Filtering webinar this Wednesday - join us

For Blue Skunk readers interested in intellectual freedom issues as related to Internet filter, have I got an opportunity for you:

Wednesday, Sep. 16 at 5 p.m. Eastern Time

It's Blocked! How Internet Filters Impact K-12 Learning
Presented by Doug Johnson, blogger and author; Dr. Joyce Valenza, Director of Rutgers University Masters of Information Science Program; and Michelle Luhtala, Head Librarian, New Canaan High School, CT

Community: Emerging Tech: Using Technology to Advance Your School Library Program
Community URL: www.edweb.net/emergingtech

Webinar Room: www.instantpresenter.com/edweb2
Registration Link:  http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=EC51DE81814F30
http://ow.ly/S5SOS
Anymeeting Event ID: anymeeting.com/057-120-173
The webinar will be recorded and archived in the community after the event.

Webinar Description
A comprehensive 21st century education should help students build a positive digital footprint, but many students don't have access to the online learning tools this requires. Join Doug Johnson, Dr. Joyce Valenza and Michelle Luhtala for a conversation about the impact of overzealous filtering on teaching and learning in K-12 schools. Doug and Joyce will explain how opening channels of communication for learners improves equity, teaches digital citizenship, and promotes intellectual freedom.

Presenter Bios
Doug Johnson is Director of Technology for the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage (MN) schools and the author of The Blue Skunk Blog and several books, including Teaching Outside the Lines: Developing Creativity in Every Learner (2015).

Joyce is the author of School Library Journal's Never Ending Search blog and Director of Rutgers University's Masters of Information Science Program.

Michelle Luhtala is the library department chair at New Canaan High School in Connecticut and community facilitator at edWeb.net's Emerging Tech: Using Technology to Advance Your School Library Program.

Join us!

BFTP: Paul's customizable world

As a good grandfather, I try to be a source of information and wisdom to my grandsons. (See The Grandpa Assignment.)  This weekend I showed Paul the world's largest (and possibly oldest) popcorn ball, above. I  taught him about the joys of swimming in abandoned gravel pits, below. We explored some Indian mounds, stage coach roads and really old comic books down in my hometown in Iowa. All good.

But I believe I learn more about the world from Paul than he does from me.

This trip I showed Paul the Maps app on the iPad and how as we drove, he could track our progress via the little blue dot. Paul quickly discovered how to change the scale of the map just to suit him. He figured out how to switch to GoogleEarth for photographic point of view. Next trip I'll show him AroundMe so he can track down the nearest DQ.

Grandpa as a boy was lucky to have a road map - one map, one scale, one function. Nothing customizable about it. That didn't prevent me from developing map reading skills and a love of maps themselves. But it was pretty much "my way or the highway" when it came to maps.

Paul has grown up with lots of customizable information and entertainment sources. A couple years ago he got mad because the TV remote in the hotel we were staying wouldn't allow the program to be rewound, fast-forwarded or paused. Paul expects DVR-like TV customizability including time-shifting. Soon it will be the expectation of portability of video content via iPad/iPod type devices. Music became portable with transistor radios back when I was a little boy on the prairie, but ubiquitous access to the world's music is relatively new. And we've all gotten a little accustomed to information on demand via our web-enabled phones and other portable devices.

Whether it is cell phone rings, game difficulty, news feeds, or font size in e-book readers, many children of Paul's generation will experience a world that conforms to their preferences.

Everywhere, that is, except in school. We're still pretty much one-size-fits-all and you'd better conform to us.

Any bets on whether drop out rates from traditional schools continue to climb? Or on whether "customizable" eduction will be the next big thing in education?

Original post July 10, 2010

Cruft

Cruft is jargon for anything that is left over, redundant and getting in the way. It is used particularly for superseded and unused technical and electronic hardware and useless, superfluous or dysfunctional elements in computer software. Wikipedia

Along with plenty of reading and reflection, I’ve been cleaning out lots of the cruft, physical and digital, that has accumulated over many years. Including a few bags of stuff brought home from the former cubicle. No matter the origins, it’s a process that’s often quite cathartic. [On his retirement activities] Tim Stahmer, Some Things Never Change

I love discovering a new and useful word. "Cruft" is the perfect term for all that digital garbage in one's harddrive or Dropbox, in one's e-mail, and on one's website that simply accumulates slowly, unnoticeably, and relentlessly. The detritus of digital activity.

In the physical world, I do a pretty good job of eliminating cruft. I regularly weed my book shelves, desk drawers, file cabinets, clothes closets, and garage. With the exception of souvenirs from my travels and handmade gifts from my children, I have no qualms about pitching something.

Digitally, discarding the obsolescent, redundant, and useless is more challenging. Probably because the medium that stores 1000 PowerPoint files weighs about the same as the medium that stores 1 of them, assuming one is not using the cloud which weighs exactly the same and uses exactly the same amount of space - nada.

As I get prepared for moving - just in case my house ever sells - I am tossing a lot of physical cruft. If I have not used something in the 15 years I've lived in this house, it get tossed, gifted, or sold. Why should I not then dump anything digital I have not used in 15 years?

A teacher commented this week that before our department started doing training on Schoology, we should have first taught teachers how to move all their digital files from their computer and local network drives to their GoogleDrive accounts. A good suggestion, I thought, since linking to online documents in Schoology makes a lot of sense.

As educators move files from local drives to cloud-based application, are they moving a lot of cruft as well? And does all that gunk make finding and using the good stuff more difficult.

Any suggestions for identifying and managing the cruft in your virtual life?