Disqus - Latest Comments for benwildeboer

Re: The Good Old Days

benwildeboer — Sun, 24 Jan 2016 21:11:46 -0000

Oddly, was just sitting down tonight thinking about how little I've been on twitter and any blogs recently- lamenting a bit on missing being a part of a community that I had found extremely rewarding, fun, and interesting.

Sure, I have a baby now, so some blame goes there, but (twitter at least) definitely has exploded in popularity to a degree that, as you mentioned Bill, there's a whole Tragedy of the Commons thing going on.

Dean, I don't see any problem with remembering the "good ol' days" fondly- I know I do- but I also think it's our responsibility to try to rethink how to best use these spaces given their current reality instead of simply pining for the past. Commenting and interacting with more posts seems like a good step in the blog-space. I certainly don't have any great suggestions. Perhaps reducing the number of people I follow on twitter would help (or blowing it all up ala John Pederson?), but reshaping how I use twitter to recapture some of the tight community feel it once had feels like it'll be more difficult.

Thanks for the post & conversation- the seeming loss of community (or difficulty in maintaining community) has been a topic I've been thinking about a lot lately.

Re: See The First “Selfie” In History Taken by Robert Cornelius, a Philadelphia Chemist, in 1839

benwildeboer — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 17:27:17 -0000

These are great! I /may/ have spent a good part of an hour cruising through all 108 categories. Thanks for sharing this!

Re: The Rutherford Model of the Atom: 100 Years Old

benwildeboer — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 11:39:16 -0000

Nice summary. I've taught students about atomic theory for many years and have found explaining it as a narrative of discovery helps students get a better sense of the scientific process. Previously, they just envisioned it as something like: "Democritus had an idea, then John Dalton proved him wrong, then ol' J.J. proved Dalton wrong."

I also threw in some credit to Indian atomism (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... as well, just because it's pretty easy to get all Greek-Western Civ-centric with science and totally miss that other cultures were doing some serious thinking themselves (though Dalton clearly was familiar with Democritus' work, and it's doubtful he knew anything of the Jains.

Re: What Are the Sources of the Energy Sources?

benwildeboer — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:14:58 -0000

Love it.

When discussing how power plants work I told them they all basically work the exact same way (except photovoltaics): You just need to spin some big magnets by a lot of wire. The tricky part is getting the energy to spin those magnets in the first place...

Re: Teacher Needs in Anticipation of the Instructional Use of Technology

benwildeboer — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 17:19:38 -0000

I agree with Scott. As the newly christened "Instructional Technology Support" at my school, I've been looking for writing such as this. You delivered in quite a timely manner. :-)

Re: Focus: What You See Is What You Get

benwildeboer — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:31:26 -0000

This came through my reader at a very timely moment. We've been told that the "one and only goal for this year" is to make AYP. Yikes. As a result instead of using our brand new "collaboration" time to truly collaborate, share wisdom & knowledge, plan with other teachers, etc. we're using it to design and "analyze" test-prep materials. We've taken what could've been a very powerful time to improve school culture and student learning and turned it into nearly worthless drudgery because we're focusing on AYP instead of student learning. It has me quite bothered.

@Deb: Love the ideas. Those are exactly the types of planning & discussions I'd like to see more schools take up. Why treat students like they aren't capable of solving real-word problems?

Re: District Support - A Second Draft

benwildeboer — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:55:12 -0000

I couldn't agree more with your first statement. Too often technology is leveraged as PR (often through interactive white boards it seems) without considering whether the technology is improving the way we do school or simply facilitating old paradigms in new ways (speaks to your second point).

I'm not sure why the question, "Will this improve teaching and learning?" isn't asked more often when technology money is being spent.

