Glogowski's insites on Classrooms as Third Places

Konrad Glogowski wrote a very insightful and provocative blog post about creating Classrooms as Third Places. He borrowed the title and concept of Third Places from American Urban Sociologist Ray Oldenburg. I truly appreciate the work and research that Konrad is doing to create spaces for classroom communities to thrive. For those interested in these ideas please take the time to watch his SlideShare presentation (see below).

How do I...?

This customized Google search engine looks to be incredibly valuable for education professionals. It is a quick way of searching multiple video sites to find video on how to do what you want to do. Click here to visit this site.

Martin Weller posted about this site on his blog The Ed Techie. He stated,

"Tony Hirst has created a neat little search interface using Google's Coop customizable search engine. It searches a number of video archives to find instructional videos - he seeds it with the phrase 'How do I?' He explains it here, so I won't bother, and thus save myself potential embarrassment by getting it wrong."

How to suck and egg...

Take a look at this video from videojug. There are many more educational videos on this search based and indexed video site. Enjoy.



VideoJug: How To Suck An Egg Into A Bottle

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Sir Ken Robinson talks about education and creativity. This 20 minute video is well worth watching. Here is an brief description from the TED website.

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. With ample anecdotes and witty asides, Robinson points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize -- much less cultivate -- the talents of many brilliant people. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. The universality of his message is evidenced by its rampant popularity online. A typical review: "If you have not yet seen Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk, please stop whatever you're doing and watch it now."

Teacher TV

Here is another site... Teacher TV.

ArcWeb Explorer: Learning through visualization

I am at the Future Visions Conference and I just learned about a tool. It is a mapping tool with a ton of power. It is called ArcWeb Explorer. Take a look. Joseph J. Kerski calls it teaching the Whys of Where. Connecting data to maps to understand and solve problems. He also points out that students can start with basics of topographic maps (low tech).

Love to read... do the Library Thing

Here is another site. The Library Thing... what they call the largest book club on the planet. This site is complete with metadata and syndication, connecting those who love to read. Note, there is a large group of graduate students learning on this site.

Open Educational Resources

Open educational resources (OER) is an Internet empowered worldwide community effort to create an education commons. The Hewlett foundation is working with Creative Commons (CC) to create a search portal for educational CC resources. This project is under development - you can read about the initiative @ Wikipedia, Creative Commons, or O'Reilly Radar. This will be an interesting one to keep eyes on.

In the meantime here are some active open-source educational sites:

Things come to me: Instructables

I gave a presentation about Web 2.0 technology and community to a group of graduate students in ED 709 Educational Leadership. I was telling them that Web 2.0 has connected me to a invaluable network of resources that push information to me and that I vary rarely search (the Internet) anymore. If I did search, I may find interesting things out there... but I get all the interesting information that I can handle form my network (no time to look for more). To me this is a great problem to have. I spend more time looking at things that others like me have found to be interesting. This is much more focused and productive (be careful... it is also additive).

Here is a Web 2.0 tool that was pushed to me (through my) this morning! I hope you like it too... If not, don't keep me (or put me) in your network. Build a network that fits your needs and that sends your stuff that makes you crave for more.

Click on the image to find about about instructables a site with step-by-step instructions. Together, what can we learn next?

Screencast-o-Matic

Here is a new tool for capturing screen movements in a movie format called Screencast-o-Matic. This is a great application because it is free and there is no need to download and install software.