Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

Danah Boyd's recent travesty with a backchannel at Web 2.0 Expo better have all presenters examining the use of this tool - which can be valuable or can be devastating! Danah said about the experience: "Well, I started out rough, but I was also totally off-kilter. And then, within the first two minutes, I started hearing rumblings. And then laughter. The sounds were completely irrelevant to what I was saying and I was devastated. I immediately knew that I had lost the audience. Rather than getting into flow and becoming an entertainer, I retreated into myself. I basically decided to read the entire speech instead of deliver it. I counted for the time when I could get off stage. I was reading aloud while thinking all sorts of terrible thoughts about myself and my failures. I wasn't even interested in my talk. All I wanted was to get it over with. I didn't know what was going on but I kept hearing sounds that made it very clear that something was happening behind me...

 While doing Black Friday shopping online, I came across Chris Betcher 's Post This is Not Amazing and was struck by his feelings towards those he is working with: "It’s time to stop being so “amazed” at things that are just part of the technological and cultural landscape of life in the 21st century.  It’s not “amazing” that computers can edit video, manage numbers or manipulate digital images. It’s not “amazing” that mobile phones can stream live video or GPS your current position.  It’s not “amazing” that you can make phone calls to the other side of the planet at no cost. None of these things are really “amazing” any more… they just “are”. To be “amazed” at this sort of stuff is to fail to recognise the invisible role that technology plays in all our lives these days. To anyone working in education, working with young people, you need to realise that simple tasks performed with technology are not something to be “amazed” at, marveled at and gushed over.  For ...

In Larry Magid's Brief, Poingnant Overview of the recent third annual conference of the Family Online Safety Institute, he called it a " WaterShed Moment int he History of Online Safety Education " I felt buoying hope.  Below are the extracted annotations from his article from me but I'd like to add something that I just emailed to Larry. Wow, Larry . Just a note that your current article in the San Jose Mercury News is SPOT ON - http://www.mercurynews.com/ breaking-news/ci_13723472? nclick_check=1 We've been seeing this in our Digiteen projects where the kids determine their own ACTION project to teach digital citizenship to the audience of their choice.  (You can see this year's action projects forming here - http://digiteen09-3. flatclassroomproject.org/ Westwood+-+USA -- they are right now in progress.) The kids research digital citizenship w/ partners around the world and self form teams. One of the coolest is my Super Social Safety Team ( http://...

A Break from Traveling Since July I gave myself five months off from travel. There were simply some things to attend to. My youngest son needed to be tested in more detail (he has dyslexia and a form of ADHD ) and my older two - one in high school and one in middle school needed a chauffeur and a cook each night.  Life begins at home and if I should raise children who do not contribute to this world in a positive way then no matter what else I do, in my own mind, I'd be a failure. Also, we have had the Eracism project to kick off and have been struggling and trying to raise money for the Flat Classroom conference in Mumbai, India still need about ($20K to do a few things we feel like we need) as well as other upcoming projects.  I picked up running the week after NECC (using the amazing Couch to 5K app on my itouch) and have lost another 10 pounds since then and ran my first 5K about four weeks a go (this weekend I run another.)  I'm totally addicted to running and ...

Last year, we had our first Flat Classroom conference in Doha, Qatar during which the students invented global collaborative projects that they believed would improve a social issue.  Out of that conference, the students invented and voted the Eracism Project as their winner, a project to hold weekly debates around creating an understanding of race and culture.  The first week into Eracism, I'll say the student vision was amazing and as teachers we are so excited about what we see with the potential for "simulated sychronous" environments to bridge gaps. Now, Julie Lindsay and I are working diligently on the next Flat Classroom Conference , which we are calling a "mini-conference" because it is being held as part of ASB Unplugged in Mumbai India this upcoming February.  We are bringing the same project based learning environment along with incorporating adult educators - not as "teachers" but as co-participants and equals in the process of not ...

Innovative Learning - Free Newsletter Fall 2009 This phenomenal special interest group of ISTE has a great quarterly newsletter which is really the best of innovative learning in all of education. On pages 15-17 there are three pages of an article from two of my students and I about teaching in a virtual world including my "quick tricks for teaching in a virtual world." Print this, share it, and learn - so many great things in this newsletter! tags : education , opensim , reactiongrid , ipod , iphone , iste , learning , edu_news , edu_trends TeachingWithContests.com This blog shares contests to use and share with your classroom. tags : education , learning , contests Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

TICAL - Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership Will be speaking in Arkansas on February 17th at their TICAL conference. I'm so excited! This is information if you are in the area so that you may plan to attend. If you do, please plan to say "hi" - it really means a lot to meet the people from cyberworld, I guess it makes it all more "real." tags : education , coolcatteacher , inthenews NetSmartzKids: Tunes Use Clicky's Raps to teach your kids Internet safety. Lisa Durff recommended this site on Twitter. Cool tool. tags : education , digitalcitizenship , digiteen Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

Social networks and kids: How young is too young? - CNN.com Important article to read about children of all ages creating profiles. I believe this supports our driving need to incorporate instruction and discussion on this topic in schools. tags : education , learning , web2 , digiteen , safety , digitalcitizenship Crowdsourcing or Loudsourcing? | ISTE Connects - Educational Technology Blogged my thoughts on crowdsourcing the ISTE keynote this year. tags : education , iste , crowdsourcing , edu_news Findings - Ethnographic Study Looks at Gossip in the Workplace - NYTimes.com Office gossip (this study on an elementary school and their gossip against a principal) hurts EVERYONE including your school and in this case, test scores declined. Remember that when you gossip, you also hurt yourself and if you didn't already know this, take a read here about office gossip and how to intervene and stop it. tags : education , learning , gossip , psychology , edu_news Posted from Diigo . The re...