate.
I will be applying to a lot of urban school districts.

According to an NY Times article entitled School District Has Dress Code, and Is Buying the Uniforms one district in NJ is supplying a set of uniforms for each of its 9,000 pupils.

There is some controversy because many critics of the move feel that it is a waste of tax dollars in an area of the country where the taxes are already very high.

Plagiarism is so Hot right now!

Mahalo Plagiarism Tool

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 80: Back to School Special

2007-09-04T14:54:00.001-04:00

New Facebook Group:

Facebook Group

PodCamp Boston 2:

PodCamp Boston 2

Online/Journal Plagiarism:

Anatomy of a Plagiarism by Hildy Gottlieb from Help 4 NonProfits (Thanks to Angeles Berman and Tara Yeats)
http://www.copyscape.com/

The Future of Work

Will Richardson discusses in his blog an article in Business Week that discusses future trends in the employment market.

Quick poll on 21st century education

The John Moravec at Education Futures polled a group of education bloggers and podcasters, including myself, and asked them "Which trend will have the greatest impact on education in the 21st century?" You can read the post entitled Quick poll on 21st century education

TftF 79: Cheating in the Classroom

2007-08-12T21:56:00.000-04:00

Part 1: Introduction:

The point of new technology is to make tasks easier. Computers replace typewriters, which replaced the printing press, which replaced the monastery of monks illuminating Bibles. But there ease goes too far and our actions become cheating? As teachers, educators, administrators, and parents it is part of our job to draw these lines in our communities, schools, and classrooms. Today we are going to focus on how the way we cheat is changing because of our new technology and our new found connectivity.

Part 2: Cheating in the Media

Cheating from bible.ca From the Site: "The world in which young people live makes it so easy to be dishonest in regard to truth. Think how easy it is to cheat on examinations in school. In fact, we see so much cheating that we must be careful lest cheating appears to be normal to us. It is easy to believe that everyone does it, so why should not we? When we get involved in real-life situations, and under pressure during an exam, or meeting a deadline, it is not so easy to think as clearly as we should."

Norms of the Classroom.
Well Designed Assessment.
Clear Guidelines.

Cheating on standardized tests isn't fleeting -- it's predictable: Cheating in schools has always been a problem, but the pressure of high stakes testing may be part of the problem in one school in California. From the article:"Donald Campbell, an eminent social scientist, warned about the danger of measuring effectiveness by a single influential metric. The more any quantitative indicator is used for decision-making, he said, the more subject it will be to corruption and the more it will corrupt the very process it is intended to monitor." (Gardner 2007)

Oakland charter school director resigns amid cheating scandal: Isaac Haqq has resigned from his position as the head of the University Preparatory Charter Academy in Oakland, CA amid allegations of cheating and changing academics records.

From the article: "Not long after Ward's decision, state department of education officials began looking into a suspicious pattern of erasures on the school's 2006 standardized tests. Staff has since determined that adult tampering did take place, and has invalidated the scores, said Bill Padia, deputy superintendent for assessment and accountability for the California Department of Education.

This year, Padia said, investigators found 2005 algebra and geometry test booklets at the school — a major security breach. As a result, he said, Uprep's standardized test scores for 2007 will be invalidated as well."

Superintendent’s Speech Stirs Talk of Plagiarism From TftF 76: The now former Superintendent of Schools in Fort Lee, NJ was caught stealing her speech to the National Honors Society. Not only did she swipe her speech from the web, but she swiped it from About.com. To many of you this may be evidence of how easy it is for students to steal and plagiarize from the web, but all I can think about is how any high school student worth his or her salt would have at least changed some of the speech.

Poll: Tougher catching cheating with online test takers, educators say

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, Alive in Baghdad, Julien Smith, financial aid podcast, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 78: Free Culture with Elizabeth Stark

2007-07-21T14:31:00.000-04:00

Click To Play
I spoke with Elizabeth Stark who is a Law Student at Harvard Law and a member of Harvard Free Culture. She talked to me about her experience as a student activist and about Harvard Free Culture. We talk about the importance of the free exchange of ideas and the role that intellectual property plays in our society.

Transcript: Coming Soon.

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching

TftF 77: High Stakes Testing

2007-06-26T01:53:00.000-04:00

Click To Play

Part 1: Introduction

In a world where viable careers in manufacturing and service are being exported out of the United States, American students are having to compete more with students form other countries. Not since the Cold War has the education of our children (big or small) has been so important for the social and economic security of our nation. But now in an effort to track our students' progress we are teaching our students to the test? With education initiative like NCLB or the MCAS here in Massachusetts we are spending more class time preparing and examining our students.

While some argue that high stakes testing is a way for politicians to tout their tough stance on education others argue that this is an important way to assess our student's progress. In today's episode we will explore the issues surrounding high stakes testing and their effects on education.

Part 2: Assessment in the Media

Elementary and middle school MCAS scores flat for second year from the Boston Globe: From the article: "People tend to concentrate on high school results but it's clear to me that we need to also focus on our middle and elementary schools," Driscoll said this morning in a written statement. "Any sign of a decline in the lower grades is concerning, because it gets more difficult to catch up as students get older." -Dave LaMorte

MCAS proponents demand reform from BostonNow: Former proponents of the MCAS such as Martin Kaplan, former chairman of the Massachusetts BoE, and Frank Hadu, former Massachusetts Ed Commissioner, are going on record as saying that the "MCAS test is off track from its original purpose" -Dave LaMorte

Tests scores are up, what does that mean? from Moving at the Speed of Creativity: Wesley Fryer discusses a CNN article that shows a rise in test scores since NCLB. Are our students doing better or are we just teaching to the test?

Part 3: Interview

I spoke with Dr. Louis Volante, a professor in the Education Department at Brock University in Hamilton, Ontario. Dr. Volante is a noted critic of
high stakes testing and analyzes test-based accountability models in
various industrialized countries. He spoke to me of some of the misconceptions and some of the dangers of high stakes testing.

Transcript:
Host: Welcome to Teaching for the Future, where education and technology collide.

While some argue that this is just a way for politicians to tap the success of the educational departments under them, others argue that High-Stakes Testing is an important part of assessing the progress of our students.

On this episode of Teaching for the Future we’ll talk a little bit about High-Stakes Testing; what are the benefits, what are the goals and what are some of the problems that come up.

I don’t want to spend too much time on No Child Left Behind only because I feel like that issue itself really deserves its own podcast or own series of podcast to explain all of the nuances of the precedent and the goals of the actual Act itself, but I would be doing you a disservice by saying that High-Stakes Testing has not been influenced by the inaction of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001.

For clarity’s sake we should probably say that Standardized Testing is a way of judging students’ understanding and learning based on a single standard that all of the students would be held against. A single metric that all administrators can sort of measure by. What makes the testing attached to the No Child Left Behind Act high-stakes is that if students don’t progress or students don’t reach certain metric, districts and teachers and administrators can actually be fired or suffer for that.

The high-stakes also affect the students because many students aren’t able to graduate even though they maybe proficient in the actual course work. They need to pass these tests to graduate and to move on to higher education or to move on really with their diploma. The goal of High-Stakes Testing is to foster student achievement for the most part, at least here in Boston there have been mixed results.

In a Boston Globe article from October, 2006 entitled ‘Elementary School and Middle School MCAS Scores fall flat for a second year’. There has been a lot of evidence that a lot of these changes haven’t actually created the results that educators were actually looking for.

Even more recently a lot of proponents of the MCAS, the No Child Left Behind High-Stakes Testing here in Boston have claimed that the test has pretty much gotten off track. I point you to a Boston NOW article entitled ‘MCAS proponent demands reform’. Former Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, Martin Kaplan, is one of the proponents saying that the test has really lost focus on its original goal.

Though the High-Stakes Testing may not all be doom and gloom, I will point you to a blog post, Moving at the Speed of Creativity. EdTech blogger, Wesley Fryer, discusses some of the positive outcomes of the No Child Left Behind Act and a lot of this is High-Stakes Testing. With reports that say that math and reading scores are actually up, although Wesley Fryer believes, at least states in this article that he feel that maybe it’s a result of teaching to the test. Furthermore, Fryer actually goes on to talk about how the High-Stakes Testing may not be the best metric to test student achievement.

But to better explain some of the nuances of High-Stakes Testing and Standardized Testing, I spoke with Dr. Louis Volante, an Assistant Professor and the Faculty of Education at Brock University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Louis Volante: See, I don’t necessarily have a problem with using Standardized Test to look at things like student achievement, what I have a problem with is not acknowledging the limitations in those tests and putting them both as sort of like the defining measure of student achievement. So, even when you look at commonly tested areas; reading, writing, mathematics, science, those are commonly tested subject areas.

So, let’s take a look at something just like literacy, for instance. Literacy, if you ask someone, well, what makes a literate person? A literate person knows how to basically read, write, speak and listen, there’s four domains.

Host: Right.

Louis Volante: But if Standardized Test can only really look at two of those domains; reading and writing, and even within those domains they’re somewhat constricted in what they can look at, so it’s not surprising then that most State Assessment Systems have an overemphasis on things like multiple choice, because money is an issue.

If you’re going to look at open-ended responses where students actually write more extended responses to a probe, a lead question, that costs money to mark, it costs a lot more money to mark that than it does to look at just feeding a bubble sheet through a feeder and getting a set of responses. But when you’re looking at multiple choice responses, for instance, that’s only looking at recognition, it’s not recall, so you’re only tapping into one type of student learning.

So, when you think of all these different issues; what kind of skill you’re looking at, how reliable and valid the test is, which is another really important issue that often doesn’t get enough attention. You have to be able to acknowledge the fact that there are limitations in holding schools, teachers, and even students accountable based on a limited measure, in my mind is not the appropriate approach to take.

Host: You’re referring more to High-Stakes Testing?

Louis Volante: I’m referring to High-Stakes, yes. So, Standardized Achievement Tests, for instance, that are used as graduation requirements in a state or province -- for instance, my own province has the graduation requirement that you complete a literacy test in order to graduate from secondary school, but we’ve seen since that graduation test has been brought into effect that the high school completion rate has dropped about six percentage points from about 77% to 71%. Six percentage points with the student population of around 200,000 is about 12,000 more students that are not completing high school in which they were supposed to complete high school, but that’s Ontario.

The US doesn’t show anything significantly different as well, they’re reporting the exact same kind of concerns. So, for instance, you have students being held back a grade, 30-40-50% more the year prior to a High-Stakes Test, so what’s that saying? It’s basically telling us that students are consciously, deliberately, being held back because the prospect of them actually passing that test the following year presumably goes up if they have that one extra year to prepare.

So, those are some of the more insidious and some of the more difficult. So, in Ontario in Canada we have a somewhat different system where the stakes are higher for students and lower for teachers. In the US the stakes are high for all primary stakeholders; students, teachers, administrators, though it’s not surprising that now we see a litany of problems as a result of High-Stakes Standardized Achievement Testing. But if you look at it from an international point of view there are jurisdictions, there are countries that use Standardized Achievement Test effectively, but they don’t use them for high-stakes decisions, which is the ironical part of all of this.

Host: I know you talked a little bit before about how we’re not really sure exactly how to measure the quality of these tests. Are you saying using them as a metric of student achievement or the actual level of assessment that the test can achieve?

Louis Volante: Well, okay, let’s be clear. First of all, there are two basic types of Standardized Achievement Test. There is Norm-Referenced, which is basically based on a Norm sample. So, if you -- you know what an IQ test looks like essentially and you get your IQ, it’s based on a norm sample. So, an average IQ is a 100. A Standardized Achievement Test works the same way. They give it to a representative sample and then they can say, for instance, a child who is eight years old is really not the age level of a child who is 7.4 years of age, so they’re below where they should be. Conversely, the child’s eight years old but they’re reading at the level of a child that’s 9.2 years old. So, that’s an Norm reference sample.

What we see more of is the Criterion-Referenced Tests, which basically suggests that all students can be successful because it’s against a set standard.

So, within a Norm-Reference sample, by it’s very nature when you looked at a Norm distribution, half of the students will be below average and half will be above, think of the bell curve. Whereas with a Criterion-Referenced test it’s still theoretically possible for all of those students to reach that level. So, if the state’s standard say the state has five levels of proficiency in a level one to five, and the state standard is level three, it’s possible for 100% of the student population to get to level three.

