Wow, it has been great to hear all the ideas that have been inspired by Scott McLeod's presentation on Tuesday. We'd love to hear what you thought and what some of your new ideas are. Please leave some comments to let us know what you are thinking about!!!
Today, the New York Times ran an interesting article regarding the use of PowerPoint in the military, We Have Met the Enemy and He is PowerPoint . It was a fairly damning critique of an organization that gets most of its information or lack of information through PowerPoint slides. Here are a few quotes from the article: “PowerPoint makes us stupid" - Gen. James N. Matti “It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control...Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.” -Gen. H.R. McMaster And the following comment that I think has a great impact for us as educators: " Commanders say that behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making ." And this... "Commanders say that the slides impart less information than a five-page paper can hold, and that they relieve the briefer of the need to polish writing to convey an analytic, persu...
Comments
One of the positives from dealing with these new forms of tech. that I've experienced already, is a real collaborative effort on the part of my colleagues to help each other through the learning process!
I think I'm going to try a Wiki with my Algebra I class and post vocabulary words for them to define and refine in their own words. We'll see how it goes!
I think we need to consider however that we have been given this time prior to school starting as "face to face" time. We had hoped that this blog would give us a medium for modeling Web 2.0 with the CoP.
When we finalize the group norms tomorrow, we can talk about expectations on time commitment "outside the walls."
As for Scott's presentations, I know I really appreciated the "Shock and Awe" activity as a facilitator. It gave me a better idea of where people are at.
In the coming days we will be adding resources on "best practice" for Blogs, Wiki's, Moodle, RSS, etc. to the site, and providing you with some road maps for implementing them with your students.
Ditto to Jeff's comments!
Have a great start!
**On a side note....if you haven't bought the blogs, wiki's....book yet, you may want to order it online...most bookstores (at least the 5 that I went to) don't have it.
Have a great weekend.