Monday, March 19, 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Double Booking
Just to clarify with everyone, teachers CAN be double booked in the library as long as they are not trying to use the Macs at the same time or trying to receive instruction from me at the same time. I hope this further increases access to the library for teachers and students. If you would like to make an appointment, please email, call, or see me if you wish to make an appointment at the same time as another teacher. Thanks.
Steve Miller
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Pretty cool free online essay grader
I came across a website http://www.paperrater.com. It's a little like the Vantage computerized essay grading program that was popular several years back in LAUSD. While I normally abhor the idea of computers grading essays (though studies have found that it's becoming much more accurate), I see no reason why students can't use it to help edit and revise their own papers. While I wouldn't use it as a tool for summative assessment, anything that will help students during the writing process is OK in my book.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Really cool app
Having now worked at five schools, one of the biggest challenges that I see is with communication. An email blast is fine, but what happens when people don't always check their email or only check it once a day. What happens with messages that are much more immediate? Well, let me introduce you to Celly. Celly allows for group texting. Let's say that a teacher wants to send all students a message concerning homework or wants to do a group poll. Now they can just text everyone. It's easy and it's immediate. Many students are already texting. Why not use that to your advantage. Celly isn't just for students. It allows you to give parents updates about your class or governance councils. It allows principals or other staff leaders to send messages to an entire faculty. It allows club or ASB sponsors to send messages to all its members.
It's very easy to create a group or "cell". Interested members can join by sending a text. You can join or leave a group if you so choose. Owners of "cells" can set the cell to be public or private and if they want cell members to respond or simply as a one-way alert system.
Whether I'm able to stay in the library or not, I plan on using this right now and in the classroom. If you are interested in joining my cell then text @cclalibrary to 23559 (celly). I encourage all teachers and administrators to use this really cool tool.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Ten Megatrends Impacting Learning (Repost)
I came across a real interesting blog post:
In a world where libraries are completely reinventing themselves, where universities and schools are moving away from labs to BYOD, and where the focus of everything seems to be on mobiles —what will be the role of technology in the next decade? What do leading institutions need to be doing now to prepare? What are the strategies that will provide them the most flexibility? The greatest competitive advantage?
These are the overarching questions that recently drove the discussions at 10th anniversary New Media Consortium Horizon Project special convocation and retreat. Over its decade of work, the Horizon Project has grown to the point that it may very well be producing the single most important body of research into emerging technology within the world of education. With more than one million downloads and 27 translations in the past ten years, the NMC Horizon Report series provides the higher education, K-12, and museum communities across the globe a key strategic technology planning tool that is continuously refreshed and updated.
The NMC and the Horizon Project are best known for its flagship Horizon Reports that focus on higher education and K-12 globally. Now, with 10 years of research that has helped us understand the nature and range of impact of emerging technolgies, the 100 thoughtleaders involved in the retreat have moved from reflections and metalearnings from the last decade, to notions of renewal and transformation, to ultimately metatrends and action.
Out of the discussion, 28 metatrends were identified. Of these, the ten most significant are
listed here and will be the focus of the upcoming NMC Horizon Project 10th Anniversary Report:
listed here and will be the focus of the upcoming NMC Horizon Project 10th Anniversary Report:
1. The world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative. As more and more companies move to the global marketplace, it is common for work teams to span continents and time zones. Not only are teams geographically diverse, they are also culturally diverse.
2. People expect to work, learn, socialize, and play whenever and wherever they want to. Increasingly, people own more than one device, using a computer, smartphone, tablet, and ereader. People now expect a seamless experience across all their devices.
3. The Internet is becoming a global mobile network — and already is at its edges.
Mobithinking reports there are now more than 6 billion active cell phone accounts. 1.2 billion have mobile broadband as well, and 85% of new devices can access the mobile web.
4. The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based and delivered over utility networks, facilitating the rapid growth of online videos and rich media. Our current expectation is that the network has almost infinite capacity and is nearly free of cost. One hour of video footage is uploaded every second to YouTube; over 250 million photos are sent to Facebook every day.
5. Openness — concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information — is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world. As authoritative sources lose their importance, there is need for more curation and other forms of validation to generate meaning in information and media.
6. Legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices common in society. In an age where so much of our information, records, and digital content are in the cloud, and often clouds in other legal jurisdictions, the very concept of ownership is blurry.