So, those are the two main differences, but the question is, is well, when you use a Criterion-Referenced test you still have to have very good reliability and validity to those tests if you’re going to use them for important decision making purposes.

Reliability, I mean there’s different types of reliability, but if that test is taken -- essentially what it means is if that student takes that test on a different day, at a different point in time, will they get a somewhat similar result? If they do then it’s a reliable measure of student achievement, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a valid one, and here’s the crux of the issue. I mean the test could be, two, three, four students can get similar results over time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be a good predictor of how well they are in that particular subject area.

So, for instance, in language, arts, how well do student’s marks -- student’s achievement levels on a Standardized Achievement Test line up with their classroom based grades. So, they might get very low or very high marks, so you can overemphasize or underemphasize how well a student does based on that one measure at one point in time. The analogy that I often use is if you go to a doctor and he takes your blood pressure, well it’s likely that he won’t give you a pharmaceutical drug in order to correct what might be high blood pressure based on one reading, right?

Host: Right.

Louis Volante: He’s going to take your -- he’s going to use a variety of different factors to determine whether you have high or low blood pressure.

In the same way in schools we need to look at a variety of different types of information before we can make sleeping statements about individual students, schools and even districts. Unfortunately, No Child Left Behind has put a really heavy emphasis on doing well on particular test.

I guess the other issue that we need to consider in terms of reliability and validity is if you’re teaching to the test then you’re really eroding the predictive validity of it. You know what I mean by teaching to the test, I’m talking about having mock examinations with sample test from previous years. There’s a number of individuals that would argue that’s an unethical and educationally indefensible approach to approaching Standardized Achievement Testing.

So, that’s a separate issue as well, and we know this when we look at research across the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand to a certain extent, the higher the stakes of the test go the more you are going to see teaching to the tests, and other types of abuses. What would be another example of abuse is sending a student home the day of a test or queuing them to the correct response, I mean there is a lot of research in the US that actually talks about this sort of thing happening.

So, my argument is that the higher the stakes of the test the greater the teaching to the test and an inverse relationship for the test reliability and validity, that the validity of the test goes down precisely because you are teaching to the test.

Host: Right.

Louis Volante: Those are few of the issues. I mean I haven’t hit all of the issues, there’s certainly a lot more that go into that; things like test-wiseness which tend to favor particular groups of students and particular groups of students from certain ethnical and cultural backgrounds.

Host: Right, where certain students are just more familiar with certain words, word groups, or even certain topics in other words.

Louis Volante: Absolutely, absolutely, certain students are always going to do better on test than others. I mean I teach, I coordinate assessment and evaluation at my university and I do a number of exercises with the students, and I’ve shown them, for instance, how it’s possible to presumably pass a multiple choice test without knowing anything related to the that subject area just by test design, for instance.

So, a very simple thing to do is if you’re not sure go with the longest answer response. The irony is I had a student bring in a Standardized Achievement Test and present some of those items in class. As she was presenting them the students were going with the longest response, and it was funny because the longest response was correct four out of the five times, and it was a test on Physics which none of the students had any background in.

So, I mean those types of skills need to be also considered and those types of design principles need to be considered. I would not say that Standardized Tests haven’t been designed appropriately, but what I would say is certain students have much more capacity with test writing than others.

When you teach to the test it obviously makes more sense that certain students are going to do better than others, but unfortunately, we have to consider well, what’s the kickback or the negative implications for doing that sort of thing? Well, when you teach to the test that means presumably other parts of the curriculum gets squeezed out, and we know that as well, the research is fairly clear.

I think the RAND Corporation which is a nonprofit organization in the US and they do a lot of good work looking at test based accountability systems, just came out with a report fairly recently and looked at the impact of No Child Left Behind in three states. What they found is that those non-tested subject areas were indeed squeezed out of the curriculum. So, prior to a High-Stakes Test teacher would spend less time on non-tested subject areas; music, physical education, visual arts, drama, social science, etcetera, you get the picture.

Host: Is there any serious discussion about possibly going to like a portfolio sort of approach?

Louis Volante: Well, I mean there has been this discussion, a lot of people have advocated for it. You have the School Redesign Network out of Stanford and Linda Darling-Hammond has done some work and she looked at every state, looked at all 50 states and the 38 states that showed improvements in tests scores were ones that used multiple measures. Well, multiple measures meaning not just Standardized Achievement Test, but more authentic based types of assessments.

So, the research is clear on this that when you use different types of assessment approaches within a classroom students benefit, not only in terms of student learning and achievement, but teachers as well because it broadens their assessment repertoire. A lot of teachers already use those approaches, but if you’re sending conflicting messages to teachers by saying okay, we want you to use all this different types of assessment approaches, but at the end of the year, at the end of the school year, the only one that really matters in terms of where you fit within, where your school fits within a district, where that district fits within a state, and maybe even merit pay tied to test scores which has been introduced in parts of the US, it’s sending a conflicting message because it’s saying yes, this is valuable, but in the end it really doesn’t count for much.

Host: Right.

Louis Volante: Because their job depends on it, the school depends on it. Schools can be reconstituted based on poor test performance. Where you start the race determines where you would finish it. So, some students are starting a 100-Meter Dash race with their blocks 10 meters into the race and others are starting from behind the start line. So, some kids come to school already knowing how to read and write, because of socioeconomic and other cultural issues that need to be considered.

I know there has been some work looking at controlling for those and what we would consider extraneous variables, so the single best predictor of performance on Standardized Achievement Test to this day is still SES, it’s above 40%. A significant part is teachers as well and how they teach to those students, but we still have to be able to control for those -- for such a huge amount of variance when we look at interpreting those results and tying implications to those results, implications such as school funding, such as bonus pay, etcetera.

Host: It also seems that -- I feel like Standardize Testing is also a very political issue. It seems often that it’s coming not from the school systems themselves but the government, the wider government, so is this really…

Louis Volante: Absolutely, when you look at the impetus for a lot of this educational reforms they’re not bottom-up it’s top-down and it’s driven by those with positions of power. I wouldn’t necessarily dismiss an educational reforms just because it’s one that’s top-down driven, what I would say is that it will never be successful if it’s not embraced by those that are directly affected in practice. What I mean by that are teachers.

There was just a poll that came out that was published by Educational Testing Services, ETS, which is your largest testing body in the US. There was a number of important findings from their survey, but one of the key findings was something like 77% of educators still had serious concerns with No Child Left Behind. No significant large scale reform can be successful if you don’t have teachers and administrators on board. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to wholeheartedly agree with every single aspect of a significant reform proposal, but they have to have some input and design of it and they have to be on board for the major aspects of it. The major aspects of No Child Left Behind are the testing that takes place from grade three to eight and AYP, Adequate Yearly Progress, and all those sorts of things.

I guess what I would like to see is a little bit more attention to broader notions of student learning and achievement, because I think what we’re focusing right now on is student performance, not necessarily student learning.

Host: Right

Louis Volante: What I mean by that is that a student’s test score doesn’t necessarily represent how much they’ve learned. Smith & Fay in the US have shown some research that if you teach a certain way, teaching to the test that is, for instance, the school can look half a year better than a comparable school that didn’t adopt those types of test practices. Now, what are we looking at here? Are we really looking at student learning or are we looking at student performance? Sometimes those two are one and the same, but sometimes they are not.

So, I don’t see a lot of methodological sophistication around looking at all these sorts of issues when it comes to large scale assessment, but I would definitely want to say one thing that I do support the use of large scale assessment as a way to promote school improvement. My main concern is with the way those test scores are being utilized right now and reported to the public, and that’s the thing that I fundamentally disagree with. For instance, rank ordering of schools based on Raw test scores is a no-no in my mind. It’s a no-no not only from an ethical point of view but even from a measurement point of view. When you factor in measurement error those Raw score differences essentially disappear for a lot of schools.

Host: Right, exactly.

Louis Volante: The best way I can explain this to you is if you put all of the basketball players on the San Antonio Spurs up against the wall, and you said, I want you to organize yourself from shortest to tallest. Then you basically take the shortest person and you say, your rank ordering is one and the tallest person is at a rank ordering of 99th percentile. 99th percentile, why? Because 99% of the people on his team are shorter than he is. Do they reflect the average height of the average person in North America? Absolutely not, but when you rank order people from lowest to highest in that manner you’re accentuating what could potentially be small differences between them. You see my point?

Host: Yeah, exactly, some of it’s statistically not significant at all.

Louis Volante: It always produces predictable winners and losers. I mean whenever you rank order you have someone from lowest to highest, there is always going to be predictable winners and losers. So, for instance, if there’s 20 schools in a district and your rank ordering is nine, you’re below average, and if your rank ordering is 19th you’re above average, but it’s possible if you take that same school and throw that school into another district we can reverse the trend. The school that was 19th is 10th and the one that’s 10th becomes 19th. So, always looking at ordinal rankings has a way of pitting schools against schools. If you do that then how are you supposed to promote collegiality, not only amongst schools, but within schools.

If I am teaching in a grade six classroom and another teacher is teaching in a grade six classroom, is there any benefit to me sharing resources with that teacher for competing for a bonus pay based on test scores? I mean how is that supposed to promote sharing. Now, I know there has been some experimenting around instead of individual teachers we’re going to give bonus pay based on teams of teachers, but I still think it fundamentally implies that in order to improve schools we have to use the same type of model that we use in the business world in terms of improving productivity. Schools and products are not one and the same and they don’t operate according to the same principles.

Host: Now, I know I’ve said a lot today but I would love to hear from you. If you have any comments, questions or concerns, please feel free to leave me a comment or email me at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com. If you want to help produce the next show you can go over to teachingforthefuture.pbwiki.com and there’s also a link at the home page at teachingforthefuture.com. I’d like to thank my guest Dr. Louis Volante as well as Aaron Smith and Whitney Hoffman for their help with the research for this podcast. Thanks a lot and please stay subscribed.

Total Duration: 26 Minutes

Thanks to Aaron Smith and Whitney Hoffman for their help with the research for this episode.

TftF 76: Teaching for the Future 1.9

2007-06-19T19:44:00.000-04:00

Mp3

News:
São Paulo: The City That Said No To Advertising
from Buisnessweek.com: I has been a year since the No Advertising initiative in São Paulo was signed into law and it seems to be working out well. The lack of ads has allowed residents to really appreciate the city in a way they were never able to do ever before. I wish Boston or New York would try something like this, imagine what we might be missing.

Superintendent’s Speech Stirs Talk of Plagiarism NYTimes.com: The now former Superintendent of Schools in Fort Lee, NJ was caught stealing her speech to the National Honors Society. Not only did she swipe her speech from the web, but she swiped it from About.com. To many of you this may be evidence of how easy it is for students to steal and plagiarize from the web, but all I can think about is how any high school student worth his or her salt would have at least changed some of the speech.

If nothing else I hope the students in the National Honors Society learned the importance of being honest and original in their work.

PFT #92 from Podcast for Teachers: I heard about the above story from the New York Times from the Podcast for Teachers, hosted and produced by Marc Gura and Kathy King. They were both flabbergasted by the fact that someone in the education could make such a mistake. However there was one thing that I found irritating. Dr.King was amazed that not only did the administrator take the content and present it as her own, but she was upset that the administrator ignored About.com's User Agreement. According to Dr.King the user agreement clearly stated that the user needs to ask permission to use content.

The user agreement does in fact state that "You agree not to modify, reproduce, retransmit, distribute, disseminate, sell, publish, broadcast or circulate any such material without the written permission of About.com or the appropriate affiliate."

And that's when my ears really perked up. I can't believe that any website could realistically expect for others to ask permission to quote form their publicly available material. I think it is wrong to reproduce whole articles, but content creators need to be open for other content creators to borrow and share ideas.

I do not plan on writing About.com for permission to quote their user agreement, but I did let Mark Gura and Kathy King know that I was using a clip from their show as a courtesy to them.

Upcoming:
Teaching for the Future 2.0 is on the way. Take a look at the wiki and try to get involved.

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 75: Wiki for the Future!

