Month: September 2006

The striking thing to me about that milestone (one billionth Internet user) is not the enormity of the number, however. More interesting, perhaps, is that the one billionth person to jump onto the Web could just as easily been an eight-year-old kid from Sweden or the South Bronx (or, for that matter, an eighty-year-old from South Africa) who sat down at a computer, opened a browser, and for the first time started connecting to the sum of human knowledge we are collectively building online. Furthermore, that eight-year-old had just as much ability to start contributing what she might know about horses or her hometown or whatever her passions might be, becoming an author in her own right, teaching the rest of us what she knows.

The New Face of Learning

Read more of this excellent piece by Richardson at EduTopia.  PDF is also available.

technorati tags:warlick, web20, willrichardson, edutopia

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I can’t really get my mind on work, as much as I have to do. My NECC proposals aren’t in yet, I have much more work to do on the K12 Online Conference address. I have two recorded interveiws to make into podcastes, and all I can think about is a weekend off. Yepeee!

Brenda and I will leave in a couple of hours for the six-hour drive up into the mountains of North Carolina to visit with our daughter at WCU and to enjoy the Mountain Heritage Festival. We both graduated from that fine institution about thirty years ago, and we are both looking forward to walking the campus again. Much has changed about the university, but they haven’t moved one single mountain.

Added Later: I wonder if I can still clog! Of course the last time both of my feet left the ground at the same time was during the Reagan Administration 😉

Here’s a great little video of the festival.

Image Citation:
Ac4It, “Southwest Bluegrass.” Ac4It’s Photostream. 20 Apr 2005. 29 Sep 2006 <http://flickr.com/photos/ac4lt/10155407/>.

technorati tags:warlick, wcu, weekend, bluegrass, mountainheritage

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After spending all day, yesterday, driving around Raleigh and talking into my camera, this was an interesting thing to find this morning.

Podcastingjust turned two years old and this weekend is the second annual Podcastand Portable Media Expo in Ontario, California. With that in mind, hereare PFAs 10 Podcasting Movers and Shakers. This isn’t a Top 10 becausethere’s no ranking. These are people who are actively making thepodcasting space more interesting, profitable and more accessible to awider audience.

PodcastingHowto, Tutorials, Articles, Hardware, Equipment and Information -Podcast Free America – 10 Podcasting Movers and Shakers

It’s got me scratching my head, especially since I’ve let the old podcasting habit slip a bit lately. The names here are the shakers, the ones who have put the work into it. I just like to tell agood story!

technorati tags:podcastfreeamerica, warlick, podcast, podcasting, education

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Setting up the Summit Room

I had another of one those singular experiences yesterday, one of events that I know I’ll be carrying with me for a long time, and that will color a lot of what I’ll be talking and writing about in the future. As you know, I have been working in the Owen Sound area of Ontario, Canada, with the Bluewater school board, covering an enormous part of the province. I delivered a keynote for their beginning of the school year event, a workshop that afternoon (more about that later), and a special public presentation for the community that evening.

While Wake County (where I live) and many other areas are seeingunprecidented population growth, rural parts of the country, continent,and world are witnessing a drain of their population (learn more about The Flight of the Creative Class ISBN 006075690X). Bluewater is concerned about a decreasing enrollment, and has taken an unusual measure. They’re treating their students like customersand trying to learn what their customers want.

Students Preparing their Cameras

This is how I spent yesterday, facilitating their first Student Summit. It started with set-up at the CAW convent center in Port Elgin,Ontario ( a magnificent ride up from Owen Sound). It was high tech andhigh proximity. Eleven high schools and feeder schools wererepresented with students from the full range of achievement — overachievers and at-risks. Each table had a recorder with video camera whorecorded as much of the conversations as they could. Each table had awiki page with which to record their thoughts and conclusions. Theirtasks ranged from general tech access issues to, “How would you goabout training your teacher for a video game tournament?” Each tablealso created a New Century School House style classroom, describing the classrooms they believe are more appropriate to them and their time.

I can’t share any of the data besides a closing panel with the teachers who were present, talking about what they heard and learned in the conversations. I hope to podcast this conversation soon. I do know that the district learned that there is much that they are doing right. They also learned that there is much yet to be done, before they are truely teaching learners that their children are, instead of the students their classrooms were designed to teach.

This was an enormously rewarding experience and a visionary action on the part of the board’s leadership.

technorati tags:warlick, studentsummit, education

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I’ve already written the first draft of tomorrow’s Technology & Learning blog, based on a new report from the PEW Internet in American Life Project on the future of the Internet.  No sooner do I put that away, but another report comes in, “26 Million Americans were Logging onto the News or Information about the campaign on a typical day in August, the Highest such Figure Recorded by the Pew Internet Project.“  The figure is up from 21 million in November of 2004 (presidential election), and up from 11 million the same time in 2002, the last mid-term campaign season.

I wonder, for the sake of conversation, how much of this results from the increased ubiquity of the Internet, increase in bandwidth, increased political discourse, via the blogosphere, or a combination of all of these.

The report states that the increase in people logging on for politics is notable for two reasons.

First, the telephone survey that captured the finding was conducted in August, usually a month of relative quiet in the political world. Second, mid-term elections campaigns tend to draw much less public interest than those that take place in presidential election years.

What do you think?  ..and of course, how does this impact what and how we teach?

technorati tags:warlick, technology, politics, education

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