Loisath-My ICT Journey » Blog Archive » “Webpage” to Weblog #3

Loisath-My ICT Journey » Blog Archive » “Webpage” to Weblog #3:

"This is the final blog of a series about using Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom. This section looks at our school’s “practice run” using blogs in the classroom and the lessons we learnt.
BEGINNING BLOGGERS

We had a clear purpose, and support from the school leadership to move forward on the weblogs. Once we started our blogs, eleven in all, it became clear that we needed some guidelines to define the tone and purpose of the class blog pages. One of the surprising comments from teacher who looked at the work the others were doing but wasn’t actually a participant was that “this could be used by parents to compare teachers.” Clearly this wasn’t the tone that we wanted."

http://loisath.edublogs.org/2009/01/25/webpage-to-weblog-3/

Dr. Z Reflects: The Horizon Report for 2009

Dr. Z Reflects: The Horizon Report for 2009:

Leigh Zeitz wrote:

"The Horizon Report for 2009 has been released.
The Horizon Report is an annual report that is produced jointly by the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. This account charts the existing and future trends in emerging technologies."

This post is one of many I have seen tweeted over the last weeks on this topic. Dr. Zeitz links to the Report and also provides an overview of the previous two Reports and their predictions. I am keen in 2009, to monitor the realisation of these predictions. This should be a "Tipping Point" year.

Now, go to the post and check out what he has written.

Here is another link to check out. This one from @mamk entitled Mobile Learning Foresight is also worth a look.

Directions, Goals and Influencers « Darcy Moore’s Blog

Directions, Goals and Influencers « Darcy Moore’s Blog:

Darcy Moore wrote:

"I always like to start the school year with a clear sense of direction and personal professional priorities and goals; a sort of pre-reflection, if that makes sense. It goes without saying that one needs, as an educator, to be a:
- better learner
- better teacher
- better leader

My comments:
Thanks for the mention Darcy. It is an absolute pleasure to be of any assistance.
What a joy it must be for the school to have you as a DP. I like what you have devised as goals and priorities. How refreshing it would be to have such a balanced blend of thinker and doer in one person.
The E program sounds fabulous. I'll stay tuned.
Very nifty use of wordle too.

It is an absolute certainty that I will post on Darcy's achievements during 2009.

Technology in the Middle » Blog Archive » Hands-On Learning is “Grand”

Technology in the Middle » Blog Archive » Hands-On Learning is “Grand”:

Patrick Woessner wrote:

"I’ve spent the better part of the last two weekends helping my fourth grade son complete a series of “hands-on” activities designed to teach him about the southeast region of the United States. These activities were developed by a well known publishing company (not to be named here) whose materials were described by their distributor as “…developed by teachers with hands-on classroom experience. All of the materials are developmentally appropriate, educationally sound, and fun! They are committed to simplifying teachers’ lives by providing them with resource materials that save time and enrich the classroom experience.”

I’m not so sure about that.

For this assignment, my son could choose to complete either three, five, or seven activities corresponding to “grades” of good, great, and grand respectively from a list of 12 possible options."

Patrick lists the seven tasks and the outcomes of his son's work and learning.

I commented:
Interesting post and quite a dilemma for you.

Your comment: "there were no learning objectives or assessment rubrics included with the assignment." is the essence of the problem.

Does your state have curriculum standards? What "subject" was this task for?

I wonder will you raise your concerns with school leaders?

More educator-parents who are well-informed need to consider doing exactly that.

Another techy start to the day

As my holidays move towards an end, a final "techy start" post seems appropriate. I began this process on January 9 and continued on January 16. It was an easy process since I just jumped out of Google Reader after skimming 500+ links onto my igoogle page and started writing in the Blogger widget. What could be easier?

I think as I am doing a leisurely check of all my infosources, that it doesn't take all that long to catch up with global learning news. What is important to this process is to have a streamlined process and a reliable set of tools to maximise the quality and clear focus of information delivered to you.

I rely on my:

• google alerts
• SlideShare finds that I star on Google Reader and that I either favourite or add to one of my SlideShare groups. The most popular one is: web 2.0 tools for effective teaching
• email newsletters from professional organisations
• Twitter PLN

I favourite web2.0, social media and relevant T&L articles, links etc. I also dip into the world of enterprise2.0 and new media marketing and advertising. These areas bring a wealth of insights and into cutting edge views on communication, participation, innovation and visual thinking.

I am always on the look-out for new, stimulating sources of forward thinking.

BBC NEWS | Technology | The best of the tech that teaches

BBC NEWS | Technology | The best of the tech that teaches:

"The education technology trade show, BETT, has got underway at the Olympia exhibition centre in London.

Exhibitors showcased a wide range of goods, from table top computers to mini video cameras and notebooks.

At the opening address, Schools Minister Jim Knight reiterated plans to give children from low income families a free computer and broadband access."

This article is broken up by a series of videos that showcase some of the best of the BETT show. The presentations and outcomes of this great show are a must-follow and know for all educators.

Why I love these techy mornings

Still on holidays and I am thrilled to be able to take a slow sift and sort through my social online learning tools looking for gems.

I flicked back through 7 hours of Twitter to get the gist of the latest global learning2.0. Favourited the usual 20 or so. I am liking the follows I have in enterprise and social media2.0. Many of these twitterati provide information, links and insights into concepts that are just as relevant to learning in educational settings.

Next, I do some of my email and just save the several google alerts for later, since they often take time to look at and explore. From these each day, I can uncover up to ten sites, articles etc that are new to me and that I save to delicious, share on google or tweet to the 'verse.

Finally, I check my google reader, up to 500 each morning. Today, I starred about 30 to come back to and read or view. This is how I find relevant decks to put into my groups on SlideShare.

This is the start of the day's social learning. I monitor, favourite and tweet some new stuff on Twitter all day, just because I can.

Lately, I have downloaded so many files, reports, articles that my desktop needs a clean up every couple of days. Lots of valuable work out there to mull over.

I am also drafting 3 posts on Blogger and have 3 slideshows on the boil.

I post through the widget on my igoogle page making it so easy!

I thrive on these connections that make the infoglut manageable.

49 Amazing Social Media, Web 2.0 And Internet Stats

49 Amazing Social Media, Web 2.0 And Internet Stats:

Interesting set of statistics compiled by Adam Singer on the TheFutureBuzz blog:

"As our digital and physical lives blur further, the internet has become the information hub where people spend a majority of their time learning, playing and communicating with others globally.

Sometimes it is easy to get lose sight of just how staggering the numbers are of people collaborating, researching, and interacting on the web.

I thought it might be fun to take a step back and look at some interesting/amazing social media, Web 2.0, crowdsourcing and internet statistics. I tried to find stats that are the most up-to-date as possible at the time of publishing this post."

The size of some of these numbers is phenomenal. I hope the use of google search and blogs for instances is translating into real learning outcomes for all users.

LTC Blog » Ten most annoying phrases in academic technology

LTC Blog » Ten most annoying phrases in academic technology:

Read full post on this Macquarie University blog.

"From the blog Accidental Pedagogy comes one of the best posts of 2008: the ten most annoying phrases in academic technology. Inspired by this article where Oxford researchers from identified the ten most annoying phrases currently in the English language (”at the end of the day” and “fairly unique” and “I personally” receive top billing), Glenda Morgan created “a list of words and phrases that folks in academic technology regularly use but which make my teeth all get up and run around my mouth.”"

This link will take you to an article about another list.

"The researchers who compiled the list monitor the use of phrases in a database called the Oxford University Corpus, which comprises books, papers, magazines, broadcast, the internet and other sources.

The database alerts them to new words and phrases and can tell them which expressions are disappearing. It also shows how words are being misused.

As well as the above expressions, the book's author Jeremy Butterfield says that many annoyingly over-used expressions actually began as office lingo, such as 24/7 and "synergy""

My observations: I use some not all of these terms. Several can create a conversation that is inclusive since they have such wide currency and form the basis of a common language. Maybe they can be exclusive too, since they may only be used by a niche group.
Those that are simply grammatically incorrect, well that's a different story, requiring re-education.

Media Literacy Tools: Best Learning And Communication Resources From 2008 - Robin Good's Latest News

Media Literacy Tools:

Best Learning And Communication Resources From 2008 - Robin Good's Latest News:

"Here the best 2008 media literacy tools and resources hand-picked from George Siemens's weekly Media Literacy Digest published here on MasterNewMedia

In this collection you will find the best resources and hundreds of tools relevant to your personal growth, learning and educational resources, as well as to social media, video and business that Dr. Siemens has picked, collected and reviewed for you."

Robin Good produces some great information of relevance to educators. Have a read of this previous post after you check this one out.

Education and learning: A Paradigm Shift-Part 1. Is Our Educational System Broken?

New Classmate PC all about “ecosystem” | Education IT | ZDNet.com

New Classmate PC all about “ecosystem” | Education IT | ZDNet.com:

Christopher Dawson writes:

"We’ve known for a while that Intel was working a touch-enabled reference design for their new Classmate PCs. It wasn’t until I had an opportunity this week to speak with some of the folks working on the project at Intel that I realized just how far this product had come.

Launched today at CES, the “Convertible Classmate PC” seems remarkably close to what tablet PCs really should be for education. Tablets always seemed like a great idea for students, but they never took off, largely because of their high cost, limited availability, and limited durability. The convertible Classmate addresses all of these concerns;"

The time of the 1:1, netbook education era has come. Much more on this over the coming months. I am planning to use this a first post of a series on laptop, 1:1, nettbook learning posts.

It is an up and coming topic.

Social Aggregation: The Next Logical Step In Social Networking | Search Engine Optimization

Social Aggregation: The Next Logical Step In Social Networking | Search Engine Optimization:

"Social media is already an obsolete term - on the web you are either social or dust. No one pays attention to the “me, me, me” tune. The “you, you, you” is losing ground too. What matters today is “us” and how we “share data”, communicate and interact.

The first steps towards a more social Web were made by bookmarking services like reddit, digg, and http://del.icio.us and by social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and others. The problem with so many bookmarking and networking sites is that the users lose track of their data sooner or later. Today more and more people are looking for solutions for the storm clouds of data and services cluttering their minds."

This is a very interesting article and with the reference to Secondbrain, it piqued my interest. I signed up and set up my feeds last year and have rarely been back. Same with Friendfeed. I receive a FriendFeed update each day and I rarely look at that either.

Why is this so?
Does it matter?
Is it worth taking another look?

Door open for a follow-up post.

Literacies for Learning - Part 2

This is a very roughly cobbled together post to follow my previous compilation post.

Written by Tim, on SansBlogue: Participatory Pedagogy and Cultural Literacy

What are the New Media Literacies
Read the blog, download papers, watch the video.

Visual literacy activity on John Hendron's TechTimes Blog.

Jamie Madson blog belonging to Rockford Middle School absolute focus on digital literacy skill development.

Liz Kolb has written: 21st Century Skills are Educators and Executives aligned

Karl Fisch of the Fischbowl blog wrote Shifting toward new literacy in which he references a Will Richardson post.

Darren Draper wrote Edublogger Etiquette a useful post that gives insights as suggested.

The Great Literacy Debate written by Ryan Bretag references many of the most prominent posts in this global discussion.

New post from Doug Belshaw, referencing the writing of Gunther Kress on literacy:

Dan Willingham writes Teaching Content is Teaching Reading.

This conversation is still evolving in the twitterverse and blogosphere.

Following those referred to my two posts will link you into some current important players in the debate.

A techy start to the day

Here I am on holidays and my "techy" catch-up routine prevails. Cup of tea at my beautiful, shiny new 24" iMac computer and this is how it generally goes:
*check email - find about 20. Few spam now since provider stops spam at ISP. Great! Then Spamsieve does the rest.
*then, I check Twitter. Refresh to get latest, then time permitting I go back up to 10 hours to check the global learning and sharing in the twitterverse over-night. I favourite about 20 to savour later.
*Next, I check google reader, find around 500 or so new items each morning. I use list form and I can just fly through them. I star only ten for later.

Then, I am ready for my next cuppa and so it goes on. I read, I save, share and best of all, I THINK about what fun learning is.

Forward to 2009-Professionally Speaking

As far as my work and work-related activities go, these are the goals that I have set for my learning in 2009.

1. I will pay more attention to learning through blogging. I intend to write at least 5 posts per fortnight. One at least should be written using only my words. Links to others' words only are OK. The rest can be through my igoogle page or the "send to blog" facility.
2. I intend to prepare at least one slideshow per term for upload.
3. I want to do some research into the possibility of teaching in the USA for 6 months to one year.

Three is enough for me.

PLN relationships: F2F v online. Most meaningful?

A Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach tweet inspired post.

snbeach Can professional relationships in your online PLN be as meaningful as professional relationships made in person? How do you know?