2007-06-02T17:30:00.000-04:00

NEWS:
Honk for peace' case tests limits on free speech from the San Francisco Chronicle: Deboarrah Mayer is a former elementary school teacher who was fired for expressing her views about the war in Iraq in the classroom. It turns out that teachers are not protected by the first amendment in the classroom, and this article also gives other examples of teachers who have been fired.

Trashed: Much left behind at colleges from Boston.com: College students are leaving more stuff behind at school than ever before as they graduate or move back home. I'm going to have to go to my local college and see what I can find.

iTunes U is a Glimpse into the Future of Higher Ed from the Financial Aid Podcast: Chris Penn pointed out the new iTunes U. A lot of great higher education content available free on iTunes.

BRAND NEW!
Check out the new wiki where you can participate and help create future episodes of Teaching for the Future. You can leave links to stories, leave your comments, and help produce the show.

If you want to help out or participate with Teaching for the Future you can leave a comment on the homepage or go over to our wiki at teachingforthefuture.pbwiki.com. If you want to get in touch, feel free to email at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, financial aid podcast, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 74: An Interview with Steve Woolf and Zadi Diaz from JETSET Show

2007-05-25T07:04:00.000-04:00

Today's episode is an interview I did with Zadi Diaz and Steve Woolf who are the creators and the producers of the JETSET Show. They talked to for my thesis research and I had a great time talking with them and I wanted to share this interview with you.

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, JETSET Show, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 73: The Role of Handheld Tech in Schools

2007-05-18T21:41:00.000-04:00

NEWS:
Lousy test question for fourth graders from BoingBoing: Mark from Boing Boing was helping his daughter prepare for a standardized test when he came across this question. If I had handed in this question in an assessment class I would have been in trouble. It's questions like this that make kids and teachers so stressed out about these tests.

"Sara wants to measure how much applesauce she made this fall. If she uses metric, which unit should she use?

A) gram
B) liter
C) kilogram
D) centimeter"

CNN To Release June Debates Under Creative Commons via Slashdot: I would think a public debate about important public issues done on public airwaves should be available to the public. MSNBC disagrees.

Law Firm Rescinds Offer to Ex-AutoAdmit Director from the WSJ: This is another cautionary tale of a student who's social networking came back to haunt them. (See Episode 72, 67) A 3L student from UPenn has lost his firm offer because of his involvement with the AutoAdmit Forum. If you are not familiar with AutoAdmit it is a controversial forum where law students can discuss classes and other students.

Teaching for the Future on BostonNow.com

EDITORIAL:
The Role of Handheld Tech in Schools:
There is a lot of change happening recently education technology in schools. As many one to one laptop programs are being scratched because schools are disappointed with the results. (NYTIMES /Slashdot). While at the same time schools are also banning iPods (Computer World) and cell phones (CBS News) are as schools are starting to think about how they want students to be using technology.

Though many schools are really starting to see a lot of hand held technology as a distraction some schools are going in completely other directions. One school, Georgia Gwinnett College, is building mobile phones right into campus life and using them for scheduling, safety alerts, course material, and even assessment. (The Chronicle of Higher Education requires a login for the full article)

OTHER LINKS:
The Answer is not always C from College Humor (Parts of sight NSFW)

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, Alive in Baghdad, Julien Smith, financial aid podcast, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 72: What not to do with your MySpace

2007-05-06T16:50:00.000-04:00

NEWS: In Memory of Chris Essex: One of my favorite podcasters and technology educators, Chris Essex, has passed away recently. If you have ever listened to Teach with Tech you know how insightful and helpful he was.

In lieu of flowers, an award scholarship will be established in his name at the IU School of Education. Please send donations to the IU School of Education Staff Council, c/o Patty Mitchell, IU School of Education, 201 Rose Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405.

91.2% of Class Time in Their Seats from Weblogg-ed: Will Richardson discusses an USA Today article that discusses a Science article that I can't get access to. The study published in science gives evidence that teachers are not engaging students and not teaching them problem solving and critical thinking skills.

The article sites a lack of movement and group work during class time, with 91.2% of student's time is spent in their own seat.

Sao Paulo goes advertising-free from BoingBoing: Brazil's capital city has banned outdoor advertising and billboards. City officials and advertisers were arguing about where certain kinds of advertising can go where. You can check out some of the images on Flickr. I have been a graffiti and street art enthusiast for a long time and I think this is the first time I've seen a municipality actually perform some culture jamming on their own. It would be intereresting to see how long this lasts and if they plan on replacing the billboards with something else.

Study: Educational software doesn't work from Joystiq: The U.S. Department of Education has released a study that finds that video games have "no significant impact on student performance." I found one of the comments by a user who called themselves "atsui" particularly interesting:

"When I was very young, I wasn't all that good at math, then I played this video game with aliens coming at your space ship all around you at fast speeds, and the only way to kill them was to solve the multiplication problem on the alien, then a beam would fire at it and kill it. Some moved faster than others and their actions were random, so the game forced me to be good at math, and boy did it work.. because of that game, multiplication became a lot easier for me.

With brain age, I've become very quick with certain tests.. and any form of similar tests at a school would be easier to do because of brain age..

I don't want to hear any studies on this type of crap.. from my own experience, and a lot of others based on what I've heard from reviews of brain age, and talking to people about these games that challenge the mind."

Schools say iPods becoming tool for cheaters from CNN.com:
Banning baseball caps during tests was obvious -- students were
writing the answers under the brim. Then, schools started banning cell
phones, realizing students could text message the answers to each
other. Now, schools across the country are targeting digital media
players as a potential cheating device.

RESOURCES:
NYTimes Resource Center and Learning Network

OTHER LINKS:

YouTube Obeys Fake Takedown Request From 15 Year Old from Mashable.com
Hip hop's Simmons: Restrict offensive words from CNN.com
Senators Discuss Preventing College Attacks from NYTimes.com
Schoolgirls bullied into stripping online from Reuters
Students attend school's first integrated prom from CNN.com
In U.S. Absence, States Take Lead in Student Loan Cases from NYTimes.com

EDITORIAL:
A MySpace Photo Costs a Student a Teaching Certificate from The Chronicle of Higher Education: This is something that we have been talking about for over a year and I could have written this story.

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 71: Tragedy in Virgina

2007-04-16T17:37:00.000-04:00

My thoughts and my condolences go out to everyone who was effected by the recent tragedy at Virgina Tech.

NOTES:
VA Tech Questions: from Boing Boing
Survivor Talks Describes Incident: from Wired
Sad Day at Virgina Tech, Facebook: from Netscape
Loren Coleman on the VTech Shooting

VTech Memorials on the Facebook.

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, Alive in Baghdad, Julien Smith, financial aid podcast, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 70: Recursivity of the Internet

2007-04-04T20:36:00.000-04:00

I am happy to announce that today marks the first anniversary of the Teaching for the Future Podcast. Today's episode I'm going to reflect on my year about podcasting about education and how a lot of the issues we talk about here are recursive and seem to keep popping up. Thanks to Chris Penn for the Intro.

NEWS:
I had death threats in high school by Chris Pirillo: Do unchecked bullies grow up to be unchecked bullies?

Dude's Cyber Girlfriend Actually a Dude from DailyGaming.net: I think this is a story as old as the internet, and illustrates how you can be anyone on the internet.

Does what happens on the Facebook, stay on the Facebook? by Christopher Sessums: This is an interesting video that talks about the real cost of the Facebook. The video goes further and hypothises that the companies that run the facebook are using the infromation as a mix of marketing data and for government intelligence. I think Sessums said it best in his post when he stated.

"It does seem to be a reasonable question to ask: Where does the information collected by social networking sites go? Who has access to it? What will it be used for?"

Gingrich urges an end to Bilingual Education from CNN.com: It does not surprise me that Gingrich does not support bilingual education. He feels that all children should be learning English in schools. Gingrich believes that it leaves students at a disadvantage and "allowing bilingualism to continue to grow is very dangerous." (from the article)

I think his statements make it obvious that he is not really familiar with bilingual programs. Students in bilingual programs learn Spanish and English side by side so that their language skills will not prevent them from learning class material. Using both languages side by side has also shown to allow students to learn to speak English faster. I think it is a bad idea to prevent students from getting the help they need because Gingrich seems to want to penalize students for speaking the wrong language.

RESOURCES:
Aaron "the Art Guy" Smith is an art teacher who does a really great podcast, called the Academic Aesthetic, that I've been devouring since I discovered it for myself. Aaron also as a great site filled with educational and media resources for teachers at freeresources.wikispaces.com.

EDITORIAL:

Recursivity of the Internet - What I've learned during my first year of podcasting.

Bullying

How do we prevent bullying?
What role do schools play?
What role do schools play with cyber bullying?
Personal Cyber Ethics

Dangers on the Web

Strangers
Vigilance

Responsible Social Networking

Keeping some information personal.
Treating public space like public space.
Treating the web like "your front lawn"

Teaching and Reteaching safe Internet Use.

TftF 69: Video News Releases, an Interview with Diane Farsetta

2007-03-30T21:13:00.001-04:00

Click to Play

Today's episode is an interview that I did with Diane Farsetta who is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy. She sat down to talk to me about Video News Releases and her work with PRWatch.org. She explains the impact of these fake news reports on both local media and media ethics.

UPCOMING:
Teaching for the Future's Podast-iversary is coming up on April 4th. It's been a great year so far, but on April 4th we'll talk more about what is in store for year two.

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 68: What Can Dave Do For You?

2007-03-26T13:45:00.000-04:00

NEWS:
Schools test Edugaming in Classroom from Joystiq: This is not a new issue and we have been talking about the pedagogy of video games. I'm just glad to see the video game industry is taking notice of this gap in the market. I'd love to see some of the innovation in gaming be applied to educational games.

On Hit Lists, Anger Finds an Outlet from the NYTimes.com: Though school violence is down, student created hit lists are on the rise. Though some may consider these harmless many schools are treating these like threats.

Stitched into Memory from the Boston Globe: This is a great art project being done at a local Massachusetts school. Students are stitching small figures to signify each of the fallen American soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not only is this a creative way for students to make connections and honor soldiers who were lost in the war.

TOOLS/RESOURCES:
The Boring Store from Laughing Squid: This strange store is a front for a 826 National Writing Center which were founded by author Dave Eggers. These hidden gems are spread all over.

Brooklyn - Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.
Seatle - Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co.
San Fransicso - The Pirate Store
Chicago - The Boring Store

USB Drive helps find lost child from Daily Cup of Tech: This is an interesting story about how parents who used a program designed to retrieve lost USB drives to find their three year old son. Though this could have also been done with a dog tag, but I think this is an interesting application of a neat trick.

EDITORIAL:
I was inspired by short film that I found through a blog post at think:lab called "You Were Supposed To Sing and Dance...". The short cartoon created by the team that puts out South Park led by Matt Stone and Trey Parker uses audio from Alan Watts.

Notes:

Cartoons are "easy to swallow" media.
New Media's Effect on our Culture.

New Media allows kids to be cultural producers.

The whole point of Teaching for the Future

My goals

Research
Collaboration
Filling in Gaps

What I've learned

My upcoming "Podcast-iversary"

Upcoming Changes to the Show
What can I do for you?
More listener participation

Voice Mails
Email
Comments
Link Backs

UPCOMING:
I sat down to talk with Diane Farsetta is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Media & Democracy and PRWatch.org. She explains the current penetration and the potential dangers of Video News Releases.

OTHER LINKS:

Puffle Kerfuffle from Wired: An interesting article about discipline in a virtual world.
Alan Watts Podcast
Aaron "the Art Guy" Smith

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.

TAGS: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, Video News Release, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 67: What is Education?

2007-03-20T13:27:00.000-04:00

Welcome Soft Reset Listeners, I hope you strike podcast gold with Teaching for the Future

News:
Conservapedia is like Wikipedia, but without all of the Liberals from Wired News: The Conservapedia is a new wiki-based encyclopedia that was created to get away from a perceived liberal bias in the Wikipedia. This is an interesting article about the new site and the reaction from the online media.

YouTube for Contract Negotiations from Weblogg-ed: This is an interesting video of a group of teachers from Nashua, NH commenting on recent budget changes and contract negotiations. I think this is just more evidence of the import role new media is going to have on our person and public lives for years to come.

