Another golden oldie

As I was transfering files, I stumbled on this that I shared in a parent newsletter in 1990...

Most educators feel students who have the greatest access to computers are the most educationally fortunate. However, Tom Snyder, an educational software developer, envisions a time when this might not be the case. As a part of a speculative timeline, he writes for a 1999 entry:

“A presidential commission has been established to study the growing inequity in computer allocation. Apparently, most computers are being used to deliver instruction to poor kids in the inner-city schools, putting these students at a clear disadvantage. All the best jobs and places in incoming college classes are going to applicants who were ‘fully teacher taught.”

from “Technology, Trends, and Gizmos: A Timeline for the ’90s and Beyond” Technology & Learning, September 1990, 92-98. 

Were you a visionary in 1990? 

If I'm not having fun...

I figure if I'm not having fun as a teacher, no one else is having fun either. - Doug

I was delighted to read the article "The Neuroscience of Joyful Education" by Judy Willis in the summer online edition of Educational Leadership. This is basically the science behind what good teachers already know - kids learn better when they are having fun, are involved, are motivated and the topic is relevant. You read the article, but one bit stood out for me:

When stress in the classroom is getting high, it is often because a lesson is overly abstract or seems irrelevant to students. Teachers can reduce this type of stress by making the lesson more personally interesting and motivating. Ideally, students should be able to answer the question, “Why are we learning about this?” at any point in a lesson.

Teachers can find valuable background materials and human interest connections in textbooks published in the 1990s, before many publishers dropped such information to make room for practice test questions. (Bold is mine - Doug.)

Is this sad or what?

One of the operative words at NECC this year seemed to be "fun." For all of Second Life's pedagogical possibilities of being the ultimate constructivist environment, what attracts me to it is that it is fun. Maybe that is what attracts me to educational technology and to libraries in the first place - both can and should be fun.

Have some fun this weekend.

Professional Development for Administrators

 All administrators can learn. - Doug

Scott McLeod over at Dangerously Irrelevant asks that we blog about PD for administrators this Independence Day. Instead of messing up my holiday and yours rambling on, I will simply link to a couple of my past articles/resources on the topic:

• Rubrics for Leadership: What Technologically Literate Superintendents, Principals and Directors Should Know and Be Able to do with Information Technologies, The School Administrator, April 1999. with Eric Bartleson, Ph.D., Minnesota State University, Mankato MN (The most recent version of the rubrics can be found here. I'd love comments on how these should be updated.)
  
• Improving Administrative Technology Skills, TECH LEADERSHIP, School Administrator, May 2005 (Links to all my old TECH LEADERSHIP columns - on technology issues written for administrators - can be found here.)
• No Principal Left Behind. Head for the Edge, March 2003. (Working with your building administrator written for library media specialists, but techs could apply these principles too.)
  

Happy reading. But I hope you spend your 4th doing something much more pleasant. 

Update: 153 articles, columns, workshop descriptions, etc. now moved to the new website. I think I only have about 100 more to go.