Monday, November 24, 2008

K12Online Presentation by Scott McLeod on Disruptive Innovation

Leading the Change: Current leadership models are inadequate for disruptive innovations - In this session from the K12Online conference Dr. Scott McLeod explains the concepts Clayton Christensen puts forth in his books, The Innovator's Dilema and Disrupting Class. Whether you read Christensen's books or watch McLeod's presentation the concept of disruptive innovation and how it impacts education is a must read/see/hear for everyone involved in our profession.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Building Your Own Personal Learning Network

This year at TIES I will be presenting a Sunday workshop on building a personal learning network. I created a 15 minute video for that session that I thought I would share with you as it directly addresses and nicely summarizes what we have been doing in our group with our personal learning networks. This is also a video you can take with you to your colleagues to introduce them to the concept of PLNs.

Enjoy!


Building Your Own Personal Learning Network from Carl Anderson on Vimeo.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Open Source & Education

I came across this panel discussion of education fellows today at Pop!Tech. Fascinating and powerful discussion regarding open source principles in education and education reform.



At the end of this video a question is asked, "With all of this technology, what is lost?" What are your thoughts?

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

pride is the driving force

Over at Meandering, our colleague Mr. Martin writes about launching an exciting vodcasting project with his students. Every day, they're filming, editing, and publishing a new Word of the Day as a class vodcast. Parents can view each day's vodcast (vocabcast?) on the class homeroom website; or they can subscribe as they would to any other podcast. Families can discuss the daily word over the dinner table. Parents, take heed: You may need to set an extra place at the dinner table for any Hollywood agents that come knocking. These kids are budding stars of the Neo Lexica Cinema movement.


The prospect of seeing their work published to the world can be a powerful motivator and point of engagement for students. As Mr. Martin notes in his reflection,

Pride is the driving force of this project. When I first introduced it. . . they were glued from the moment I mentioned they would be published on the web!
That's not to say there aren't challenges, both logistical (sustaining and streamlining the vodcast creation process) and colleagial (helping neighboring teachers find time, motivation, and resources to try the same project with their students). Mr. Martin is already thinking about these issues.

None of these resources are at my fingertips at school so how am I suppose to
share this fantastic process with other teachers?
What suggestions do you have for making "this fantastic process" accessible and practical?