Sky Mall Liberation (Not Safe For Work) from Ni9e.com: Ni9e.com decided to do a visual inventory of the Sky Mall catalog. While on a flight they had decided to dissect the catalog. They removed and collected the faces of the models and then arranged them in different ways outside of the context of the catalog. I was not surprised when they separated the photos by white and non-white.

I think I'm going to steal this idea and use it in a lesson plan. I know we talk about racism and multicultural education, but this is a great way to generate a really important discussion in your class.

Girls Suspended over 'Vagina Monologues' from CTV.ca: From the article:

"A public high school has suspended three students who disobeyed officials by saying the word 'vagina' during a reading from a well-known feminist play."

I am not sure what to make of this article. Part of me is annoyed that three girls were suspended for using the proper medical term. Another part of me is annoyed that if the students were allowed to perform a play about what it is to have a vagina, without saying vagina. Related: The Hoohah Monologues via boingboing

Don't Choose Facebook Over Your Job from TechCrunch: Michael Arrington tells the story of a man who has a facebook problem. "Charlie" is a trader at Goldman Sachs who was warned by his company about his time on the facebook at work. From "Charlie's" facebook page:

“It’s a measure of how warped I’ve become that, not only am I surprisingly proud of this, but in addition, the first thing I did was to post it here, and that losing my job worries me far less than losing facebook ever could.”

The Real Cost of Facebook from Storygeek.com: Mark Bell discusses the real cost of Facebook. I think this is an interesting blog post that makes a clear argument for being careful online.

Dan Rather Interviewed by Andy Carvin: Andy is an interesting guy that I met at Beyond Broadcast 2007 and who happens to be the DC Metro correspondent for Rocketboom. This is a great video that he did of an interview with Dan Rather.

Bum Rush The Charts: On March 22nd you can help promote independent music and education at the same time. More information in the podcast and at BumRushtheCharts.com.

Editorial: What is Education?
For centuries artists and art historians have always asked the question, "What is art?" As the years go on it seems that this question is getting increasingly harder to answer. On a recent episode of ABC Radio National's Philosophers Zone host Alan Saunders discusses what art is with Arthur C. Danto, Emeritus Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. They spent a lot of time explaining how this question has become harder to answer since Marcel Duchamp's The Fountain. Danto makes an interesting point how we never know if we are in the presence of art.

"I was invited to give a talk for some of our history students, and I walked past a classroom that was being redone, and I thought to myself, How do I know that that's not just an installation? How do I know that's not a work of art that happens to consist of ladders and paint buckets and so forth?"

Education is changing in the same way. Teaching and learning is no longer confined to the classroom as there are more opportunities to gain enlightenment. When we watch TV, read the paper, or listen to a podcast we are learning without realizing it. These instances are rich learning experiences that need to be incorporated into our schools. How can we capture these powerful experiences to be able to educate in a way that is both effective and profound?

I'm beginning to realize that that the answer is proper assessment. The way we assess student learning is a direct reflection on our values as educators. To check for understanding and to create a rich learning experience we need to have rich assessment. We live in a world where students get information in many different ways, so we need to check up on them in different ways. Writing in art, singing in health, and crocheting in math.

I'm being overly dramatic, but I think we need to be assessing students more often and in ways that allow them to make connections with what they are learning. What's important is that we are giving them chances to check in with us. How we assess makes a clear statement to students what we value as teachers. What does your assessment say about you?

Upcoming:
How can you help with Teaching for the Future? Well that's easy. You could leave a review in iTunes or link to us on your blog or podcast page.
Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 66: The Medium is the Message

2007-03-12T11:06:00.000-04:00

News:
The End is NEAR from TechLearning.com: As an artist the medium is always part of the message, but what if your medium is a Pringle? David Jakes talks about all the new ways we are getting information. He talks about a bunch of interesting online and off-line ways of spreading a message. This could be an interesting article to work into a lesson about different kinds of literacy. It would be interesting to ask your students how the message changes when it is a YouTube video, on a potato chip, or etched into a plant.

Big Brother State by David Scharf and Stephen Taylor: I cannot remember where I originally found this video, but I think we need to share it. It deals with interesting ideas of surveillance. I'm not sure where I fall on this issue, because as a podcaster I live a lot of my life in public, on the web. I'd love to get your comments on this. Related: The Real Cost of Facebook
----

----

New Media Super Heroes by Dave LaMorte: This is not really news that I'm working on my graduate thesis. My work is going to be arts based, which means my paper needs to have a body of artwork to go with it. I put up my first bit of artwork recently in the form of a low-tech web comic. You can follow my thesis work at my personal site at DaveLaMorte.com.

School Without Google? from TechLearning.com: This is an interesting look about how blocking web tools can put teachers and students at a real disadvantage. Wesley Fryer talks about how blocking things like Google is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The comments on this post are also pretty interesting. You should also check out Wesley's podcast on his homepage.

Recently access to YouTube was shut off at Lesley University. Which is another case of not realizing the learning potential of a lot of these new media sites. Related: Turkey Lifts YouTube Ban, Don't Choose Facebook Over Your Job

Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use: This is an interesting document that I learned about at Beyond Broadcast 2007. This is a great document that explains the rules of fair use as they stand. Though it is written with filmmakers in mind, this is a valuable resource for content creators who may want to use content from other artists.

Other Links:

Thanks:
Thanks to HappyKatie for the image of the TV and to Dan Flannery for all the great music.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF 65: Always Save!

2007-03-06T21:57:00.001-05:00

Click to Play

News:

Whitney Hoffman on Podcast411: I'm really excited to see Whitney Hoffman did an interview with Rob from Podcast 411. Whitney hosts and produces the LD Podcast. The LD Podcast deals with issues of kids and adults with learning disabilities and special needs. I've talked about her show and it is one of the best shows that deals with issues of accessibility and inclusion. Whitney is a rockstar when it comes to accessibility issues.

Steve Jobs, Proud to Be Nonunion from Wired: There has been a lot of talk about Steve Jobs' comments from early last month about teacher unions. I think Leander Kahney makes a lot of sense when he says "Steve Jobs makes a lot of sense when he's talking about music and copyright protection, but when the topic is schools, he seems to be on a different planet."

Â
Hey Kids, this is Advertising: This is not quite news, but I found on a McDonald's happy meal website. It reads, "Hey Kids, this is Advertising." It is a similar typeface that is used in magazines to let the reader know that what they are reading is not the message of the publishers. I am happy and annoyed at the same time about this little innocuous caption. It's funny in the obviousness of the message, although it is the least "eye catching" thing on the entire page.

My 2 Cents: When I talk about new media with other people we often spend a lot of time focusing on the tools; Cameras, recorders, microphones. Just think about the overwhelming amount of tech podcasts and websites. Some of the most popular websites on the web are technology sites, and a lot of those are "gadget" sites. These podcasts are popular because new media is all about communication and these sites talk about tools to create or consume information. The shoptalk is not just about hardware and software, and there is also a lot of energy devoted to marketing ideas.

I don't want you to get the impression that these are not important issues, because these conversations are answering an important "how?" and "what?" questions. How do I make a podcast? What are other people doing their shows about? How do I make my show more compelling? How do I allow my community to better reach me?

I think we need to start asking "why?" a little bit more. Now that we have established the basics of communication I think we need to focus on creating more engaging messages. I'm going to start with myself and really begin to develop a message that will benefit teachers who are trying to teach media literacy and technology. I'm going to start looking more at what the problems are that exist for teachers and students., and how what I know can either solve or chip away some of them. Also, I am going to do my best to point out the issues that will affect young people and how we can teach them to take control of the media and ask more substantive questions.

Let me know what you think by leaving me a comment or a voice message on the podcast page.

Follow Up: Henry Jenkins wrote on his blog about his presentation at Beyond Broadcast 2007. Not only is he dealing with real substantive issues in the media, but a lot of his ideas are addressing a lot of the same issues teachers are dealing with.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy, beyondbroadcast2007

Beyond Broadcast 2007 Opening Panel: Participatory Culture

2007-02-28T00:30:00.000-05:00

moderator: Jesse Walker, Managing Editor, Reason Magazine
Arin Crumley, Four Eyed Monsters
Kenny Miller, Executive VP and Creative Director, MTV Global Digital Media Team
Elizabeth Osder, Senior Director, Product Development, Yahoo! Media Group

This video was from the first
panel of the Beyond Broadcast
2007 Conference at MIT.

This is a clip from the first panel discussion from Beyond Broadcast 2007. The panel was moderated by Jesse Walker and included Elizabeth Osder, Kenny Miller, and the disembodied head of Arin Crumley.

They discussed the nature of participatory culture, how audiences are becoming increasingly involved and more influential on the media. Each of the panelists discussed the costs and benefits of a fully engaged audience.

Link to mov file.

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy, beyondbroadcast2007

TftF 64: The Politics of Education

2007-02-26T13:10:00.000-05:00

Today's episode was originally going to be my way of prepping myself for Beyond Broadcast 2007. I could not get this show out before my conference, but a lot of my ideas still remain the same. The conference was a way for academics and the media to get together and discuss the changing nature of communication and the role of new media. A lot of the conference dealt with ideas of Participatory Culture and participatory democracy. How can we use new media and social networking as a tool for political activism and social change. I think these issues are really important and I have spent a lot of time talking about them on Teaching for the Future. But how do we harness our new participatory culture and turn that into pedagogy? Well that's what I want to talk about today.

This past week Patty Bode, from the MFA, came to run a workshop in one of my classes. Patty teaches at the MFA's art education department and she had been a classroom teacher for several years. Her presentation was about using important topics and events as a way of getting students to become more involved in the art curriculum. Patty talked about a project she did with a group of 7th graders about Hurricane Katrina. She talked about her motivations and how students used their artwork to explore their ideas. Students were able to discuss issues surrounding Katrina and as a way for raising awareness and advocating for victims of the devastation.

A lot of the student work centered around the images that were being used in the media. The students would critique photographs that they collected and ask important questions. A lot of the questions looked at who was being depicted and who was not, which related to who was effected most by the hurricane. They began to deal with issues of race and class in their work.

Patty's presentation showed how students can connect to curriculum, but really illustrated how education can be a tool for political activism and social change. Not only was she generating interest in current events in her classroom, she was empowering students to think critically and help others in need.

All of this got me thinking and reflecting on what I've been doing here on the Podcast. I would not categorize Teaching for the Future as a political podcast at first glance, but I think it is fair to say that all education is political. How we structure our schools and our curricula are decisive political acts that can be made to include or exclude certain individuals. The teachers we hire and the books that we choose all serve to frame the debate and influence. Even the way we teach can effect who will struggle to meet state standards and who is able to succeed. (If you want evidence of this you should listen to the LD Podcast)

Some of these ideas are also illustrated in two very interesting articles written by Patty Bode at RethinkingSchools.org: A Letter from Kaeli and The Puerto Rican Vejigante. These articles are really good illustrations of what you leave out is as important as what you leave in.

A Letter from Kaeli deals with how people of color and minorities are often excluded from books. Though this may seem innocent enough, but this can be damaging to a child's education. Under representing minorities implies that they are not important or not worth writing about.

The Puerto Rican Vejigante is an article that deals with issues of multicultural education and how schools will exoticise the other. Exoticising a culture means examining that culture only on it's obvious or basic features, without any real depth. This also deals with issues of equity that I think I should devote a who podcast episode.

Final Thought:
This brings me right back to the whole point of new media. New media is about giving anyone a voice. The goal is to bring equity back to public discourse so that we can better understand each other. If you were tuning in to Beyond Broadcast or PodCamp Toronto, don't forget that the whole point of these events is to get people to have a voice and to participate in the conversation.

Upcoming:
I'm going to talk a little bit about Steve Job's comments about education.

I know that among podcasters there is always a lot of shoptalk. I'm beginning to wonder if we're too geeky for our own good. On an upcoming episode I want to ask... Are we focusing too much on how to communicate to be able to communicate effectively?

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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy, beyondbroadcast2007

Silent Post: Beyond Broadcast 2007

2007-02-24T08:15:00.000-05:00

I made surprisingly good time on my way to the Beyond Broadcast 2007 conference. I'm not sure about how much podcasting I will be doing from MIT, but I hope to share some interesting conversations with you. If I have any energy left when I get home, I will record a podcast that I tried to record last night.

