Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

Interview about the Flat Classroom Project Yesterday, Steve Hargadon over at the infinite thinking machine and I talked about the flat classroom project . You can hear our discussion and also learn about Chris Craft 's meeting with students in Peru via Skype. Beginning Blog and Wikis Interview I also spent about an hour with the guys over at TechPodZone yesterday talking about an introduction to blogs and wikis. It was a discussion tailored for beginners so if you're new to this, you should take a listen to the discussion . They are amazing podcasters and I've learned a lot from them (including the cool free podcast producing program - PodProducer .) (In fact, Mike is called the Podfather at his school.) They did a great job with the interview! They are a lot of fun to talk to! Tags: blog , wiki , podcast , Infinite Thinking machine , Chris Craft , Steve Hargadon , Techpodzone , podproducer

School turnaround is a huge issue in education. I have just found and listened to the most incredible podcast from John Merrow where he interviewed three "turnaround specialists" - Catharine Thomas, J. Harris Coleman, and Michael McClellan-- I found it through itunes. (I don't have an ipod but I find and listen to all of my podcasts here.) For you like minded cynical-consultant type people like me, this podcast is not what you think. It is real principals who have a winning record talking about the realities of school turnaround. You should listen and take notes. If you are a superintendent, you should forward it to your principals because it exposes a lot of realities that I hear administrators deny but they need to understand. Here are my favorite quotes: "You must be commpassionate and understanding of the people involved." "You cannot change people but you can create an environment where people are willing to change." "Over time, staff g...

School 2.0: School 2.0 New Website, Wiki, and One-Day Blitz Steve Hargadon has created a great site for us to begin building upon called School 2.0 . I'm very excited that he and Will Richardson will guest on our weekly Wow2 Skypecast on January 23rd to discuss School 2.0. I hope you'll mark your calendars and begin to join us on Tuesday nights at 9 pm. We are getting quite a group in the edtechtalk chatroom and listening. Each person in there (both speaking and contributing via chat) is a gem and it is really great to get such an amazing group together. On a personal note: A funny thing happened this week, though, that most of you will appreciate. We had trouble creating the skypecast and finally on the 5th or 6th try, Cheryl just created it without a description so our name was Women of Web 2 -- consequently, we had an extremely large group of men looking for single ladies. (And it took us at least 15 minutes to figure that out!) It wouldn't have been so bad, except ...

My jaw hit the floor today when I saw the article passed along by my good Canadian friend Sharon Peters . It is entitled: Futurist: To Fix education think Web 2 . In case you haven't noticed, Web 2 is about to become THE HOT topic in education for all disciplines. Many of us are noticing more "mainstream" articles on this every day spurred on by the fact that KIDS LOVE IT and are responding educationally in ways that all good educators dream of. My students worked ALL weekend on their flat classroom projects, for goodness sakes! Teenagers on a Saturday morning? What!? The article highlights the opinions of leading scientist, Seely Brown . Listen to this! "Seely Brown argued that education is going through a large-scale transformation toward a more participatory form of learning . Rather than treat pedagogy as the transfer of knowledge from teachers who are experts to students who are receptacles, educators should consider more hands-on and informal types of...

I just can't resist! When I came across this article at Tech Crunch about the 6 Biggest New Ideas in chat , I was giving it a cursory glance. That was until I came to a cute little "widget" like I've included in this post. The Meebo Me widget allows you to embed the widget on your site so people can send private chats with you! You can then sign into your website and your visitors can chat directly WITH YOU! Now, for those of you looking for something with students - this actually is a good tool - the chat is only between YOU and them. You don't have editing, previewing, or moderation. But this is great for two things: 1) If you need an easy way to add chat capabilities to your site and chat with your users, this is a neat thing to try. 2) You could also attach it to your Skypecast (embed it in the talk page or your blog post about it) and have a chat for the skypecast in an easy way. (I haven't been able to figure out how to make it a group chat like tec...

I'd like to bring you in on a "little" discussion that we've been having behind the scenes about the potential for an edubloggerCon just prior to the NECC conference in Atlanta in June of 2007. We're still in the formatory stages and that is why we need YOU to join the discussion. I personally have had enough of things where I had no input and I always felt left out. Well, if you feel the same way as me, ("I've got something to say and want to be a part of something!") then this is a personal invitation from me to join in the conversation. Go on over to the Edubloggercon page and join the edubloggercon Google Group or even the wiki . NECC is going to be incredible and this will actually be my first one! I am so excited about meeting some amazing people and coming away with inspiration. I hope you'll introduce yourself (and I hope that some of the proposals I've submitted get accepted.) Since I went to Georgia Tech and lived just down...

I've posted this weeks podcast about my thoughts about how this decade will be characterized. We have the 70's, 80's, 90's, and now we have the 00's (pronounced Oh's). I think that there are three types of people that characterize the OO's in education that I outline in the podcast. Also, I talk about the Friedman book and its impact on teachers as well as the new flat classroom project that I've been discussing here on the blog. Length: 5 minutes 54 seconds About the Podcast You can now download the cool Cat Teacher podcast from the iTunes store (in ITunes click on I tunes store, PowerSearch, and then type in cool cat teacher). Unless I do an interview, these will be posted two-three times a month and will run around 5 minutes in length. You may also subscribe over Odeo. http://odeo.com/channel/80086/rss.xml