7. Real challenges of access, efficiency, and scale are redefining what we mean by quality and success. Access to learning in any form is a challenge in too many parts of the world, and efficiency in learning systems and institutions is increasingly an expectation of governments — but the need for solutions that scale often trumps them both. Innovations in these areas are increasingly coming from unexpected parts of the world, including India, China, and central Africa.
8. The Internet is constantly challenging us to rethink learning and education, while refining our notion of literacy. Institutions must consider the unique value that each adds to a world in which information is everywhere. In such a world, sense-making and the ability to assess the credibility of information and media are paramount.
9. There is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and training. Traditional authority is increasingly being challenged, not only politically and socially, but also in academia — and worldwide. As a result, credibility, validity, and control are all notions that are no longer givens when so much learning takes place outside school systems.
10. Business models across the education ecosystem are changing. Libraries are deeply reimagining their missions; colleges and universities are struggling to reduce costs across the board. The educational ecosystem is shifting, and nowhere more so than in the world of publishing, where efforts to reimagine the book are having profound success, with implications that will touch every aspect of the learning enterprise.
2. People expect to work, learn, socialize, and play whenever and wherever they want to. Increasingly, people own more than one device, using a computer, smartphone, tablet, and ereader. People now expect a seamless experience across all their devices.
3. The Internet is becoming a global mobile network — and already is at its edges.
Mobithinking reports there are now more than 6 billion active cell phone accounts. 1.2 billion have mobile broadband as well, and 85% of new devices can access the mobile web.
4. The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based and delivered over utility networks, facilitating the rapid growth of online videos and rich media. Our current expectation is that the network has almost infinite capacity and is nearly free of cost. One hour of video footage is uploaded every second to YouTube; over 250 million photos are sent to Facebook every day.
5. Openness — concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information — is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world. As authoritative sources lose their importance, there is need for more curation and other forms of validation to generate meaning in information and media.
6. Legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices common in society. In an age where so much of our information, records, and digital content are in the cloud, and often clouds in other legal jurisdictions, the very concept of ownership is blurry.
7. Real challenges of access, efficiency, and scale are redefining what we mean by quality and success. Access to learning in any form is a challenge in too many parts of the world, and efficiency in learning systems and institutions is increasingly an expectation of governments — but the need for solutions that scale often trumps them both. Innovations in these areas are increasingly coming from unexpected parts of the world, including India, China, and central Africa.
8. The Internet is constantly challenging us to rethink learning and education, while refining our notion of literacy. Institutions must consider the unique value that each adds to a world in which information is everywhere. In such a world, sense-making and the ability to assess the credibility of information and media are paramount.
9. There is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and training. Traditional authority is increasingly being challenged, not only politically and socially, but also in academia — and worldwide. As a result, credibility, validity, and control are all notions that are no longer givens when so much learning takes place outside school systems.
10. Business models across the education ecosystem are changing. Libraries are deeply reimagining their missions; colleges and universities are struggling to reduce costs across the board. The educational ecosystem is shifting, and nowhere more so than in the world of publishing, where efforts to reimagine the book are having profound success, with implications that will touch every aspect of the learning enterprise.
O'Connell, Judy. "Ten Meta-trends Impacting Learning." Hey Jude: Learning in an Online World. 01 Feb. 2012. Web. 02 Feb. 2012. <http://heyjude.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/ten-meta-trends-impacting-learning/>.
Friday, January 27, 2012
New Video Resource
Ok, I realize that the DVDs that are on order are taking FOREVER to come in. I called and left a message with the Coordinating Field Librarian that is helping me with the order. I'm still waiting to hear back. In the meantime, LAUSD has introduced a new video resource that appears to be extremely helpful, NBC Learn. This is a new partnership between LAUSD and NBC News. Below is a video that explains it. There's some really, really cool features to it. And, it's not blocked like with YouTube (LAUSD has added this new Education Filter).
Please let me know if this link doesn't work. I'm not sure if you have to be logged in or not. I would be willing to conduct a PD on it as well. Again, just let me know.
Steve Miller
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
What is SOPA and PIPA? Revisited
I've already posted information about SOPA, but since Wikipedia, Mozilla (Firefox) and other Internet companies are boycotting today, I thought you guys should know about them. Click on the link below for article regarding these two important pending legislations:
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