You should check out the overview page to have a better idea bout what will be going on here today.

Here is a photo of my program and a piece of chalk they gave me. I was just told to "go nuts."

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, beyondbroadcast2007, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

TftF Ep. 63: Portabliblity Education

2007-02-21T22:59:00.000-05:00

News:

Does Public Relations Equal Propaganda?

from Ed Lee:

Ed blogs over at Blogging Me Blogging You, where he talks about social media and marketing. He points out an interesting YouTube video from a group called PR Watch. It's interesting and really well done and asks a lot of interesting questions.

Americans Devoting More Time to Media from VOA News: from the article:

"This year, the average American will spend 3,518 hours (nearly five months) watching TV, surfing the Internet, listening to the radio and reading. That's a prediction from The Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2007. This is the 126th edition of the Statistical Abstract, which is published annually by the U.S. Census Bureau."

Americans Devoting more time consuming media
More content
More delivery systems.
iPods, Podcasts, PVRs allow people to have more control.

Education As Portable As A Pop Song from The Unofficial Mac Blog: This post looks at how portable media is changing how we look at distance learning. As media players become cheaper, this will become more prevalent.

Follow Up:
Chris Penn from the financial aid podcast sent me this link. Thanks Chris!!!
http://www.iveyfiles.com/my_weblog/2007/02/moron_tries_to_.html

Upcoming:
I'm going to be going to the Beyond Broadcast Conference at MIT this weekend. I'm going to try to get some interesting audio and video that I will share with you on the podcast. I hope to see Steve Garfield and meet Henry Jenkins.

Other Links:

Ads Made By You, In a Click from the NYTimes
Iraqi-American Rapper Timz on YouTube
Armed Forces Welcome Suicidal Teens? from Neatorama
Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping
Intellagirl's take on why Teachers Need to Understand Computers Or Risk Prison
Bum Rush the Charts

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, financial aid podcast, media literacy, new media literacy, beyondbroadcast

TftF Ep. 62: Media Literacy of the Saddam Execution

2007-02-17T18:29:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: This podcast reflects my impressions and my opinions based on my own research. If you disagree I urge you to leave a comment and tell me what I missed. I don't want to edit anything out, but it's my name all over this website and anything offensive is subject to removal. Anything offensive can be emailed to me at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com.

We are all very aware that the media is an important part of our everyday lives. In our face or in our ears the media is everywhere. As the media becomes more invasive, it becomes a large part of how we interpret our world. Even for those of us whole pride themselves to think for themselves, are influence by the media constantly. The media is a powerful not only for its reach, but for how it sets the agenda for information and frames the discussion. The key to being a free and critical thinker is not tuning out the media, it's tuning in. We need to take the message head on and look at it carefully and critically.

There is a great deal of debate surrounding the Iraq War. Most recently this debate has dealt with the recent video of the execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. What I want to do is take a step away from the debate over the execution, and look more closely at the video. There are many people talking about the brutality of the video, and the copycat effect that has claimed the life of dozens. We could try to ignore the video because of it's brutal depiction, but I think we are responsible to look at this issue carefully.

In an effort to be fair to all sides of this issue I want to take an analytical approach. I'm going to be looking at the video using the Five Key Questions that were developed by the Center for Media Literacy. The questions were developed as an easy way to break down media messages based on Five Key Concepts. These concepts are important assumptions that can be made about any message.

Five Core Concepts

1. All media messages are ‘constructed.’
Media messages are not plucked from the ether. They are ideas and concepts that come from people who formulate or construct them. Even a message that contains nothing but facts was put together by someone before you received it.

2. Media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules.
Like any language the media has it's own vocabulary and syntax. This language allows the media to communicate ideas. Just as with English, the language of the media can carry multiple layers of meaning that is not always evident at first listen. The more we pay attention, the better we can understand the media and all of the layers of meaning.

3. Different people experience the same media message differently.
The same message can be understood in dozens of ways because everyone has a different perspective. Their perspective can create a completely separate context for these messages. Context is an important part of how people interpret the media. Any message is always interpreted twice, by the author and by the audience. A person's life experience, background, and ideals are in important part of context.

4. Media have embedded values and points of view.
Media messages are like any idea and have to be formulated by people. These ideas are created by people and are a product of their biases and experience. This is not to say that all messages from the media are deliberately misleading, but many are slanted by the people who create or interpret them. Even the most impartial observation will be peppered with a person's experience and personal knowledge.

5. Most media messages are organized to gain profit and/or power.
There are laws, ethical guidelines, and policies in place that weigh in on how a news outlet reports. However, the end of the day the media is a business like any other business and need to produce a profit to survive. The media is in the business of delivering information and a lot of this information is paid for. Even if a media entity does not profit directly from their message, information can be used to gain and leverage power.
Five Key Questions
1. Who created this message?
There is little information on who the person was who took this video. What we do know is that they were present at the execution and were probably some sort of government official or state employee. There does not seem to be an explicit point of view, but I think there are a few possibilities of which group this person may be from.

Depending on who this person is can greatly effect the intended meaning of the video. Some people speculate that this was taken by a Shiite who wanted to document Saddam's execution for posterity or as evidence.

Because Saddam was a Sunni himself, this could make sense. Groups in Iraq will often tap executions and attacks for propaganda. This video maybe a way to sent a message or a warning to their enemy groups. There is still a possibility that the person behind the camera is a Sunni. If that is the case this video might be used to give Saddam a final platform. The video includes Saddam's last words and a person who was more hostile to Saddam may have edited this out. This may have also been taken to memorialize the former Iraqi dictator. Just as suicide bombers will record videos of themselves before dying, this may be a way to create a similar video on Sadam's behalf. This is probably an effort to cast Hussein as a martyr.

2. What creative techniques are used to attract my attention?

There does not seem like a lot of work production wise was done to this video. Despite that there are many elements that were used to commmunicate a message. The quality of the video is grainy, probably due to the lack of light and the low quality of the camera. (More in the Podcast)

3. How might different people understand this message differently than me?
This question is posed to push people to look for bias in the media. It asks you to step out from your point of view and try to see how this message would effect someone of a different race, ethnicity, nationality, or perspective than your own. (More in the Podcast)

4. What values, lifestyles and points of view are represented in, or omitted from, this message?
This question is also used to searching for bias in the media. This question is posed to allow the audience to try to to figure out what the message is trying to sell them. In main stream American media this could be products, lifestyles, or political perspectives. (More in the Podcast)

5. Why is this message being sent?
Well I think this may be the 64 million dollar question. With out know who sent this video it is really hard to understand their motives.

I hoped this may have helped you to better understand how to breakdown the media piece by piece. More information can be found at the Center for Media Literacy's website. There you can find a treasure trove of information and ideas on teaching and learning more about Media Literacy.

"If you have an emotional reaction, you need to question the information."
-David Warlick (Connect Learning Episode 79)

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy, warlick

TftF Ep. 61: Cheating 2.0

2007-02-12T14:17:00.000-05:00

We've had an interesting week or so and there are some things that I have not had a chance to mention on the podcast.

To kick off Black History Month we were all able to see the first Black football coach to win a Super Bowl. Though it is strange that we've only devoted a month to celebrate the history of African Americans, I think the best way to celebrate is to break as much ground as possible. I'd also want to mention the first female president of Harvard was chosen this week as well.

School Shortcut: This website is a place for UK students to share papers and purchase material for their A-Levels and their MCSEs. These are similar to the SATs in the US, as they are one of the factors used in determining where students go to University. This is not the first social network for plagiarism and I'm sure it won't be the last. What makes this site so interesting is the level of social networking involved. This site has a point system which will be familiar to the XBox users in the audience. You can earn points by writing answers for someone else and you can trade in your points for your own course work. This turns the act of cheating into a kind of game, even though it seems that it would be less work to write your paper than earn all those points.

But these are the websites that we all fear. This is real plagiarism with the intent to deceive, and pass off the work as your own. Though I would argue that the students who use these sites are students who need to be better motivated, and probably need to take some time off from their WOW campaign. Maybe the stress of constant testing is becoming too much for some students.

Though I do not have any answers right now, I feel we need to assess how we assess our students....
(I'm tired of typing so you'll have to listen to the podcast to find out more. -Dave)

News:
New Spending for No Child Left Behind from The Washington Post: There are good parts and bad part of the NCLB legislation. This article talks about changes to funding, and funding is one of the worst parts. From the article:

"Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said cuts in inefficient programs are necessary to achieve a balanced budget. Officials also said that the plan, if approved, would mean that funding for No Child Left Behind has risen 41 percent since the law was enacted five years ago."

Which means cuts in technology education, cuts in gifted and talented programs, and cuts to special education. Instead the Bush administration will be devoting $300,ooo for school vouchers. I'm not sure if giving money to private schools is really going to bring change to our public schools.

The Pursuit of Knowledge from the Wooster Collective: Artist Darius Jones is know for his subtle, but powerful street art. This post talks about a art project that Darius did with students at School 52 in New York City. This is a real departure from the artwork we think of when we think to our own middle school art projects. I just wish there was more contemporary artwork in schools. The project was sponsored by Creative Arts Workshops for Kids (C.A.W.) and The School Based Health Clinic.

Follow Up:
More Saddam Copycats: Turkey & Yemen from The Copycat Effect: Loren Coleman follows up on the copycat suicides that have followed the Saddam execution. Coleman thinks that many of the incidents are not being linked to the video, but that there are many copycats incidents are still coming up. You can also find Loren Coleman at Cryptomundo.com

Upcoming: I have a busy week coming up, but I'm hoping to reschedule my interview with Frank W. Baker and record a podcast that looks at the Saddam hanging video through a media literacy perspective.

Thanks to those of you who have been leaving positive review for me in the iTunes Music Store. And thanks to Christopher Penn for answering my Google Bombing question on the latest episode of the Financial Aid Podcast.

If you want to help out or participate with Teaching for the Future Podcast 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.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, financial aid podcast, media literacy, visual literacy

Silent Post: #7 with a Bullet

2007-02-09T19:29:00.000-05:00

My interview with Frank W. Baker did not go as planned because we decided to reschedule the interview to be an hour or so later than we originally planned. This did not cause a problem until about thirty minutes before we were going to talk, I managed to lock myself out of my apartment.

Despite this semi-disaster it turns out that Teaching for the Future is on the currently ranked #7 in Educational Technology in the iTunes Music Store. They have a very blurry picture of the album art I created for the podcast at the bottom of the Ed/Tech podcast page. I took some screen shots so that I had some proof for later on.

I'd like to thank everyone who helped me get to this point and who have continued to support the show. I would especially like to thank you the listener for all your comments, links, and support.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, itunes

TftF Ep. 60: Alive in Baghdad

2007-02-07T14:35:00.000-05:00

This episode is an interview I did with Brian Connelly of Alive in Baghdad. We talked about the impact of the Saddam execution video, iraqslogger.com, and what's in store for the future for Alive in Baghdad and Small World News.

Upcoming:
I'll be talking with media literacy educator and author Frank W. Baker. Frank runs the Media Literacy Clearing House, which is one of the best online media literacy resources for K-12 educators.

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

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, Alive in Baghdad, media literacy, visual literacy

Silent Post: Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

2007-02-06T20:01:00.000-05:00

This YouTube video was create by Michael Wesch and has become a favorite of education bloggers and new media people alike. This video is a great explanation for why the internet is so engaging and so versatile for exchanging information. I hope you have already seen this, but if you had not I did not want you to miss out. Michael Wesch is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University.

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

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy

Ep. 59: New Media Literacy

2007-02-02T13:38:00.000-05:00

What is Media Literacy?
Media literacy is the process of thinking critically about the media and looking for clues to putting the information into a wider context. This means giving students the tools they need to spot ambiguity and misleading information to allow them to better understand their world. The goal is to allow students to be more aware of the messages they are given so that they can produce their own content.

Media literacy is a skill that we need to develop in young people. As they become more media savvy they can become more information savvy and can make better decisions. These skills will also allow students to become better communicators (like Dylan).

