Sunday Night Reading

Well, the Bungals lost in typical Bungal fashion.  Now, they're 0-8 versus Peyton Manning.  At least it looks like the Vikings have come down to their mediocre reality.

Here's what's new in the professional reading this week:

Ten TED Talks for elearning.

I can't get enough TED Talks and these are great.  Adora Svitak's is especially great.

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Here is an interesting post refuting the idea that technology shortens attention spans and distracts the youth of today.

Personally, I think it's a sign of age as you grow older, you start to look differently at the young.  They aren't really all that different than when you were young (different distractions for different times), but you just don't see it that way.

I thought of that when a colleague of mine showed me a picture (on her cell phone no less!) of two teens sitting on their laptops on Facebook messaging each other.

She thought it was proof that their communication skills are suffering; I thought it was awesome.

I think this point is moot.  Unless there's an armageddon event, technology isn't going away.  So let's adapt and adjust.  We just have to do it at a breakneck speed instead of the glacial pace that occurred for the last 100 years.

I love this point that the author makes --

I don't find this question of whether people are more distracted by technology to be very difficult.  THEY ARE MORE DISTRACTED.  But more specifically, we are all more likely to be distracted by things that are changing, dynamic, or more interesting and engaging than what we are currently doing.

If our students are distracted from our boring lectures . . . good.

That's maybe what I love most about using technology: it makes me adapt and strive harder than ever to engage my students.

Here is a great point from the author again about how we - as educators - are really no different from our kids when it comes to being distracted (and if I had a dollar for every time I was in a meeting and a colleague of mine was not paying attention or reading the paper or playing on their iPod, I'd be rich)

 I am an educator, and I love to learn.  Like most of us, I read hundreds of articles and blogs every month, go to dozens of PD sessions, and gaggles of meetings and presentations--an education geek to say the least.  However, you do not have my (nor many of my colleagues, I would guess) full attention at a meeting or presentation if:

• you are minimally prepared (and we can tell)
• you are reading from a Powerpoint
• you are giving me information that I could have read in an email or a memo
• you are lecturing for more than 3-5 minutes at a time
• you are not maximizing the number of interactions that I can have in the room, either with you, my peers, the material that we are working with

Why should it come as any surprise to us that our students should expect the same thing?  How many of these bulleted items relate to the teacher?

So what do we do instead?  What do we do to limit the distractions of our students . . . what is, what do we do to engage our students?

But regardless of my great smartphone, if you

• are over-prepared (and we can tell)
• have a Powerpoint with pictures and videos and interesting dialogue
• are giving me information that I need to have
• are lecturing for more than 3-5 minutes at a time but have different bits of multimedia (sights, sounds, pictures, things to touch and manipulate) that stimulate a number of my senses
• you are maximizing the number of interactions that I can have in the room, either with you, my peers, or the material that we are working with through things such as literacy strategies like Bank On It, Socratic Circles, GOSSIP, and others 

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And if it's not distracting, then hopefully it's disruptive.  Here's a great slideshow.

"I am Disruptive - We are Digital"

I Am Disruptive - We Are Digital from London Knowledge Lab

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I know we hear all the time how our students need to learn how to work in groups and function as part of a team and so on, yet talk to a class full of students and they'll tell you one thing: group work sucks.

I've heard it for ten years now.  Here's one take on how to make it not suck.

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Let's face it, communications have changed.  This is awesome!

And here is something pretty cool as well . . . the video resume



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And here's one from the archives . . . (I still have a couple hundred old emails of links and blogs and videos to be opened (I sent them to myself last summer).  So here's one from the archives.

What's so great about schools in Finland?

Well, there's a lot that makes them great, but my favorites are -

#3 - they don't focus on tests

and

#5 - they trust their teachers