Forced Obsolescence
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Edtech Survivalist
In my ever greater efforts to make a fool of myself in the name of educational technology I agreed to do an “interview” for Jim “EdupunkHe made it to WIRED magazine” Groom’s Edtech Survivalist blog. We filmed this on the flyObviously without a script in a creek by my house. Some of the kids wandering around aren’t even ours. The swamp comment towards the end was my favorite as it was totally ad-libbed based on one of the neighbor kid’s comments. I highly recommend this as a way to meet your neighbors (there are strange men in camouflage with mullets filming your children) but probably not such a good way to make a great first impression. Yes, I am considering growing a mullet after seeing just how good it looks.
Nightmare (guard your passwords)
An educational technology blog I followed out of Georgia (SEGA Tech) seems to have been abducted by a porn site. It’s possible the author has turned to the porn business but I kind of doubt it. A not so nice reminder to keep your passwords secure and your software/apps updated. That’d be quite a nightmare. It’d be all some people would need to outlaw school blogging forever or get you fired. I’d suggest going the passphrase route if at all possible. I’ve been using pass phrases when possible after reading this article. It’s kind of long but I’ve cut out the relevant chunk below. So here’s the deal – I don’t want you to use passwords, I want you to use pass-PHRASES. What is a pass-phrase you ask? Let’s take a look at some of my recent pass-phrases that I’ve used inside Microsoft for my ‘password’. “If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane“ (Jimmy Buffet rules) “Send the pain below!“ (I like Chevell too) “Mean people suck!“ (it’s true) So why are these pass-phrases so great? 1. They meet all password complexity requirements due to the use of upper / lowercase letters and punctuation (you don’t HAVE to use numbers to meet password complexity requirements) 2. They are so freaking easy for me to remember it’s not even […]
Google Zeitgeist as a Writing Prompt
So the folks over at Google Blogoscoped had a great idea. Use Google trends as a writing prompt. For instance, if the top queries are … 1. subaru impreza 2. priyanka chopra 3. build a bear … and so on … … then your narrative may go like this, to quote from Simon’s try: I went out and bought a brand new Subaru Impreza last week, which was very scary as I have only just passed my test. I took Priyanka Chopra, the Indian film star, with me to keep an eye on me and exert a calming influence as I was pretty nervous because the Impreza is wild beast of car. “Let’s go build a bear”, I shrieked as we weaved through traffic, “an actual live bear that will do our bidding”. “Good idea,” agreed Priyanka, “This bear could drive us around too, anything would (and so on) … Morphs pretty well into a fun writing prompt that uses subjects that are, by definition, things people are interested in. Ways to take it to the next level- write the zeitgeist as a character or historical figure use the words to take the pass the sentence game to the next level see who can make the longest sensible sentence with the fewest additional words (not listed in the trends list) […]
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[…] the teacher not? Im sure other thoughts will occur to you. Have a say in the comments. [image via Bionic Teaching] Tags: laptops, teaching, […]
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[…] exactly as they are right now. Waiting for the ideal learning space may never happen but as Tom Woodward’s great photo illustrates, schools will be eventually forced into change whether they want to or not. […]
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Comments on this post
Fascinating image, Tom, great eye! Be prepared for lots of people coming by to borrow it. It says a thousand words about how important it is to adopt pedagogy to match laptops.
This equally talks about how fast the technology is changing. I’m often in the same pose in meetings – I find that almost all of my online communications can get done on my mobile.
Thanks Jeff.
It is interesting what one can see as a visitor.
I’ve got a number of shots of admins doing the same thing at meetings. I plan on doing some comparison pictures at some point.
Great shot. I guess that filters and behavioural demands are never a substitute for somehow getting the pupils engaged with what is going on in the classroom.
At the end of last semester I had a discussion with a group of students who said that technology had not really changed anything. One said “Here I stare at Facebook and don’t pay attention to what is going on in class, but before, in middle school, I just stared out the window for three years. In the end, it’s the same really.”
Simon,
That’s a perfect quote, sad but perfect.
It is a two way street but there’s a tendency to substitute rules for any attempt at engagement. The idea seems to be that if we block out enough fun and interesting things students will have no choice but to pay attention to things that are boring. I think we’ve proven that’s not true. There’s always a window to stare out, a wall to state at or a nap to take.
For the most part, I’ve seen filters primarily serve to foster innovation.
It is intriguing that the closed laptop sits ideally there while the phone becomes a gaming device. Is this due to lack of engagement? retro-fitting of the laptops? filters?
Regardless, there are some great discussions surrounding the hypothetical situations that would lead to such a shot.
Ryan- I’d like to hear more about filters fostering innovation. Do you mean students find innovative ways around them or that they have to adapt other tools because the normal ones are blocked?
I’m not sure the student was playing a game. I don’t think I said that. I’m really not sure what he was doing. Why he was doing it is probably a combination of the possibilities you listed (although I don’t know what retro-fitting a laptop means).