ISTE Board Election Opens

Vote early and often. - Mayor Richard J. Daley

I hope most of you got one of the one below in your e-mail yesterday. Here are my recommendations:

1. Vote for the incumbents. These are dedicated, thoughtful, hardworking people in my (now ended!) experience on the board. I mean that. (Ryan, Camilla, Helen, and Jill.)
   
2. Vote for Gordon Dahlby for an at large seat. He's a great guy and would make an excellent board member. He already has a great track record of working for ISTE. (Bonus points: he is from Iowa!)
3. Be assured that all candidates are pretty high quality people. My guess is you won't make a bad choice.

Vote. Like TODAY. 

Dear Mr. Douglas A. Johnson,

Welcome to the 2008 ISTE Board election! Online voting for open seats on the ISTE Board of Directors begins today and lasts through April 11, 2008.

This election year with so much at stake, we really want to emphasize full participation by all ISTE members. We urge you to review the candidate profiles and VOTE.

Please take the time to participate in the life of your professional organization. Cast your ballot for the ISTE Board of Directors.

Sincerely,

Dr. Kurt A. Steinhaus
ISTE Past President
Chair, Nominations and
Appointments Committee

Dr. Trina J. Davis
ISTE President

P.S.: Remember that you'll need to login as a member to view the slate of candidates, read their statements, and vote. Voting is a privilege-and a responsibility! -of membership.

 

Student voices on cyberbullying

Maureen Tumenas from Berkshire Country Day School shared this message and link with me and gave her permission to repost it:

I did my first attempt at blogging with my 7th graders on Internet Safety and did a page on cyberbullying. I will be adding this pdf link [to my cyberbulling guide] next time- thank you! If you're looking for media- you tube, etc.. you can check the links on the kids' blog. They evaluated the project afterwards and aside from organizational issues (which I, of course, quickly realized as we started to work) the kids were really split 50/50- half of them had heard of this problem before and didn't think it affected them, the other half had never heard of it but, also didn't think it really affected them. Naive? Live in a bubble? I honestly don't know what to think.

http://bcds.edublogs.org/internet-safety/33/

Kudos to  Maureen and her  students! Great use of a blog and YouTube videos. What I appreciate most is the intelligence and level of sophistication these 7th graders are showing about this issue in their posts. I sense a lot of discussion and teaching having gone on "behind the blog."

What does it say when 12-years-olds make more sense of a Internet safety issue than many adults?

Dr. Bell on computers and politics

I can see now that it wil be tough to keep the Blue Skunk apolitical this year. I thought this observation by Texas library professor Mary Ann Bell on her Wanderings blog was rich:

...it occurred to me that the MAC vs PC preference discussion is somewhat analogous to today's political conundrum. Is it just me or does Obama seem like a Mac and Hillary more like a PC? Playing around with this idea I came up with several reasons: 

Obama:
* Very nicely packaged
* Stylish
* Engaging and appealing
* Easy to like

Hillary
* Businesslike
* Long history of getting things done
* Practical
* Hardworking

McCain? There my analogy breaks down. I am not sure what to compare him to!

McCain? A 386 PC running Windows 95? 

Oh, welcome back from the Dark Side, Mary Ann!