What is Old Media?
When I refer to the old media, I'm referring to the mass media organizations that make up the major media outlets. The mass media industry is in the business of delivering information. These companies are the major cable news channels, radio stations, and TV networks.

These companies influence the way we see the world. This can be very dangerous and can influence how we understand what is going on. This is because these organizations have become our eyes and our ears in the wider world. This allows these organizations to edit what we see and frame the debate.

What is New Media?
The fundamental difference between new media and old media is how the information is exchanged. In his book We the Media, Dan Gilmor explains that the old media pushed information and advertising out to the consumer where new media everyone involved is exchanging information.

New media's exchange of information allows everyone to become part of the conversation. This allows individuals with separate viewpoints to expose and be exposed to new ideas. Blogs, podcasts, video podcasts, and other social networking services lower the barrier of entry and allow anyone to join the wider conversation.

What is New Media Literacy?
New Media Literacy is applying the skills and techniques of media literacy to new media sources. We need to go beyond the tools and find ways to use these new forms of communication to expand the conversation. We also need to challenge our practices. (What are Blogs Used for in the Classroom?)

Why is this so important?
As the same few media companies expand their coverage they are slowly producing a mono-culture. By becoming involved in the media we can add more voices and more points of view and make the media more nuanced.

But in the words of Stan Lee "with great power comes great responsibility."

Upcoming:
I'll be putting out the audio of the interview I did with Brian Connelly who runs the Alive in Baghdad video podcast.

Don't forget to Digg me on Digg.com's new Podcast section! It is a great way to get the word out about the show.

Thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music, Skareski for the great photo, as well as C.C. Chapman, Chris Brogan, Brian Connelly and Chris Penn for all of the inspiration.

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 (at) gmail (dot) com or send me an audio message through Odeo.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, Alive in Baghdad, Julien Smith, financial aid podcast, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

Ep. 58: Lesley Technology Institute Part 2

2007-01-31T08:55:00.000-05:00

Part 2 of 2. I was one of the student panelists at Lesley University's Technology Institute. We discussed social networking and it's role in the lives of students. The beginning explanation is being done by Rebecca Petersen who is the head of the Center of Academic Technology at Lesley University.

Don't forget to Digg me on Digg.com's new Podcast section! It is a great way to get the word out about the show.

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, make me your friend on MySpace, or send me an audio message through Odeo

Tags:
Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, social networking, myspace, facebook

Ep. 57: Lesley Technology Institute Part 1

2007-01-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

I was one of the student panelists at Lesley University's Technology Institute. We discussed social networking and it's role in the lives of students. The beginning explanation is being done by Rebecca Petersen who is the head of the Center of Academic Technology at Lesley University. This is first part of two podcasts of this event.

Don't forget to Digg me on Digg.com's new Podcast section! It is a great way to get the word out about the show.

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, make me your friend on MySpace, or send me an audio message through Odeo

Tags:
Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, social networking, myspace, facebook

Silent Post: Lesley Lesson Index

2007-01-27T14:11:00.000-05:00

I've been talking to one of my Professors at Lesley University's Creative Arts and Learning Department about extending the Lesley University education community online. We have been kicking around the idea of creating a space where teachers can share and better develop lesson plans. One idea was creating a wiki where lesson plans could be uploaded and worked on by the community. This to me seemed a little chaotic, having ten or more people editing the same document for 10 different classrooms.

I've taken the first step and I have created a Del.icio.us bookmark page and a blogger blog. This will allow anyone who want to contribute to tag lessons online or on their own sites through del.icio.us. The blog will created to allow teachers who do not want to host their own lesson plans can have them posted up by me. Basically teachers could email me their lessons and any lessons from the site they have altered and I would post them up. The blog will be searchable and act as an archive.

I'd love to get your ideas about this. What do you think I'm missing? Do you feel like this could be done in a more simple way? Do you want to help me with this and be more hands on?

You can find the new Blog here: http://lessonindex.blogspot.com/
You can find the bookmarks here: http://del.icio.us/teachingforthefuture/lesleylessonindex
Technorati Tag: Lesley Lesson Index

This is a project that I want to leave open to everyone who's interested. It will be a project that came out of the Lesley community and it is not exclusive to that community.

Upcoming:
In the next few weeks look out for an interview with Brian Connelly from Alive In Baghdad. I will also put out the panel discussion I was in at the Lesley University Technology Institute in two parts.

Don't forget to Digg me on Digg.com's new Podcast section! It is a great way to get the word out about the show.

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

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, Lesley Lesson Index

Ep. 56: State of the Union and Guns in Schools

2007-01-25T22:51:00.000-05:00

News:
The Daily Show - Guns in School: I found this wonderful clip on YouTube and I wanted to share it with you. We talked about messures and legislation being developed to allow teachers to carry guns in schools during Episode 48. This clip deals with some of what we were talking about and brings up a new "innovation" that uses textbooks as sheilds. David Truss left an interesting comment on Episode 48 that I do not think the Daily Show chose not to focus on.

"An angry kid that brings a weapon to school has probably had issues with police or authoritative family members already, why should teachers try to take the same 'broken' approach with these kids?"

You can find David at his elgg blog by clicking the link here.

Visual Literacy Periodic Table via the Financial Aid Podcast: Chris Penn has a nack for creating and finding neat things on the web. In Episode 452 Chris put a link to the Visual Literacy Periodic Table. This is a neat website that has a large gathering of techniques of displaying and organizing information. This is a good tool for those of you who are trying to explain concepts to the visual and mathematical learners in your classroom. This could also be a good reference for students who need to make presentations or want to better organize their ideas. I'd like to know what you think of this site, leave me a comment or email me and let me know what you think. Or better yet if you use this in a lesson or with a project, let me know how it turned out.

State of the Union Smackdown from Pluggd: Pluggd has made the state of the union available on their site. This isn't so interesting, until you see how they have allowed you to search through both the state of the union and the response. Using a simple text search bar you can search for any topic in the speeches. This is a great way to look at both sides side by side and issue by issue. This could be a real educational tool that could allow you and your students to find portions and discuss them.

Listen to Your Kids Gets Going: Julien Smith's new project, Listen to your Kids is starting to get some recognition and is having a good response. As of this episode, there have already been two "kids" who have left messages. You can listen to my interview with Julien about this project here.

Children's Songs from Afghanistan: One of my professors at Lesley University, Louise Pascale, has created an album and song book of Afghan children's music.

"After decades of political upheaval in Afghanistan, this moving collection of
16 children's folk songs is being returned to a new generation of Afghan children to be sung and passed down for generations to come. Originally collected by Peace Corp volunteer, Louise Pascale, and published by Kabul Press in 1968, the songs have all but disappeared from the culture. They have now been recorded by well-known and respected Afghan musician, Vaheed Kaacemy, and a group of Afghan children. A new, colorful version of the songbook includes lyrics in Farsi, Pushto, Uzbeki and Hazara, musical notation and a 60 minute CD. With support from the National Geographic Society, Ayenda: Afghan Children Initiative, and many generous individuals, 3,000 copies are being distributed for free to children at 100 schools across Afghanistan. Additional printings are planned to return this cultural heritage to thousands more children in Afghanistan and in Afghan communities around the world."

Upcoming:
In the next few weeks look out for an interview with Brian Connelly from Alive In Baghdad. I will also put out the panel discussion I was in at the Lesley University Technology Institute in two parts.

Don't forget to Digg me on Digg.com's new Podcast section! It is a great way to get the word out about the show.

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

Tags:

Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, Alive in Baghdad, Julien Smith,
financial aid podcast, media literacy, visual literacy

Ep. 55: Email is for Old People

2007-01-21T00:03:00.000-05:00

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.

Parents get a quick answer to their questions.
Kids are more apt to respond to text messages when they are with their friends.
You, or they, don't have to worry about tone of voice.
Texting allows you to enter your child's world.
Text messaging allows parents to compose and edit a message before pressing send.
Texting vs. calling gives kids more space but allows parents to keep in touch as often as necessary.
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

Tags:
Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching

Silent Post: If My Life Was a Movie, What Would the Soundtrack Be?

2007-01-18T00:23:00.000-05:00

CC Chapman started a new round of blog tagging. CC tagged Chris Penn and then Chris tagged me. I'm going to post this on both Teaching for the Future and DaveLaMorte.com:

How to Play:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question below, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the nextbutton
6. Don’t lie or try to pretend you’re cool …

Opening Credits:
We Know - Talib Kweli

First Day At School:
Morning Bell - Radiohead

Falling In Love:
Surfing on a Rocket - Air

Breaking Up:
Walk Away - Ben Harper

Prom:
Trouble - Stephen Malkmus

Mental Breakdown:
Fake French - Le Tigre

Flashbacks:
Your Heart Is an Empty Room - Death Cab For Cutie

Getting Back Together:
Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou) - Sufjan Stevens

Wedding Scene:
She'll Come Back To Me - Cake

Final Battle:
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - The Band

Death Scene:
Bend to squares - Death Cab For Cutie

Funeral Song:
Sugar, Baby - Wilco

End Credits:
I Didn't Understand - Christopher O'Riley (Written by Elliot Smith)

Finale:
Due Progress - Cyne

Wow! Some of these really seem to fit the story. I've been listening to a lot of podcasts over the the last six monthes, but this made me want to rediscover my music collection. I want to pass this on and see what happens with Tom Mantzouranis, Kyle Decker, David Warlick, Bre Pettis, and Jesse Thorn.

Ep. 54: How Connecting Effects Conversation

2007-01-17T16:25:00.000-05:00

Today's episode was recorded with my new iTalk. It's an attachment that allows me to record with my video iPod. I'm still experimenting with it, but so far so good.

Now that I'm using my digital still camera to do the video and the iTalk for audio I feel like I have covered all of my podcasting needs. With that in mind I'm going to be donating my old video/audio recorder to Alive In Baghdad. If you have any digital equipment you would like to donate, let Brian know because Alive In Baghdad could use some new/semi-new equipment. Even if you decide not to donate to Brian, I recommend you to donate any of your unused equipment.

News:

Teens 'turn to social websites': from BBC News.com: "The study for the Pew Internet Project involved 935 teenagers and found 55% of American youths aged 12-17 had accounts at sites such as MySpace and Facebook." Kids today are connected in a way we have never dreamed of. The study also finds kids are beginning to be smarter about how they share their personal information and how they use the web.

Social Networking Evades Schools: via think:lab: This post on the Fast Company weblog is talking about how excluding social networking in schools is leaving kids with out guidance. Maybe it is a good idea to have a policy that addresses the issue of social networking in school. This is going to be an issue for years to come and we need to start dealing with it. Just as you would talk to your kids about sex, drugs, and alcohol; you need to talk to your kids about social networking. If you don't address this with your kids someone else will.

IM/Chatting Affecting Language Wired: I was reading the Mr-Know -It-All column in the latest issue of Wired and found an interesting look at how text messaging/IM chat effects teens. Clive Thompson who writes the column argued that out fears are over blown. Where most educators and parents think chat is eroding student language skills he explains that this is probably not the case. In studies cited in the article researchers found that students made less spelling mistakes while instant messaging then in their papers.

He argues that it's due to teens not wanting to look bad in front of their friends. In my mind is all comes down to PUBLISHING. Students are not worried about being shamed for their spelling errors by their teachers so they are just less likely to proofread. Thompson's suggestion is teaching students about code switching, so they know what kind of language is appropriate and when it's appropriate. You can find this article on page 50 of the January issue of Wired.

Ads in captchas from In Over Your Head: I did not know what a captchas was before Julien mentioned them, even though I've been using them for a while. According to the Wikipedia a captcha is "an initialism for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University, is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human." Usually these are a semi-random set of numbers and letters that are used to cut down on comment spam on blogs. Recently ads and messages such as "drink coke" have been popping up in these semi-random sets. This seems indicative to the fact that people are learning to block out ads.

Because we can tune out these ads, advertisers are trying hard to slide their messages past our defenses. This worries me because I have a feeling that students who have learned to block out information may begin to tune out messages in the classroom. To your average 16-year-old information from a teacher can seem analogous to a commercial they don't want to pay attention to. More likely is that students have been blocking out their teachers since the beginning of time, but I do feel a trend.

