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April 23, 2007

Milton, Delaware & the 21st Century

The world just keeps shrinking!  Today, I am sitting in a meeting in Arlington, VA.  At this minute, I'm listening to a speaker from NASA Learning Technologies and we've just spoken with someone from England via the Internet. 

Of course, I'm not just listening but also reading email.  This just arrived.

I can't help but share that we are beaming with joy for our students who have been recognized on Will Richardson's blog! This has opened up a flood of comments not only on this site, but on their class own classroom Wiki!  How cool is this?!!! Delaware is on world's map for some really awesome stuff!  And we are so grateful for the DITC Teacher of Excellence showcase that propels these opportunities! This recognition is the payoff for all of our hard work!

Check out these comments! Better yet, make your own!

http://weblogg-ed.com/2007/business-cards-we-love-to-see/


Lori Roe
Instructional Technology Specialist
Cape Henlopen School District
http://web.mac.com/lori.roe/iWeb/Roe/  

So off I went to check this out.  Sure enough, Will Richardson, who was the keynote speaker at the Delaware Instructional Technology Conference last week, has commented on his blog.  That's cool because he is one of the big names right now in using the Internet effectively in the classroom.

But cooler than that are the comments on his blog.  The 8th graders in Milton, Delaware are commenting on the blog of the author of the textbook that their teacher used last summer in a university class.  They are commenting along with many educators from around the world. 

I spend a lot of time talking to educators about 21st Century Learning.  This is happening now in Milton, Delaware.

Posted by Pat on 12:50 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 5, 2007

New Internet Safety Wrinkles

This week, I'm updating my presentation called "Social Networking, Internet Safety and the Collision called MySpace" to present at the Delaware Instructional Technology Conference 2007. Since last March, I have been delivering versions of this presentation to various faculty and parent groups. With last year's news blitz of scare stories, many of them true and many of them staged, I tended to emphasize safety over networking. But this was hard for me since I really believe in the value of networking for authentic learning. Hopefully, I hit a balance.

As more study has gone on, it seems that, just like in real life, kids that engage in risky or promiscuous behavior are the ones that are most likely to get approached by predators. What that really means is that parents should incorporate a digital version of "don't talk to strangers" into the usual repertoire. What it also means is that kids who use the social networking sites intelligently can do so intelligently.

Okay, so now that we've got MySpace and FaceBook pretty much under control, two new sites may give some pause. Right now there are two big deals in the tech community. Twitter.com allows anyone to do real-time blogging from their computer or cellphone. Each "tweet" is limited to 140 characters. What is interesting is the frequency that these come at you. There are also new mashups that incorporate tweets in realtime. The most famous of these is twittervision.com.

The second one is justin.tv. This fellow has committed to wearing a camera and microphone 24-7 for the rest of his life! Currently the tech community is wondering about his prospects for marriage and dating.

Posted by Pat on 10:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack