Catching up on some blog reading tonight after a very busy week with several projects at work, a bunch of stuff for classes and some prep for a presentation I’m giving next week. I was reading this post from David Warlick that I felt warranted a repost to remember it. He is discussing contemporary literacies, information ethics and our kids. A topic he correctly points out is still getting short shrift in our curriculum. I really like the list he provides of four main concepts that we need to provide some focus on:
* Respect for intellectual property (copyright, etc.)
* Respect for intellectual integrity (respect truth)
* Respect for each other (cause no harm)
* Respect for the information infrastructure

I think that provides a very concise outline of a curriculum unit that should be developed and worked in…ummmm….somewhere. But do yourself a favor - if you refer back to David’s blog, skip the comments. I generally encourage exactly the opposite, but in this case arguments over the definition of ethic just confuse the original (very simple) point.

Just read a very interesting and well written blog post by David Jakes. I need to constantly remember that while I sometimes get frustrated at the resistance to shift in instructional practice, it is absolutely essential to know that these folks [resistant teachers] are, by and large, excellent teachers.

I spent the morning upgrading to the latest version of WordPress (2.2.1) and playing around with the primary new feature it seems to have added - sidebar widgets. You’ll see the layout is slightly different and I’ll probably play around with it a bit more over the coming days. Added a Flickr widget that actually works. And a translate widget that doesn’t quite work, but it should be easy to fix (that uses Google translate and strips out the wrap frame).

Check out this mock periodic chart listing a bunch of good internet resources.  Found it over on Bib2.0, a new blog I found tonight focusing on educational technology with an eye on the school library.  Its published by Jeri Hurd from Pittsburgh.  Another tool that I noticed while visiting was stu.dicio.us, providing some useful tools for students.

Found another new read tonight as well - The Committed Sardine Blog which is put together by the well-known Ian Jukes. The following is an excerpt from their ‘about us’  thing that I found interesting…

“…little known fact about the blue whale is that it is so large that when it decides to swim in a different direction, it can take 2 to 3 minutes to turn 180 degrees. That’s the reason why some people draw a parallel between the blue whale and school. It just seems to take forever for schools to turn things around. Our ability to adapt to changing times helps explain at least in part the rise in demand for vouchers, charter schools, home schooling and virtual schools. There are some people who just don’t believe or don’t want the public school system to turn things around in time.”

While I love the concept and the analogy of the whale and a critical mass of sardines that can shift the entire school, I didn’t really find much content on here worthwhile.  It was more along the lines of a Slashdot for education.

As long as I’m posting some random links here, I want to give a shout out to Google Docs & Spreadsheets.  While I have been aware of these tools for a long time now, I really got turned onto them at NECC and I can see some fantastic application of these fantastic resources in the classroom.  Some of the most powerful features include some decent compatability with MS Office as well as a great sharing feature that allows you to identify people to sahre your document with just by typing their email.  Very slick.

Read an interesting post from David Warlick this morning in which he attempts to compare and contrast instructional reform by describing School 1.0 vs 2.0.  Includes a nifty diagram that is definately worth referencing.