DIY Cut and Fold Paper iPhone from Sneak Move:

This isn't news but I love a good paper project. I wanted to make my own paper iPhone, but Sneak Move beat me to it. This was just a lot of fun to make and will make for some funny flickr images.

Don't forget to Digg me on Digg.com's new Podcast section! It is a great way to get the word out about the show.

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

Tags:

Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching

Ep.53: Julien Smith

2007-01-14T10:45:00.000-05:00

News:

Listen To Your Kids is a new project from one of my favorite podcasters, Julien Smith. Julien does a hip hop podcast where he discusses topics that he is thinking about and dealing with in his own life. I began listening to his show, In Over Your Head, after I came back from PodCamp Boston.

Listen To Your Kids is a website/podcast where kids of any age can say what they are afraid to say. The project was designed to start a dialog between kids and parents that all to often never happens. Listen To Your Kids is an anonymous confessional where people with something to say can leave a message over the phone or over Skype.

From ListenToYourKids.com:

Listen To Your Kids connects kids that want to share with parents that want to listen, all through very simple, existing technologies...
...If you're a parent, you'll hear kids talking about what's going on in their lives. If you're a kid (of any age), you can call and talk about whatever's going on in your head-- questions, problems, whatever you need to discuss. It will not be censored.

Julien sat down to talk to me over Skype and we discussed his new project.

Don't forget to Digg me on Digg.com's new Podcast section! It is a great way to get the word out about the show.

Check out http://digg.com/podcasts/teaching_for_the_future_with_dave_lamorte

Thanks to Chris Penn from the Financial Aid Podcast, thanks to Brad Niessen for the great intro, and thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music. Make sure you make Dan your MySpace friend.

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

Tags:

Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching

Ep. 52 Listen to your Kids

2007-01-12T10:50:00.000-05:00

I created this episode as a way to promote an interview I did with Julien Smith about his new site Listen To Your Kids. I like the video format, but I still have a lot of work to do. So far so good, but feel free to tell me what you think in the comments.

Don't forget to Digg me on Digg.com's new Podcast section! It is a great way to get the word out about the show.

Thanks to Above These Cares(aka Tom Mantzouranis from The Out-Route) and thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music. Make sure you make Dan your MySpace friend.

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

Tags:

Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, julien smith

Ep. 51: Boston Media Makers

2007-01-08T21:18:00.000-05:00

I finally had a chance to go to the Boston Media Makers meeting. This was my first time going and I had a lot of fun. According to Steve Garfield who runs the group this meeting's turnout was larger than usual. The group is a great mix of podcasters, filmmakers, bloggers, educators, artists, and developers. It was great to meet everyone and find out what they were doing. For the video I used a song from my new favorite band Above These Cares who are also available on the Podsafe Music Network. This is my first time having to edit a video, but I'm really happy with how this came out.

The first part of the meeting was pretty formal. We all sat around a large table and spoke about what we are doing. After the more formal part of the meeting a few of us made a short movie. We did the film as a way of thanking Sweet Finnish for letting us use their back room for the meetings. This video was definitely a group effort. I did sound, Bre Pettis directed, Christopher Penn and Kristen Crusius acted, David Tames acted and produced, while Steve Garfield consulted.

Don't forget to Digg me on Digg.com's new Podcast section! It is a great way to get the word out about the show.

Check out http://digg.com/podcasts/teaching_for_the_future_with_dave_lamorte

Thanks to Above These Cares(aka Tom Mantzouranis from The Out-Route) and thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music. Make sure you make Dan your MySpace friend.

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

Tags:

Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching

Episode 50: Children Still Are Not Tiny Adults

2007-01-04T22:43:00.000-05:00

I'm excited to have finally reached episode 50. Thank you for all of your help and your support over these few months. Also expect to see a new video post during the week around Tuesday or Wednesday. I got a chance to go to the Boston Media Makers meeting in Jamaica Plain. You should definitely check out the Meeting Report. I'd expect to hear some of my audio from that meeting over the next few weeks.

News:

Madden Birds & Bees '07 via The Out Route:
This is a weird story of a young man who received pornography instead of a copy of the new Madden 07 game for XBox. I think that this was probably a freak accident, but I think this is evidence that consoles, like computers, should be kept in main rooms where kids can be supervised.

Saddam Video Copycat from The Copycat Effect:
Loren Colman is a researcher and author of The Copycat Effect. He discusses the resent rash of "Saddam Imitators". This is the first blog post, but Coleman has recently posted about 2 more incidents. Though he does not really seem to comment on the incidents himself he describes the copycat effect at the top of the page as "The copycat effect is what happens when the media makes an event into a "hot death story" and then via behavior contagion, more deaths, suicides, murders, and more occur in a regularly predictive cycle, as per the book The Copycat Effect (Paraview Pocket - Simon and Schuster)". I first became of Loren Coleman when from his interviews on the RU Sirius Show and The Boing Boing Get Illuminated Podcast and he's a favorite reference for Gene and Bryan from Hometown Tales. He seems to be an interesting guy with a lot of interesting ideas.

Boy hangs himself 'like Saddam' from News 24:
This is the orignal story that Coleman refers too.

Education projects on the Teen Grid - A Glimpse from The Official Linden Blog:
This is not really news in a true sense, but I find SL as an interesting environment for learning. This post talks about some resent developments in the SL Education group and a link to sign up for the SL Educators mailing list.

Boy killed unplugging Game Boy from GameSpot News:
Recently a young boy was killed while on vacation with his family. After swimming in the pool the boy was still wet when he tried to unplug his Game Boy and was subsequently electrocuted. This is a tragic story of another freak accident that could have been prevented. What worries me most is that if this boy had unplugged anything else this may never have been a news report at all.

Couple Arrested After Web Posting via Fark:
A man and woman were arrested when the man's 12 year old daughter posted about them giving her drugs and alcohol on her MySpace page. They were discovered when the mother of the girl saw the information on the girls MySpace Page. This story is troubling to me on a few levels. One parents should not be allowing their twelve-year-olds to have controlled substances. Two this girl is twelve and I'm pretty sure you have to be thirteen to join MySpace. And finally that the article talks about how many parents are afraid to confront their children. Parents shouldn't be afraid to be parents.

Study Finds High Schoolers Believe We Have Too Much Free Speech... from Snark is the New Sarcasm:
This blog post talks about an interesting study that showed up in USAToday that found that most teenagers probably do not have a good grasp of the Bill of Rights. This is not really news but it seemed to fit with the theme of the show.

I watched one of the most interesting interviews on the popular machinima podcast This Spartan Life. In episode four Damian Lacidamian(Chris Burke) interviews McKenzie Wark who teaches media and cultural studies at the New School in NYC. Wark is best known for his work studying hacker and game culture.

Don't forget to Digg me on Digg.com's new Podcast section! It is a great way to get the word out about the show.

Check out http://digg.com/podcasts/teaching_for_the_future_with_dave_lamorte

Thanks to Above These Cares(aka Tom Mantzouranis from The Out-Route) and thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music. Make sure you make Dan your MySpace friend.

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

Tags:

Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching

Ep. 49: "You may not be the person of the year"

2006-12-29T19:55:00.000-05:00

News:

Texas: Panel Will Study Confederate Statues from NYTimes.com:
University of Texas at Austin is reevaluating some of it's statues. A series of confederate statues have began to be reconsidered. Many students, advisors, and faculty have been discussing the existence of the statues on school premises. This brings up many questions about being sensitive to others, issues of what is history, and how to design our schools to last.

Gore's Film Available to Science Teachers from David Warlick:
The producers of An Inconvenient Truth will be giving out a limited number of free copies of their film to teachers. All you need to do is go to the site and sign up and give some information about you and your school. Just remember that this is a first come, first served basis.

Immigrant Children Shielded From State Tests, but for Whose Protection? from NYTimes.com: This was an interesting article that I was reading. It talks about the issues that surround immigration and English Language Learners.

Follow Up:

Putting Songs in Ads Can Ruin Those Songs from AdJab: The folks at AdJab take a look at cross promoting songs and products in commercials. More specifically they look at the Chevy ad that I talked about in Episode 36. It seems that using the John Mellencamp's "Our Country" is actually hurting his album sales. This may just indicate that having your song in a TV commercial can make people sick of you, but I'm going to chalk this up to Karma.

Times Person of the Year

There has been a great deal of discussion about the choice of Web 2.0/All of us for Time's person of the year. Many people see this as an outrageous cop out and Time was just unable to pick one person. While other argue that the connectivity of the web has caused untold numbers of Internet users to become part of a world wide competition.

There is a lot of validity for these arguments. The web is definitely really starting show it's potential for connecting the world and sharing information. I think the internet still has a long way to go, but we're finally using the web to speak, record, and distribute our "minds". Though some people argue that things like YouTube and MySpace are just fads, you can't ignore the desire to connect that they are a part of.

And yes I totally agree that Time was not really making an effort this time around. In past years the Person of the Year was someone who we all loved and/or hated. The issue would talk about why this person is important. Instead Time chose all of us and devoted the issue to talking about how we are all having a conversation. That is all well and good, but we've been talking to each other for a while and we have already spent a lot of time talking about our conversation. Instead of bringing something to light Time just told us what we already knew. That just seems like a waste of paper and whatever the shiney stuff on the cover is.

The real reason to make All of us the Time Person of the Year was to make them part of the conversation. As we begin to talk to each other, many mainstream news outlets are feeling left out. Many of the find this new connectivity threatening to them and their livelihoods. After trying to ignore the conversation they are know trying to be the first outlet to embrace it so they will not get left behind. This article was written so that they can say that they know what's going on.

How do you feel about this issue of Time? I'm interested to find out if you feel the same way I do. Leave me a comment here at Teaching for the Future. Or you can leave a message on Time.com and let them know directly. This is a great way for them to become part of our conversation.

Don't forget to Digg me on Digg.com's new Podcast section! It is a great way to get the word out about the show.

Check out http://digg.com/podcasts/teaching_for_the_future_with_dave_lamorte

Please check out Steve Runner's Pheippidations podcast at SteveRunner.com. Thanks to Matt Dattilo for playing my into on Matt's Today In History and thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music. Make sure you make Dan your MySpace friend.

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

Tags:

Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching

Ep. 48: I am a Level 4 Educator

2006-12-16T09:30:00.000-05:00

News:

Simulations give safe but realistic training to military, teachers, airlines from The Associated Press: No this isn't an article about fighter piolets or Second Life. This is a class simulator to allow rookie teachers to get a chance to deal with class room management in a controlled environment. This is actually all over the news, so I'll just give you a list of these articles here. What I find interesting that the student dialog is acutally provided by an actress who is hidden in another room, or out of site. If you had to hire an actress to run this program it seems that is would be hard to make this scalable. I find this article really funny because nothing will get you ready for students like the real thing. But it all seriousness we should be teaching teachers how to prevent fires and not how to put them out.

This does make sense in context to how our students learn. David Warlick often talks about how students play school and often treat school as a role playing game. It might work with younger teachers to get them to play school as well. It would be interesting to see how you would collect items, score points, level up in a virtual classroom. I do think this virtual class thing is an interesting toy and I'd love to get in front of it and go for the high score. The spit balls may be digital, but your shame is still real.

Nevada Senator Proposes Letting Teachers Carry Guns from KRNV 4 News: Senator Beers(Republican) is vying to have teachers to get weapons training and be allowed to carry hand guns in schools. I think this will totally change the way we look at classroom manangement. I know there is a lot of statistical evidence that states that allow conceelled weapons have less gun deaths than states that don't. I would argue that states that allow people to carry concealed weapons are areas of the country where there are less people.

I think that having guns in schools would only turn teachers in a kind of police force. Not that I think teachers would use the weapons to enforce school rules, but they would seem much more authoritarian. This would cause a huge rift between students and teachers in urban schools where many young people feel target and do not trust the police. I would not want students to feel like they would have to defend themselves from teachers.

Promo:

I wasn't able to get a hold for a promo for the Open Source Classroom Podcast so I'm going to do my own. Maybe Chris Craft can use this audio for his sho.

