Laurence Scheindlin's Blog (10)

 I love the concept of wikis, the subject of this week's (admission: I'm a week late, so it was last week's) assignment.  After reading The Wisdom of Crowds a few years ago as well as some data on the error rate in the Encyclopedia Britannica vs. Wikipedia (surprisingly favorable to Wikipedia, as I recall), I began to comprehend the power of wikis. 

Of course, Wikipedia has quality control, something that cannot be assumed for your everyday wiki.  Still, the fact that people might add…

Stupid.  And frustrating.  If Second Life didn't drag so slowly, with hesitations and agonizing moments of waiting for every action to happen, it wouldn't be so frustrating.  Which it was.  Extremely. 

But even if it weren't frustrating, it still would be stupid.

Which reminds of the old Laurel and Hardy routine:

"You're crazy.

You're drunk.

You're crazy.

You're drunk.

Tomorrow I'll be sober, you'll…

(Sigh)  I hate to sound like an old curmudgeon because I really like technology.  But all of the tools I tried for the this week's tech-course assignment seem so labor-intensive.  Which is fine, if there's a distinct payoff that makes them worthwhile.  I hate to say it but the amount of time that an individual instructor would need to invest in creating a video, or cartoons, or other media for instructional use seems disproportionate to the potential impact.  More than that, it diverts…

The course's subject of the week is productivity tools, but the textbook gives over most of the chapter to GoogleDocs.  I am having a hard time understanding why GoogleDocs and its ilk are classified as productivity tools since "productivity" refers to the rate at which actions are accomplished, typically expressed as output per unit of labor.  Now, GoogleDocs could legitimately and accurately be described as a collaboration tool, but no one has yet convinced me that it is a productivity…

This blog post, required for the course in Instructional Technology, is the deeply-considered product of three full hours on Twitter, in which time I've set up an account, sent a tweet to my daughter, signed up to follow a dozen or so individuals or organizations, read a bunch of web sites on the educational uses of Twitter and tried to come up with a lesson plan employing Twitter.  These thoughts therefore give promise of being as reckless as a teenager's driving.  Come to think of it, if I…

I've now expanded my research for this course assignment beyond Khan Academy, and have learned that the term "flipped classroom" is not original to Khan.  It seems that around 2005 various people began advancing the notion of video lectures. Since every American educational idea gets product-branded before it gets a theory or articulated practice, it comes as no surprise that in those early days various names vied for preeminence, most notably "blended learning" and "reverse instruction."…

I've taken on the task of learning about Khan Academy and exploring its advantages, disadvantages and potential, as a differentiated assignment that the instructor was kind enough to allow me to do.  This is part one, reporting on my initial impressions.

Overview

For anyone reading this (if there is anyone other than the instructor!), here is a brief summary of what Khan Academy claims to do:

Video instruction: The site contains over 2700 short…

In preparation for this course-assigned post, I undertook to learn about Inspiration, something I have never tried before.  I went through the entire tutorial to the point that I have a working knowledge of the very basics of the program.  It is evident that much flexibility is built into it and I am certain that with a few more hours of time and experimentation I will learn more about how to utilize the program to conform to my needs.

My concern with Inspiration—and, again, I’m a…

Across my desk today came two relevant commentaries on instructional technology that couldn’t have been more different.  A passionate article in Independent School Management's  e-newsletter Monthly Update for Heads enticingly titled “How Do We Operate Five Years into the Future,” could only make one yearn to see played out in one’s own classrooms its promise of intense student engagement coupled with student freedom and joyful collaboration.  So it was with eager anticipation that I watched…

A piece on the OpEd page of today's LA Times offered a somewhat jaundiced view of online learning.  While acknowledging its potential, especially for students who might have little or limited access to learning, the author points out that, at least as often constituted today, online learning may offer an insubstantial environment compared to a live classroom.  I actually think that he missed the most important point: part of the job of a teacher is to work with the student to tease out his…