Re: Help with Amazing List of Book Reviews

benwildeboer — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:14:35 -0000

LibraryThing.com can generate an RSS feed and/or HTML for any users reviews. I haven't used this feature for my LibraryThing account, so I'm not positive of how it works. However, LibraryThing will let anyone search through a user's book list by author, title, date read, etc. and read reviews from individual users as well. I'm not sure if this works for commenting, but perhaps someone with better technical skill knows how to create a blog that automatically generates posts off of a separate RSS feed?

Just brainstorming here.

Re: Social Media Success Plan for Beginners: 6 Hours for 6 Weeks

benwildeboer — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:02:56 -0000

I like it. :-)

Thanks!

Re: Social Media Success Plan for Beginners: 6 Hours for 6 Weeks

benwildeboer — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:50:59 -0000

Good points all. Is there a certain type of group that you would start with RSS then go to blogging? Or have you found that starting with blogging is generally the best course for most groups?

Re: Social Media Success Plan for Beginners: 6 Hours for 6 Weeks

benwildeboer — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:17:51 -0000

This is a nice, simple, breakdown of how to get a foothold in the social media frontier. Thanks for sharing!

If I was presenting this, I might switch the blogging and RSS feed aggregator. My reasoning would be to give students a chance to see some well-read blogs, see what the authors are doing right; how to design posts (w/ eyerests and all that) before having them start their own blogs. This could also give them some food for thought which can be easily turned around into a reflective blog post.

What's your reasoning for having students blog first? I'm thinking of proposing a workshop for teachers at my school at some point, and would like to hear some different views on this matter. Thanks!

Re: YouTube and Jordan School District Policy

benwildeboer — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:29:31 -0000

Very nicely done. This is a big step up from many districts (including mine) which block YouTube for students and teachers. I've been told YouTube's blocked status is non-negotiable. This is a sad state of affairs considering the wealth of quality educational videos on YouTube.

While I'd love for my district to have the same level of YouTube acceptance that Jordan has, I still think the "Have your principal or their designee preview and approve all designated online content," line is a little excessive. I understand how this part of the policy might be considered necessary to address legal and accountability issues, however, I doubt many principals want to spend the time to preview every teacher's YouTube picks. Not to mention (to me, at least), it carries an undertone of, "teachers can't be trusted to recognize appropriate fair-use videos." I know that's not what you're probably going for, but sometimes all the "oversight" makes it feel like administrators don't think I can function as a professional educator without them looking over my shoulder.

Again, I would love to work in a district with the technology policies and technology curriculum director of the Jordan School District. I'm just projecting my perhaps overly optimistic ideas on what the ideal technology policies should be. :-)

Re: 21st Century Learning System - Start at the Top

benwildeboer — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:20:01 -0000

Hmm....

I guess I don't disagree that if administrators get on board lots of good stuff can happen quickly (as long as the implementation is well thought out). However, in my humble experience, I have not come across these administrators in my buildings. In my experience, most technological change is driven at the teacher & parent level. A few teachers start using technology to great effect. They show a few other teachers, these teachers quickly run out of enough laptops/interactive whiteboards/etc. to use them as much as they would like, so they talk to their administrators about getting more.

Admin can be a big help /if/ they're on board. If not, it's really up to the teachers to prove the worth of the technology.

Re: ...Leading the Blind

benwildeboer — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:01:13 -0000

Sounds like you've had a frustrating week or two. Lots of posts on ignorant educators...

I'm very much with you. I've had several frustrating weeks myself lately with administrative, bureaucratic, double-speak: "We want technology in the classrooms!" "No, not THAT technology." And so on...

It's tough fighting the good fight. ;-)

Re: The Ugly Side of Open Education?

benwildeboer — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:51:42 -0000

I think you've hit on why so many teachers keep their doors closed with black paper over that little window alongside the door frame. They know they're putting out sub-par stuff, and they'd prefer if you didn't know it.

Over the years I've also found a direct relationship in teaching to be true: The greater the vociferousness of the defense of the curriculum the less the curriculum is engaging, effective, or well-planned.

Re: I Want My Google 1983

benwildeboer — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:20:57 -0000

The first thing that came to mind when I read this:

Oh...Snap!

