More tweaks

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll spend the weekend in a boat drinking beer with his friends." -- anonymous

In this sense, blogging is like fishing. I started to do just one thing, make the body of the post wider, and I am still making little changes. In addition to the new layout, I've:

• added Creative Commons (CC) licensing. CC provides content creators a relatively simple way to maintain copyright over their materials while still allowing a range of usage, at their discretion. I, for instance, selected an Attribution, Non-commercial, Share-Alike license for all materials that I create for the Advisory Bored (see the footer of each page). This means that anyone is free to use my works if they: attribute the work to me, don't make money from it and share any derivative work under the same licensing. BTW (by the way ), this topic would be a great addition to any content creation class so that students start to understand the role of licensing in a professional/business setting. More on that later.
• changed the position of the subscription details. In addition to moving the subscription box to the top of the left-hand navigation column, I've also simplified the display. I wanted to make it more prominent to encourage people to use some sort of syndication to get notifications of new posts. Syndication eliminates the need for the reader visit a site and look for new content. I use Feedburner for the syndication so that I am able to capture statistics about non-visiting readers.
  
• made it easier to share with AddThis. At the bottom of each post you will now find a little icon that says "BOOKMARK". It's a tool from AddThis that makes it easier for you the reader to bookmark the post for retrieval later or to share it with friends via email or social networking sites. Click the icon and you get a box of common sharing/bookmarking options (see image at right). For instance, click on Email and you can quickly send an email to a friend, with a little message and a link to this post. In return, I get feedback about which posts are most intriguing.

As is often the case, the changes don't take long. It's troubleshooting all the little roadblocks that leaves you weary and sleep-deprived. I spent 90 minutes figuring out why I couldn't sign-in to Google in IE on my laptop - I almost never use IE on that machine. Somehow Google, Amazon and Blogger all were set as "never accept cookies" in the internet options, a requirement for Google/Blogger login. Then I spent another 2 hours trying to figure out why I couldn't add the AddThis icon to my blog template without causing an error. After 2 hours I put down my laptop, walked over to my desktop machine and made the change in 40 seconds. Why? I have no idea. Some days it is better to declare victory and go home early.

Let me know if you find any of these things helpful or merely a visual distraction.

Tags: Creative Commons, Feedburner, AddThis

Links and Resources: November 18th, 2008

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. -- Eric Hoffer

• Opps, maybe IT isn't as recession-proof as columnist were predicting (that bubble burst quick). Over at ZDNet "Tech workforce pinched by economy, feeling like 2003" gives the bad numbers for layoffs in the tech sector, especially for telecom, electronics and computer industries.
  
• However, there is still hope for other parts of the profession. Michelle Singletary picked "150 Best Recession-Proof Jobs" for her Color of Money Book Club (Everett Herald Nov. 2nd). #1 on their list was computer systems analyst. #5 was post-secondary teacher. Mrs. Advisory Bored, who teaches computer systems analysis at a community college, was rather smug the remainder of the day.
  
• Computerworld's 2008 Salary Survey seems to indicate that "The hottest IT skills survive a cool economy". The survey tells us that businesses need to get the most of the technology they already have. Web developers, network administrators and information security managers stand to do well regardless of the economy.
  
• At the most recent Everett SD technology advisory committee we briefly touched on the issue of the under-representation of certain demographic groups in IT. In the article "Making a Case for Diversity in STEM Fields" the authors argue that the lack of diversity isn't merely an unfortunately civil rights issue, but, given the importance of STEM, has significant implications for our economy and future. The article is hosted at MentorNet, an eMentoring site for science and technology fields (more here).
• eSchool News reports that the "Nations first tech-literacy test" will be included in the Nation's Report Card starting in 2012. (I assume they mean information technology, because a stapler is technology and we don't need a test on it.) A contract was awarded to develop the framework for the assessment, but there is plenty left unresolved. They don't even know which grade-level will be tested.
  
• And let us conclude with something fun. Paul over at the Last Great Road Trip sent me a link to Oblong Industries. Oblong makes g-spatial, a spatial operating environment. Watch the video.
  

Seek and ye shall find

I was listening to KUOW on the way to work today and I heard a piece on a basic education funding study for the State of Washington. This blog isn't about that study, it's about finding that study.

So when I tossed the search terms into Google I started getting a lot of results from a lot of places. I had a few keywords that helped me refine the search, but there were still a number that were not relevant. Then I remembered that I could build my own custom search engine with Google. A custom search engine allows you define one or many specific web sites or web pages to be searched.

So I created a search called Washington State Education that pointed to a handful of state education sites such as the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (sbctc.ctc.edu) and the Higher Education Coordinating Board (hecb.wa.gov). Now when I enter those same search terms into the custom search box, only results from the specified sites are included. Much more relevant because I'm not interested in Ohio's basic education funding initiatives.