I will be keen to follow this tweet thread. The key words are relationship and meaningful?

I wonder what twitterati will make of this question.

A twtpoll could be useful. twtpoll.com/

Growing old Digital - my latest book title

A Darcy Moore tweet to Julie Lindsay inspired this tiny post:

@Darcy1968 Grown up Digital"-am interested in reply. I think I'll write "Growing Old Digital". That's what many baby boomers have done.

Said to my husband we could write a book about how we have grown old digital. He was not keen. Still, I am hoping that book has not yet been written. Is it nearly 25 years of "digital" for us?

Back to the present, I must get around to reading the Tapscott book: "Grown up Digital".

This was my first post using igoogle. Fabulously simple as always with google tools.

Peer Discussion Improves Student Performance With 'Clickers'

Peer Discussion Improves Student Performance With 'Clickers':

An article in Science Daily:

"University of Colorado at Boulder campus students are sharing answers, checking their responses to questions against those of their neighbors and making adjustments to those answers in hopes of earning a better grade.

Not surprisingly, the students are getting more answers right. But what may be startling is that professors are encouraging the whole thing.

The students aren't cheating, they are learning from each other in a meaningful way, according to Tin Tin Su ... who authored a paper in the Jan. 2 issue of the journal Science showing how peer discussion during 'clicker' questions helps students learn in a way that simple lecturing does not.

Clickers are simple audience response devices, similar to a TV remote control, that allow students to record their answers to thought-provoking, multiple-choice questions in class. After students answer a question individually, the instructor often asks them to discuss the question and then vote again before revealing the answer. After discussion, they usually do better on the question - but why?"

My observations: I love the concept of personal or classroom response systems. If it is coupled with face to face structured discussion and questioning with effective follow-up and feedback, then we have to be on a winner.

Half an Hour: What Not To Build

Half an Hour:

Stephen Downes wrote this post: What Not To Build I have included some extracts here to give you the gist.

"I get to play a government scientist on the internet. As a result, a large part of my work involves being exposed to new and interesting technologies, whether they are the latest military simulators, academic papers delivered at scientific conferences, or product proposals being promoted by aspiring developers. (and)
My sort of environmental scan is a bit different from what you'll get from consultants and venture capitalists...
What I can tell you, though, is what technologies are working, what technologies are flopping, and what technologies are fads..."

His post, much retweeted is in six sections:
1.What not to build-10 items
2.What is there? Stuff everybody is working on-nine items
3.Fads-three items
4.Maybe-2 items
5.Out there for the taking-six items
6.Dead tech-five items

My observations, based on my thoughts as a teacher, senior school leader and corporate IT manager:
Most educators would not be considering "building" any of the ten items. They may be wanting to create wikis and ning groups for PLN initiatives.
As for ning groups, I am inclined to to agree that it is just too hard to find the time to make a serious and sustained contribution. I have joined many and feel regularly guilty that I never get back to them to participate.

The wiki is still an ideal user-friendly platform for PL activities and research collections whether created by one or many, who cares. Each user of any of these tools writes the rules for their own use. That is the whole purpose of them. "I present me"

At this time, I cannot see that the iphone and similarly functional consumer electronic devices should be called a fad. It is from the desk to the hand and pocket that is the main feature here. For education, what is important about this device are the mlearning opportunities. It is all about the applications.

In terms of online instruction systems, I agree, there is a lot to be done here and much to be gained. It is about more than community, it is a about quality too.

The references in this post to innovation are a valuable launchpad for further thinking and discussion. I agree that the ideas to be further explored are:

• personalisation, it's all about me and my learning
• simulation,immersive and vlearning. Lots of possibilities here for very powerful learning.

Twitter is a good place to take this discussion forward. I am looking forward to reading what Judy O'Connell finds out from twitterati, she tweeted:

heyjudeonline How would you define 'innovation' in a school setting? what would you look for? how would you wish it to happen?

There are some interesting thoughts already tweeted.

Alan Levine response to Downes post

Literacies for Learning

This has been another hot topic in the twitterverse and blogosphere over the last year. The conversation has been wide-ranging and brought to light diverse and often contested views.

From the basics of: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Literacy has become literacies and a range of descriptors have been used, including: digital, information, media, new media, 21st century to identify a few. The notion of skills, competencies and fluencies have occasionally been referenced.

For this topic, I am looking back before moving forward to devise plans and goals for 2009.

These are some posts that have contributed to the conversation over the year:

Doug Belshaw on literacy using his digital literacy tag or his Ed.D. thesis references and more recently his post: The problem/s of 21st century literacy/ies.

Kim Cofino wrote: What is literacy?

John Connell wrote on visual literacy

Ben Grey wrote on his blog, The Edge of Tomorrow: 21st Century Confusion

Elizabeth Helfant wrote in her blog, Helcat Rants and Ramblings: Defining Emerging Literacies

Elizabeth Holmes on jog the web: What are 21st Century Skills?

Jenny Luca put together: Literacy for our age

Jo McLeay wrote: Blogging as a literacy practice.

Mike Romard wrote: Information Literacy for lower elementary students

Toni Twiss wrote in her Upwardly Mobile blog: Information Literacy

Edwin Wargo wrote on his blog, The Brute Thing: Literacy: Back to the Basics

Patrick Woessner contributed: 21st Century Information Literacy

The New Literacies

Principles for New Media Literacy

The 21st Century Information Fluency provides some interesting resources.

I am making this post a work in progress.

As a reference point: #literacyconversation

Where to for student and teaching blogging 2009? - Part 1

On Twitter in 2008, we experienced a feast of tweets about teacher, student, class, leader blogging. There were competitions, challenges and all manner of tips for current effective practice professional and student blogging.

Here is a selection of posts I identified through Twitter. Many of these edubloggers have multiple posts on blogging effective practice.

tasteach aka Sue Wyatt and Sue Waters initiated and sustained a brilliant global student blogging competition. Student friends on Bringing us Together blog. Planning is on for 2009.

Sue Waters also launched the Improving your Blogging with the 31 Day Project. She is looking to something in 2009 also.

In her latest post she references Steve Dembo's 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger.

educationau's Blogging Corner an edna group managed by Kerrie Smith and Alison Hall ran a successful blogging project in 2008 and has plans to launch the Blogging Corner Carnival in 2009. Check out the website and prepare for the adventure.

Anne Davis wrote: Rationale for educational blogging

David Warlick has contributed Why blog?

A case for using blogs in education

The langwitches blog of Sylvia Tolisano provided some very useful lesson plan guidelines for teachers on scaffolding student blog comments.

Tom Barrett wrote: Blog post instructions

For the new school year in NZ, in a web 2.0 tools for writers teacher training session, more ideas for successful blogging are provided.

Some benefits of blogging have been articulated in the following posts:

Paul Bogush wrote in his blog: How has writing for a world wide audience changed the way you write?

Jose Picardo has written in his excellent blog: How to start you own class or subject blog

Carla Arena has written Blogging away

The blogging cycle and a number of additional links to other relevant posts.

Blogging 101

Teacher blogs for a District approach.

Teacher Weblogs

Blogs by subject

Blogs and blogging- wiki lists

Stephen Downes wrote: Grading blogging

Blog grade rubric

Clay Burell wrote: Blogger training school for a student blogging license. A silver bullet?

Maggie Giev has prepared the SlideShare presentation. Blogging for teaching and Learning

Graham Wegner wrote Reviewing our 2008 student blogs

Anne Mirtschin wrote about the problems and potential of Live Blogging in Education

The business world is also very interested in the value of blogging to the bottom line.

Business- 10 reasons to find a blog buddy and The Psychology of Blogging

Let's hear it for the blog - an interview with Tom Peters and Seth Godin provides a business perspective to blogging.

The 48 Laws of Power Applied to blogging and Blogging is like going to the gym ... for your brain

Learning from Great Blog Conversationalists

25 tips to make a blog work

These are just a sampling of posts. Let me know of the great ones I have missed in a comment.

Looking back to move forward with a plan into 2009.

The twitterverse and blogosphere have been awash with reflective posts on achievements 2008 and forward planning and goal-setting for 2009. Here are some links that will help us keep track of what some of the guru-types are thinking.

Looking back or both ways:
The Learning Circuits Blog: What did you learn about in 2008?
My Journey with Digital Pedagogy Blog: My personal review on 2008
Kim Cofino wrote on her Always learning blog: Making and Impact
Darcy Moore's post: Best of 2008
Karl Kapp in his blog Kapp Notes, answers the ASTD Big Question for January: 2009 Predictions, Remembrances and Challenges.
Read all the Big question for January posts on the Learning Circuits blog.

Some identified their top tools for 2008:
Top Ten Tools

Looking forward:
The Learning Circuits Blog: What are your Challenges, Plans and Predictions for 2009
Tony Searl 2009
Tony Searl also posted one view 2020 earlier in the year.

What those who like to spot the TRENDS:
Trends Shaping Education
Trend Blend

There are stacks of others who have been looking back to look forward with trends, predictions and plans that reach schools, classrooms and students in 2009 and beyond.

Have those mentioned here missed anything of great significance to learning?

I'll get my forward to 2009 goals up as soon as.

Learning with 'e's

Learning with 'e's:

In his post "teaching with Twitter", Steve Wheeler writes:
"Most would agree that Twitter was one of the social networking phenomena of 2008, and has enjoyed exponential growth in popularity. The microblogging tool has obvious potential to be used in formal learning, both in traditional online classroom settings and - through mobile technologies - for mobile learners.

Ever since I first began to use Twitter I have been thinking about how to harness the potential of microblogging for the benefits of my own students, and have tried out several ideas to exploit it already. Below are my 10 top uses of Twitter for education:"

My comments:
Valuable post.
If, I were still teaching languages I would certainly be trying to use these microblogging tools.
I have not looked closely at most of these tools but I do love twemes.com.
You could also look at http://shoutem.com/ and a recent post by Miguel Guhlin on some Twitter tools.
Also, edmodo looks like an interesting app.
I have collected a lot of Twitter slideshows on one of my slideshare groups: http://www.slideshare.net/group/web-20-tools-for-effective-teaching

Twitter apps are appearing fresh each day it seems. Do web filter policies prevent teacher or student access?
Blogging and now microblogging are here to stay. So many ways to encourage literacy development.

7 THINGS you may not want to know about me.

A work in progress ...
I had seen this Twitter/blog challenge out there for a few days and wondered if I would like to join in. This thinking only lasted minutes and I decided in the negative. When I am out there in the twitterverse or blogosphere. I like to keep my contributions mostly limited to professional learning. Why I wonder ...

• Firstly, when I am online I am reading, catching up with saves, favourites etc. I just don't find the time.
• I also want to keep Twitter for a professional learning tool and generally don't get involved in conversations.

I was only to briefly escape the thinking attached to this challenge, since it was not long before an Oz colleague, Tony Searl tagged me and my number was up.

As I first thought, this was not going to be easy. Just as well, these are things that no-one would want to know and I can keep it quiet by writing them here.

1. In 2009, I have been in education for 35 years.
2. I have 5 grandchildren. Four girls and one boy. One set of twins and 2 new babies in 2008.
3. My husband and I have travelled to the USA four times including 2 trips to Hawaii. Loved the mai-tais among many other things. Our last trip was to Japan, can't wait to get back to that absolutely fascinating country.
4. I only plant Australian plants in my garden. Our Kangaroo Paws are spectacular. We have a big yard with natural bush and many birds and animals are attracted to it.
5. I have had 20+ computers since the late 80s. That is just me and not those my husband has had. We have always been MAC people.
6. At home, we have been online since it was available in Australia. I can remember when Yahoo was a directory that you could easily scroll through and read over time.
7.I like "retro" anything. My husband and I visit markets, garage sales and various charity shops. I have many collections of what I call " flash trash".

I may come back to this post and insert links to pictures of my grandchildren, our trip to Japan and my garden.

The dying art of cursive | floridatoday.com | FLORIDA TODAY

The dying art of cursive | floridatoday.com | FLORIDA TODAY:

"Some fear classic penmanship has been left behind as preparation for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test dominates class time.

Others blame the rise of the Internet, combined with the push to ensure that children are technologically literate, for rendering delicate handwriting an art of yesteryear.

'With all the other subjects we must teach, we just don't have the time to spend a lot of effort on cursive,' said Carl Brown, principal of Manatee Elementary in Viera.

As a result, most primary school classrooms spend less than 10 minutes a day on longhand lessons, educators estimate."

My observations:
Lots of articles on this topic over the recent months. I think yes, having reasonably legible handwriting is still necessary and relevant. It may not be as relevant 5 years from now, but in the short term a sufficient amount of time should be dedicated to the effective teaching of this skill in school.

Also read the article "Some schools refuse to write off cursive" in the Sacbee: http://www.sacbee.com/education/story/1505448.html

What do you think?