Disqus - Latest Comments for stevekinney

Re: Commission recommends broad overhaul, with few specifics

Steve Kinney — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 19:31:27 -0000

Let's take this one at a time.

No. The iZone is part of the Department of Education.

Yes. Joel Klein does work for News Corps, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. But the company he runs is called Amplify and it's not affiliated with the Department of Education as far as I know. (That said, I'm just a teacher and I'm not particularly privy to the contracts and whatnot.) The iZone has been up and running for 2.5 years—2 full years without Klein at the helm, so it's hard to call it a Joel Klein joint (I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader as to whether or not that is a good thing or not).

I don't think I ever said anything about sitting students in front of a computer and passing that off as learning. In fact, I said the opposite. Students have been doing work at alone at home (outside the classroom) for years—it's called homework and—in my experience—it's a pretty lonely ordeal.

At my school, we roll with a blended model. The online learning piece allows students to collaborate when they're not sitting in the same room together. It's the opposite of lonely. In addition, students have had the chance to review the material and familiarize themselves with it. When they come in to class, the teacher can skip the boring chalk and talk and dig in to interesting projects that let students apply what they've learned to the real world.

Other schools do it differently. Let's say you're over 18 and you're a returning student who needs to polish off some high school credits, but you have a job that you need in order to help your family makes ends meet. Well then, maybe an online class is right for you.

I'm not so much cheerleading for the program itself; it has it's good points and it has some areas where it could certainly improve. I'm cheerleading the fact that after decades of one-size-fits-all teaching, we can finally experiment with tools to provide more individualize instruction and even new educational settings that couldn't have existed when I was in school.

This is uncharted territory and I think we—as teachers—have a lot to learn. I hope that in 10 years, we can look back on the work we're doing now and see how far we've come. But the fact is that it's a learning process and not something we're going to get perfect at the first pass.

That said, it's myopic to write it off because someone you don't like worked on it at one point and now works at a corporation you don't like—don't you think? Yea, it could be done poorly. There may be someone out there who is just sitting students in front of a computer, but I suspect that kind of teacher is in the extreme minority and I don't have a lot of patience for teachers who are trying to work creatively with new tools and approaches that happen to involve computers be derided based on a potentially fictitious counter-example.

Re: Commission recommends broad overhaul, with few specifics

Steve Kinney — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 12:11:00 -0000

I'm interested in the recommendation that the State create "innovation zones." This has something that, I can only imagine, is based on the similarly named program in New York City and—with any luck—will resembles the city's program in practice as well. I teach at a school that has been involved in the iLearnNYC initiative for the last three years and, in my experience, it has been a phenomenal program that has continued to evolve and improve upon itself each year. The programs that fall under the umbrella of the City's innovation zone—iZone 360 in addition to iLearnNYC—encourage schools to rethink how they approach instruction in order to maximize the benefit for their students.

The program has allowed us to offer courses to our juniors and seniors that we would not have been able to offer otherwise (most notably: AP courses). It allows us to be more flexible with our scheduling and use the time students spend with their teachers having rich discussions about the content they were introduced to outside of the classroom. Additionally, as part of the program, we now have access to a wide number of instructional media like NBC Learn and Discovery—not to mention the equipment we've received as part of the program, which has been a tremendous blessing.

Basically, it's saved us money and allowed us to do a better job serving our students and I'd like to see something similar at the state level and based on what's happening in New York City.

Re: I still have Cloak beta invitations to give away

Steve Kinney — Mon, 23 May 2011 17:16:25 -0000

I'd like one! hello /at/ stevekinney /dot/ net

Re: Questions?

Steve Kinney — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 19:42:22 -0000

Two possibilities: 1) You made a teeny, tiny error somewhere. 2) It doesn't like you. It's most likely the first one. Try to figure out where on the page things are beginning to fall apart. Start there. Make sure your tags are closed. Check for typos.

Trust me. I know—it can be frustrating some times.

Re: Questions?

Steve Kinney — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 05:15:06 -0000

Those buttons aren't all that hard. They're mostly CSS, which we're going to begin covering next week.

Re: http://web.scholarsnyc.com/post/1178508396

Steve Kinney — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:48:08 -0000

I was just playing around with the look. I can change it back. I started to think it looked a little ugly.

Re: [Sponsor] Friday Freebies: 5 Copies of Applied Security Visualization

Steve Kinney — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:37:30 -0000

I'm super thankful for all the great resources on the internet re: data visualization.

Re: Teacher Burnout: 20 Insights From a 17-Year Veteran Teacher On The Brink of Burnout

Steve Kinney — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:01:43 -0000

I remember reading somewhere—or being told by my mother, a teacher—that the determining factor between whether or not a teacher made it past the 5-year mark was "Do you have a hobby or passion outside of teaching?"

Re: [Sponsor] Friday Freebies: 1,000 Business Cards from AllBusinessCards

Steve Kinney — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:31:30 -0000

Awesome.

Re: 110 4th Avenue Starts Renting

Steve Kinney — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:20:10 -0000

@Bklynight Please send me info about that apartment building on Warren between 3rd and 4th. stevenkinney / gmail period com

Re: The Entertainment Gathering - How to Hang with Bezos, Yo-Yo Ma, and More

Steve Kinney — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:17:39 -0000

Do you know if your talk will be posted online like the TED Talks are or like your presentation at the DO lectures was?

That would be a great opportunity for those of us not fortunate to attend to soak up some additional information.

Re: Hudsn dot org

Steve Kinney — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:05:55 -0000

Have you tried clicking to change the color?

Re: TypePad Announces Native iPhone 3G Application

Steve Kinney — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:11:00 -0000

Your title suggests that the TypePad application will be for the 3G version of the iPhone. Is there any reason to believe that it won't work for the EDGE iPhone (using WiFi at the very least)?

Re: When “Keeping in Touch” Hurts vs. Helps You (Plus: Win a Virtual Assistant for 2008)

Steve Kinney — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:33:33 -0000

Okay, I realize that I'm speaking to the master of contacting mentors and that most tricks will not work.

That being said, I've read The Four Hour Work Week four times now and am trying my best to implement it in my day to day life. I do have one important and outstanding question.

I've been working on creating a product. Sometimes I get far enough to realize that I'm not the first cat with the idea. Other times I realize there is no interest. One question that is not addressed in your book is how many attempts failed or never got off the ground prior to BrainQUICKEN.

What also amazes me is that when I search for Cognamine, BrainQUICKEN is the only thing that shows up. How is this possible? In the years following BrainQUICKEN and with 4HWW as a bestseller, how how is it that no copycats have emerged?

Thanks,
Steve

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Hi Steve,

Thanks for the comment. Copycats have emerged. Most have failed because they target too broadly or attempt to replace another product (steal mindshare) vs. finding another niche. One large public company actually imitated BQ after pretending to want to acquire the company (common practice, btw) and lost millions because they felt distribution would beat branding. It didn't in this case.

Cheers!

Tim