Chapter 9

This is going to be short today. I’m packing.

I checked out the web site mentioned in class today, School 2.0. I really liked their transformation exercises. I was happy to see that I knew all the terms except one, which was document camera. I now know that one, too. What was really thought provoking was the introductory exercise. (I went back to get the name of it and it said the site is down for a few hours.) I would never be able to accomplish discussing those topics in 30 minutes. I am a reflective thinker and envisioning change takes me a long time to process.

I started to play around with the bandwidth calculator, but didn’t have enough information to really start. For example, I have no idea what the current bandwidth is at each of my labs. We signed up for them at different times. Originally (probably 5-8 years ago), we’d just call Cox or Qwest, find out who served the area and have them install a line. I don’t even remember them asking about what bandwidth we needed. Then the City’s ITD group started insisting they be involved in these purchases of service, and, oh my goodness, it can drive me crazy. However, I never hear or see what they finally purchase for us. When I return, I plan to see if I can find out.

At first I thought I would check out the future of education by linking to thoughts found on Web 2.0 tools. Honesty, I wasn’t terribly impressed. It seems like everyone is so caught up in trying to incorporate technology and Web 2.0 tools that they’re not thinking much beyond that. One of the sites caught my eye. It was a link to an article that talked about using wikis in law school. But what was really interesting, was that along the right margin of the blog, it said, “This blog will replace the paper Faculty Awareness Bulletin. “ I suppose law school professors have got to get with Web 2.0, too. http://sufab.wordpress.com/2007/11/29/wikipedia-and-the-future-of-legal-education/

Using Education 2020 as a search was somewhat interesting. There’s a corporation with that name that specializes in online classes for grades 6 through 12. Although I did not specifically read this, I got the impression that they specialize in helping kids get caught up or who have difficulty in a traditional classroom. They use virtual classrooms, one of the topics of discussion today. They had some research pages that showed their method will at least help kids pass the high stakes test for the applicable state. I was surprised; they’re located in Scottsdale, AZ. I’m not sure they’re going to make it to 2020, though. They’re summer school advertisement was for 2007. http://www.e2020inc.com/aboutus.html

This whole Education 2020 thing has been around awhile. This article, http://www.tcpd.org/Thornburg/Handouts/2020visions.html, was written in 1997. There are a few things that date the information (a computer with 8 MB of RAM cost $2,500), but other than those idiosyncrasies, we’re (globally, not just our classroom) still talking about the same thing – are we preparing kids sufficiently for the jobs and the world of 2020?

Wow, this year’s 1^st graders will graduate in 2020!

When I was visiting the School 2.0 web site, it suggested you view a MacArthur Foundation video, which was on YouTube. Of course, YouTube is somewhat similar to Amazon.com in that it suggests other videos to watch. I watched a number of them and enjoyed most of them. However, one really stood out. Other than reading and hearing from Sir Ken Robinson, this has to be my very favorite thing I’ve seen while delving into the topics found in our text. It would have been a great introduction (or closing) to either of the classes I took this summer and certainly a fitting end to the chapter reviews on this blog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8&feature=related