johnhendron.net: hendron’s digest - a weblog

You can now preorder my book, RSS for Educators through the ISTE website.

The book will be released in March, 2008. $20.95 for ISTE members, $29.95 for the general public.

I realized today that I have done a horrible job at keeping track of when I’ve appeared in the press. At least the national press.

Back in ‘06, an article was written about our blogging initiative in Teacher Magazine.

More recently, I was quoted in District Administration Magazine. This article, oddly enough, was on administrator salaries. I wasn’t aware of this, until at the end of the interview. But it was cool to get our district named/linked in the article.

Last year, too, I was interviewed by EdTech Magazine for an article on podcasting in schools. My favorite quote from this one:

Fresh is best, says John Hendron, Webmaster, Goochland County (Va.) Public Schools.

Sadly, one interview I also did for EdTech, in which they took over 80 posed photographs of me at our high school, never saw the printed page.

Anyhow, I wrote this post for myself, so that I could refer to it in the future, if need be.

Last Friday, we noted the 5-year anniversary of Creative Commons. Today, the 10-year anniversary of the blog.

It was back in 1997 that I was in graduate school. I started my first webpage. Friends were telling me I ought to write a book of stories. (I had the uncanny ability to raise hilarity with my storytelling, not unlike the style in which my father can tell a story.) Instead, wanting instant gratification, I started a website to share my creative interests.

Soon after, and I use the year 1998, I naturally evolved my writing into a post-like format, mimicking other sites on the web. I wasn’t yet aware of the term weblog, but that’s what I had going. Soon enough, I had a Blogger account and it all went downhill (or up) from there.

I’m sad I haven’t had a continual, non-stop blog since 1998. That would have been interesting.

Currently, I (mis)manage to author five blogs. Among them are a music blog, my work blog, and a food blog. So, yes, I’ve been doing a lot of this since the dawn of the blog. It’s not surprising, perhaps, that I think blogging has a place in education.

Tonight I taught a class in blogging to some of our teachers. We call it “PowerBlogging,” as it teaches them how to go beyond mere text entries, and do links, pictures, podcasts, and whatever else we can cram-into a 2-hour session. I long for the more power-ful blogging platforms (like Wordpress, used here), so that the “power” is more evenly distributed, and available to all (without so much training). It seems hard to believe the HTML codes I was putting up on the interactive whiteboard have been a part of my active vocabulary for some 10 years.

Do I expect such rapid change in the future? I am not sure we’ll see it. I think in the next five years to be trends will be:

• anytime, anywhere writing (cell phones, ubiquitous Internet access)
• vlogging and videocasting
• (even more) use of tags
• shorter and shorter posts (i.e., a proliferation of what I call microblogging)

Hopefully, Hendron’s Digest will continue-on for at least another 5, to see if I’m right.

Today I recorded a podcast to celebrate the 5th anniversary of Creative Commons. For this discussion, I partnered with our Goochland ITRT Bea Cantor, who thought a podcast about Creative Commons was a great idea.

This is Episode #110 of our TechnologyTimes Live Podcast from Goochland County Public Schools.

After installing Leopard, I didn’t do any printing for some time. When it came time to print on my Canon Photo Printer, the i9100 large format model, I couldn’t print (well). It would start-out fine, but stop mid-print. The processors in my G5 would rev-up, and all printing would stop.

I downloaded new Canon drivers after removing the old.

1. Go to /Library/Printers/.
2. Remove the Canon folder. I moved it to the ~/Desktop.
3. Install the new drivers from Canon.
4. Restart.
5. Add your printer. Mine is connected from USB to my Airport Extreme.
6. It works!

The step I think was important, and worked for someone on an Apple forum, was the removal of the OS X-installed drivers first.

I think Flickr combined with CreativeCommons is about the best single source for finding images to use in the educational setting. But Garr Reynolds pieced together some sites (with those commenting), that I’d like to recommend (with a heavy hand on space and nature):

• NASA Visible Earth
• Earth Observatory
• NASA-Great Images
• NOAA Photo Library
• Uncle Sam’s Photos
• Public Domain Pictures
• University of California Images
• LOC Memory Project
• Wikicommons

Teachers and students both need access to high quality media for learning. CreativeCommons offers a means by which anyone can share their content for re-use and distribution without the stricture of standard copyright.

This video details how to find photographs using Flickr.com.

Finding Photos to Use Using Flickr from John Hendron on Vimeo.

Our school division now bans access to Flickr for students. At one level, yes, there is content there we’d consider objectionable. But our teachers can still access this resource. I am hoping you, in your place of learning, can gain access to the content. It’s too valuable a resource to ignore.

Barry Schwartz says too much choice is a bad thing. The rub, of course, is that more choice feels right/good. But the high expectations we derive from having too much choice… reduces our capacity to enjoy life.

Scott Elias has a good example of an effective presentation on his blog. I would have liked to hear him speak, too, but I just found his blog after many trips to education blogs and found particular interest in this one.

Some time back, I wrote on this topic to our teachers in Goochland. I talked less about the visual look of slides (or Promethean Flip Charts), and more on how pedagogically slides ought to be organized. I think it would be worthy of me to repeat this topic again (after seeing more teachers deliver boring slides via PowerPoint). I think the second-installment ought to be on the visuals and perhaps could manifest itself in a workshop. Bring your content, we’ll enhance your craft.

It still amazes me how many teachers think giving the assignment of creating a “presentation” to students is worthwhile. Yes, in 1999 that would have been a whiz-bang lesson. In 2007, it’s dull, inappropriate, and disgusting.

Yes, I have harsh feelings on this. Are there no teachable moments in the creation of slides? Perhaps there are. But, many teachers are woefully prepared to teach students how to make effective messages with slides. They instead, follow the lead of the Microsofts and students are making lists in bullets with silly clip art.

As I hinted in my rant (linked above), I think slides can be used as a pre-writing exercise. But as a final product, it too many times is robbing us of our time.

Some time ago, I remember reading about an updated Bloom’s Taxonomy, to which I was very pleased to see “creation” on the top of a pyramid of levels. For, you see, I believe creativity is one of the most essential skills we can impart to our students.

I wanted to log some links here (for my own pleasure, if not yours), in some links on this updated taxonomy.

• http://www.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/curric/newtaxonomy.htm
• http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/slatta/hi216/learning/bloom.htm
• http://www.kurwongbss.eq.edu.au/thinking/Bloom/blooms.htm
• http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy

As we all think about introducing content to students, I think this revised model by Anderson and Krathwohl is worthy of our attention for learning and “surviving” in the 21st century.

I just posted a VSTE Podcast Edge episode with a teacher from Annandale High School in Fairfax County. We talked about a concern for computer and Internet ethics and attitudes with students.

If it were up to me… I think the best way to teach pre-service teachers to use technology is to give them the experience of learning with technology. The tech has to become a part of their problem-solving, self-learning arsenal. Sure, you will teach about technology too, but the emphasis for the college professor should be using the technology to learn.

• Lectures? Not so many.
• Learning blogs, yeah.
• Graphic organization tools? You betcha.
• Classes with PBL experiences? Certainly.
• Sharing and collaborating via digital channels? I hope!
• Writing? Not so much… unless its a prequel to a multimedia product.

Just some ideas.

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