Follow Up:

Chris Penn sent me some links to stories about the ongoing Nelnet saga as well as an audio comment. If you're still curious feel free to check out the following articles:

Nelnet Received $278 Million in Overpayment, Inspector General Finds

Ed. Dept. IG Calls on Nelnet to Give Up $1.2 Billion in Student Loan Subsidies

Lender Overcharged U.S. $1 Billion, Audit Finds

Don't forget to Digg me on Digg.com's new Podcast section! It is a great way to get the word out about the show.

Check out http://digg.com/podcasts/teaching_for_the_future_with_dave_lamorte

Thanks to Chris Penn from the Financial Aid Podcast, thanks to Brad Niessen for the great intro, and thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music. Make sure you make Dan your MySpace friend.

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

Tags:

Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching

Ep. 47: Let the Holiday Begin!

2006-12-11T23:07:00.000-05:00

I was thinking about doing a holiday edition of Teaching For The Future and do a whole episode about holiday marketing and consumer spending. I found this article Teens and Holiday Spending from The Orlando Sentinel. It is an article about a survey done about teenage spending.

Junior Achievement, an business education nonprofit (check out the wikipedia entry) did a survey of 1,512 students between the ages of 13-19 and found that teens planed to spend 3% less this Holiday season then last year. I wanted to include this article because the research group stated that students would be spending more conservatively this year that in the past two years. I think that it is a great idea to spend less at Christmas, but I feel like a 3% drop rate would be bellow the margin of error. Well even small victories are victories.

Well I was interested in finding more about JA Worldwide and their take on business education programs. As a searched around the sight I could not actually find any lesson plans except for one, which turns out to be instructions on how to fill out their financial aid application. So I dug a little deeper and found that they did some scholarships for students who are interested in going into business.

I thought I would let Chris Penn from the Financial Aid Podcast know about the whole thing. I figured that it was either something shady or a great new scholarship for his show. He noted that they were underwritten by Nelnet and sent me this article. It turns out that Nelnet is under investigation by the federal government for using money that they received through a loop hole.

What did I learn from all of this? You'll have to listen to the show to find out!

Thanks to Jesse Thorn from The Sound of Young America for the great intro, thanks to Christian Long from Think:Lab for talking about my show,
thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music, thanks to Chris Penn from Financial Aid Podcast for help with the research, and thanks to Rocketboom for the LINK.

If you have a podcast I'd love to hear about it, so feel free to email at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com or send me an audio message through Odeo

Tags:

Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching

Episode 46: Better schools or better priorities?

2006-12-11T13:04:00.000-05:00

Like many fields education has been filled with new ideas and new techniques that offer success at reaching students and improving the learning experience. Some of these ideas have come and gone but many still exists in different forms. Often these ideas are championed by well meaning experts or politicians who are trying to enact real social change and reform our schools. This is not to say that these ideas are based on falsehoods, many of them are great ideas that just do not seem to reach certain kids.

David Truss pointed out something to David Warlick who then put it up on his blog. It's an article from TIME.com called How to Bring Our Schools out of the 20th Century. It uses the story of Rip VanWinkle to explain that our schools would be comfortable for old Rip because they have not changed in any fundamental way.

"For the past five years, the national conversation on education has focused on reading scores, math tests and closing the “achievement gap” between social classes. This is not a story about that conversation. This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about education, the one that will ultimately determine not merely whether some fraction of our children get “left behind” but also whether an entire generation of kids will fail to make the grade in the global economy because they can’t think their way through abstract problems, work in teams, distinguish good information from bad or speak a language other than English."

Is the lack of change because schools are so great that we just need to bring the kids around, or are we stuck using the same battle plan to fight a completely different battle?

Thanks to Chris Brogan from Network2.tv for the great intro, thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music, thanks to Brian Conley from Alive in Mexico/Baghdad for opening the conversation, and thanks to Sonja Cole from BookWink.com for mentioning me in her interview.

If you have a podcast I'd love to hear about it, so feel free to email at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com or send me an audio message through Odeo

Tags:Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching

Episode 45: How Are We Using Technology?

2006-12-04T09:43:00.000-05:00

News:

Cory Doctorow Teaches USC Course from Boing Boing: Cory is one of the editors of the popular blog Boing Boing and will be teaching a class called "Pwned: Is everyone on this campus a copyright criminal?". Cory will be teaching about the role of computers in society and how our internet freedoms are being threatened. I'm a big fan of Cory's and I wish I had a chance to take a class like that here on the East Coast. I just hope that USC will be podcasting this course.

New tool helps Internet users bypass censors from Public Radio.org: Psiphon is a new program created by CitizenLab at the University of Toronto. Psiphon is designed to circumvent firewalls and allow people who live in censored nations to access the whole web. As I listened to this episode of Future Tense I wondered how hard it would be to set this program up to allow students and teachers to use this to go around federally mandated firewalls in schools?

Teacher Tech Use on the Rise...So?fromWeblogg-Ed: Will Richardson responds to a blog post by David Warlick.

Promo:

If you enjoy Shakespeare than definitely check out the ShakespeareCast!

Commentary:

"What difference, really, does the infusion of technology into the classroom have if the teachers who use it don’t have a context for learning with it? My guess is that most of what’s happening in schools right now is what Alan November calls “automating,” taking the stuff we used to do on paper and digitizing it in some way without any real change in the pedagogy or in the understanding of what the learning potentials are. I mean, take PowerPoint as an example. If you use PowerPoint, technically you’re using technology. But most of the uses of PowerPoint that I’ve seen in schools have nothing to do with learning. Nothing. In fact I still have a hard time believing how much of what is presented at the technology conferences I go to has nothing to do with helping those in the room become more effective, lifelong learners. It’s all about doing." -Will Richardson

Thanks to Chris Penn from the Financial Aid Podcast for the great intro and thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music. Make sure you make Dan your MySpace friend.

If you have a podcast I'd love to hear about it, so feel free to email at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com or send me an audio message through Odeo

Tags:Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching

Episode 44: New Media Revisited

2006-11-26T23:18:00.000-05:00

News:

Preaching and Teaching in NJ from NJ.com: A school teacher in Kearny, NJ was reprimanded for preaching to his students instead of teaching them their history curriculum. Students complained and one student recorded the lectures to prove that what he was saying was true.

UCLA Police on YouTube via Financial Aid Podcast: Chris Penn talks about the recent stun gunning incident at a UCLA library. Chris talks about the incident and how the new media affects the spread of news and information.

Hiring Tech Savvy Teachers from 2 Cents Worth: I've been thinking a lot about teaching jobs and I think this blog post gives me a little more hope about finding the right fit and finding a great teaching position.

Promo:

Bookwink: I got an email from Sonja who is the host of this podcast and I wanted to share it with you. This not only a great podcast about books, but it's directed for teens and young adults! Well it is also a lot of fun for big kids like me.

Commentary:

Bard Williams

Thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music.

If you have a podcast I'd love to hear about it, so feel free to email at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com or send me an audio message through Odeo

Tags:Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching

Episode 43: Kids Don't Believe Everything?

2006-11-18T23:02:00.000-05:00

News:

Games 4 Girls aren't from DS Fanboy: It would seem that GameStop's "Games 4 Girls" display seems to be a little insulting to it's targeted audience. It would seem like a better idea to try to offer games that would appeal to both sexes instead of making everything pink.

Young Children Don't Believe Everything They Hear from Science Daily: It would also seem that kids are smarter than scientists previously thought. I think they could have saved some money and just asked me. Of course kids don't believe everything, they're just leveraging their parents for better Christmas gifts.

Promo:

C.C. Chapman is going to be hosting a Live Concert with Uncle Seth in Second Life on November 25th. C.C. will be putting the concert at his virtual U-Turn Cafe.

Commentary:

In Over Your Head

Thanks to John Wall from the M Show for the great intro and thanks to Dan Flannery for the great music.

If you have a podcast I'd love to hear about it, so feel free to email at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com or send me an audio message through Odeo

Tags:Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, podcamp, hip hop

http://www.teachingforthefuture.com/teachingforthefuture43.mp3

Episode 42: Wikiversity Reports

2006-11-12T21:11:00.000-05:00

I got the chance to talk to John Schmidt who runs the Wikiversity Reports Podcast which is a podcast about the Wikiversity Learning Community. We talked about his podcast and about the Wikiversity. Not only is John an avid member of the Wikiversity community, but he's an experienced educator who can speak to all of the benefits and limitations of the Wikiversity. John explains the differences between Wikipedia, Wikiversity, and the role of wikis in education.

If you have a podcast I'd love to hear about it, so feel free to email at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com or send me an audio message through Odeo

Intro: Thanks to Jesse Thorn from The Sound of Young America for the Intro.

Tags:

Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, wikiversity, wiki

Episode 41: The Cambridge Codex

2006-11-10T23:17:00.000-05:00

Today's podcast was initially going to be episode 33 but life happened and I'm happy to finally share this with you. Kerrie Bellisario is a professor at Lesley University and is on of the organizers of the recent Cambridge Codex project. The Codex is a community art project that takes place between Harvard and Porter Square in Cambridge, MA. Participants are asked to use chalk and create a coded in public spaces. This project brings together many different ideas and deals with issues of public spaces and community interaction. Participants are able to communicate with each other and their environment with out harming local buildings or public spaces. If you are interested in contacting Kerrie or one of her students about the project please visit the website.

If you have a podcast I'd love to hear about it, so feel free to email at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com or send me an audio message through Odeo

Intro: Thanks to Brad Niessen from the Tech Teacher Podcast for the Intro.

Tags:

Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, graffiti

Episode 40: Librarians in the Future?

2006-11-04T19:39:00.000-05:00

News:

Scientists recommend educational gaming from Joystiq: This story gives some interesting evidence that educational gaming can be very useful as an educational tool. This is one of the articles that I sent to Irene at No One's Listening before I interviewed her and Colin.

MySpace Predator Caught by Code from Wired: Police in Suffolk County, New York use about 1000 lines of code to catch a sexual predator. The code was used to scour MySpace user profiles for users who had profiles that matched known sex offenders. The code allowed the authorities to identify the actions of over 744 known sex offenders.

UC Merced Podcast: I recieved an email from Alex Kang, a senior at UC Merced, who started a podcast for his school. It is not yet syndicated because they are trying to do it in house, but I'll let you know when it goes up. Until then check out the first episode.

Wikiversity from
Wikiversity Reports: "Wikiversity: where teachers learn, and learners teach from Information." This is a podcast by Teaching for the Future listener John Schmidt about the new Wikimedia project that explains what the project is all about and how to get involved in this new community.

Mark Frydenberg talks at the Berkman Center: I met Mark at Podcamp when he did a presentation about how he used podcasting in his IT 101 class at Bentley College. He recently spoke at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School. Mark may be the first person in higher education to assign podcasts in the course work.

Congratulations to Brian Conley from Alive In Baghdad who won something at the Vloggies. I can't figure out where the winners are listed or it just may be too early but I found a photo of Brian with a novelty check so I figure he was honored some how.

Commentary:
Librarians in the Digital Age(Part 2): David Warlick discusses how libraries and librarians will change and I try to give my "2 Cents Worth."

Intro: Thanks to Chris Brogan for the great Intro

If you have a podcast I'd love to hear about it, so feel free to email at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com or send me an audio message through Odeo

All Music provided by Dan Flannery. You can find more of Dan's music at MySpace.com/UkuleleFunk
.

Tags:
Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching

Episode 39: Video Game Revolution

2006-10-28T19:34:00.000-04:00

The interview I did with Irene and Colin from No One's Listening made me think a lot about the role of games in education. How can we harness the power of the medium of video games? A group of students at MIT's Comparative Media Studies Program under Henry Jenkins have created a game called Revolution. Revolution is a networked multiplayer video game that takes place in Williamsburg, Virgina circa 1775. The game gives students the chance to interact with each other in the 3D environment.

To find out more about Henry Jenkins check out an interview he did for Game Biz Daily. For more information about Revolution and other educational video games visit Education Arcade. I discovered the Henry Jenkins interview through Critics and Builders a blog by Bernie Heidkamp, an educator from Virgina.

Music Provided by Dan Flannery.

Here is the trailer for Revolution:

If you have a podcast I'd love to hear about it, so feel free to email at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com or send me an audio message through Odeo

Tags:

Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching