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What happened to my nifty little Blogger widget?

All week, every day, I read my feeds, emails, A list blogger posts and pages of tweets with diligence. Keen not to miss a beat or useful tweet. It takes hours. I still love it!
At the same time, I wonder if I can keep up this pace. Is there any way to filter better what I like to read? At this time, I have not found a way.
All ideas, will be well-received.

Leadership 2.0 «

Leadership 2.0:

Dean Groom wrote in his "teaching and Learning Design" blog, a post that will stimulate another round of valuable discussions by blog and twitterati on what needs to be done.

"I listened this week to people talking again about the ‘skills’ students need as 21st Century Learners. They spoke of their frustration that their community leaders didn’t ‘get it’. This made me think about the polorisation they were discussing; advocates talk of media literacy and collaboration while many schools focus on ‘skills’ that deliver the current measure of attainment – examinations. So what makes a ‘great’ leader?"

Several other well-known bloggers have been posting on this over the last years. The time has come to sort this out. The pace of change in schools just has to pick up.

Go and read Dean's post and add your voice to this urgent need. Frustration about the "glacial pace" needs to be translated into proactive action and active agitation about what really matters in school leadership.

I'll publish this post as Version 1 and over the coming days I'll add the links to the other powerful posts. If you want to do the search, start with posts by: Scott McLeod. Miguel Guhlin, Wes Fryer, Karl Fisch, Darcy Moore ... add more if you read this.

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.