Re: Perspectives and the Future of Education

benwildeboer — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:19:19 -0000

Interestingly, I just purchased Disrupting Class (like seriously 5 minutes ago). When I first heard of the book the ideas you mention here weren't what I was thinking the book was about. At any rate, I look forward to reading it and engaging the ideas promoted in the book.

Re: Perspectives and the Future of Education

benwildeboer — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 07:45:47 -0000

Here's my fear:

As computers become more and more prevalent in educational settings, some school boards will look for ways to "improve" upon the situation. Unfortunately, often this means purchasing some pre-packaged educational program. So, now you have this software that "teaches" students math, science, writing, or whatever. Now the school goes ahead and decides that because this stuff is pretty much student guided, let's dump 60 kids into a computer lab with one teacher, since really, the teacher is just monitoring the lab anyway, not doing any real teaching. In fact, maybe they decide they could pull out the teacher all together, and pay a parapro a less than fair hourly wage to be the lab monitor.

Hopefully it'll never come to that. But I'm sure in some places, at some time, it will. :-(

Re: If I Can Do This, Anybody Can

benwildeboer — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:08:46 -0000

I've taken this as a call to quit the excuses and start making some waves at my new school. What am I waiting for? If I want to see change, I'd better start pushing for it.

Re: Twitter Nevermind

benwildeboer — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:05:43 -0000

Good point. I don't find twitter all that valuable if I can only check it once for a quick second every 4 hours or so. It's valuable when it's running in the background all day for me to scan and pick up blog posts (like this one), interesting links, and worthwhile news. It's all about scanning.

That being said, I do feel like I haven't been much of a edu-twit lately. I think I need to put a little more education into my twitter stream, less snarky thoughts. The world can only take so much of my snark.

Re: Life Skills 101

benwildeboer — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:39:14 -0000

I've been having fun at my new district w/ all the "state mandated activities" we're supposed to do. In theory they're designed to "help students prepare for the state standardized tests." In reality they're poorly designed with questionable outcomes, and they take up unnecessarily long periods of time.

Just who decides these things are they best way to a brighter future?

So, did you make any comment to your friendly neighborhood school? Was there any reaction?

Re: Fail

benwildeboer — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:45:27 -0000

The new school I'm teaching at just implemented a "confiscate upon sight" policy for cell phones. No warnings, no safe zones. Anytime between the first bell and the last bell cell phones are totally and utterly banned. Worse, 98% of the staff had nearly blood-thirsty looks in their eyes when given this power.

It sounds to me that last year they allowed cell phones whenever, wherever, without any restrictions (i.e. no text messaging friends during activities, etc.), and now they're reacting on the extreme. Needless to say, there are lots of NO CELL PHONE signs popping up.

Re: The Most Effective Teachers Have Much More To Learn

benwildeboer — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:48:36 -0000

I think that's the most frustrating thing about the conversations we have in this forum. Look at all the people who replied to this post. Everyone seems to agree and found Michael Pressley's comment to be quite true (I do as well). However, the audience that could really gain the most from participating in this forum are those "weaker teachers." The teachers when confronted with new ideas or professional development say, "That's great in theory, but..."

I think that Scott McLeod and David Jakes were hinting at this need to include these teachers in this type of discussion. In reality, we're not a representative population here. We need to take our learning and disseminate it through our buildings and professional practice. Stand up for what we believe in and be willing to (nicely & professionally) stand up to those who suggest we're wasting our time.

Re: Poor, Poor, Pluto

benwildeboer — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:31:25 -0000

That throws a bit of a wrench in Encyclopaedia Brittanica's longstanding claim that Wikipedia is inferior because no one can guarantee the accuracy of their content. :-)

Wikipedia has become a powerful example of the potential of the crowd to create something of great value for no tangible reward. Now if we could only focus those powers to stop global warming, fight poverty, and end discrimination...