You can also include the search as a widget/gadget in your iGoogle page or in a blog. If you scroll down the left-hand side of the Advisory Bored you will eventually reach a search box. That uses the same exact custom search engine as if you went to the link I specified above. Cool, no.

What can you do with a custom search engine? Well quite a lot I would guess. Google lists some featured sites here. A couple of my favorites are:

1. Expanding Your Horizons which is an engine for girls, teachers and parents to explore science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). This engine includes over 140 different sites.
2. CS Curriculum Search will help computer science (CS) faculty find teaching resources that other CS faculty has published to the web.
3. Mrs. Gray's Research Sites for Kids contains a list of kid-safe sites that middle school teacher Lucy Gray can use with her students in Chicago (and now you can use with your students too).
   

You will notice in the final site that there are contributors listed. What this means is that while Mrs. Gray created the site, she has allow some people to help suggest new sites to add to the custom search engine. So, for instance, history teachers in the Mukilteo SD could band together to build a history search engine even if they are spread out across the district.

My one other custom search site is called Puget Sound News Sources. It includes 12 local media entities, including the Everett Herald. So if you want to know what local media is saying about you, give it a try.

Tags: Google, Custom Search Engine

Virtual High School - continued

Not long after my Virtual High School post I received a tweet (a Twitter message) from the Cool Cat Teacher Vicki Davis pointing to this article from Orlando Sentinel on a new Florida law to expand online education in primary and secondary grades:

The law passed by the Legislature last spring is designed to give parents more choice in how their elementary- and middle-school children are educated full time. Online instruction joins home schooling, charter schools and Florida's on-again, off-again experiment with vouchers to private schools as a way of broadening the selection.


"The beauty of this is it is another choice for parents," said Sonia Esposito, director of school choice for Osceola schools.

The state will pay for online instruction, providing districts about $6,000 per student -- what they would get for a student who showed up at a regular school. But savings are expected in bus transportation, school construction and other areas.

Then today I was outside for my last lawn mowing/Teachers's Podcast listening session of the year - I'm done with lawn mowing not the podcast. Virtual schools were again the topic of discussion in episode #28 (for those of you new to podcasting, you can play the episode from your computer, you don't need an iPod).

They discussed the Florida law which apparently requires schools to offer a full online degree program starting next year. They then dove deep into virtual schools and online education. It's a great discussion and they have posted a number of links for you reading enjoyment. A couple of things I found particularly interesting:

1. Dr. Kathy talked about online education as a continuum that starts with the use of basic online resources, moves to students using it as part of their studies, then to partially online courses and finally to fully online programs. Starting with the simple stuff is alright, but it's just the beginning.
   
2. Dr. Kathy also reinforced the notion that the proper application of technology to the classroom is not simply migrating your existing class content to the web or learning management system (LMS). Teachers will need to adapt their teaching to get the most of the new technology, just as they have had to do in the past (anyone remember filmstrips?).
   
3. Dr. Kathy and Mark went on to discuss the hybrid or blended model in which coursework is a mixture of online and on-site. They referenced the VOISE program in Chicago as an example (see this summer 2008 Converge article about the program starting on page 21).
   
4. Mark talked about a Converge article he did in 2007 about the Distance Learning program in Alabama. He talked about how the program was used to, among other things, deliver coursework that was not offered on-site because of insufficient demand for certain classes (say Latin or AP Programming). We might consider this the Long Tail of education.
   

Okay, so last time I said we in the broader community - business, taxpayers, parents, advisory board members - needed to be thinking about this too. I am even more convinced of that now. The implications of these changes seems more profound than merely getting teachers to blog.

• How will we pay for educators to learn the technology and implement an entirely new way to deliver education? (And don't tell me they can do it as part of their job, that's not how it's done in the business world.)
  
• How will funding be effected if students rush to fully or partially online programs and leave school buildings empty? It might be a great solution for a growing district that doesn't have enough space, but what about a district that is shrinking?
• How will we fund schools if a student is on campus for four classes each day and then takes two more online from another school (funding and football are going to be the biggest roadblocks to educational reform).
  
• What changes in teacher education do we need to make in advance of the transition? Are the Colleges of Education in our Universities training new teachers how to build their curriculum around both on-site and online delivery?
  

Digging up the links for this post I trip over a site, Virtual High School Meanderings, that you might add to your reading list if you are interested in virtual/online education.

Tags: Virtual Education, Online Education, Cool Cat Teacher,
Florida Virtual High School, The Teacher's Podcast, Virtual High School Meanderings

What's your reaction

I'm trying out a new Blogger feature called reactions. It's a way for you to quickly provide feedback about a particular blog post without commenting (although I would really like you to comment too).

At the bottom of each post, under the tags, comments and labels you will see the word reaction with five check boxes: Great, Good, So-So, Boring and Huh. If you have an opinion, but don't want to hassle with a comment, then just check the box that best represents your thoughts. Blogger will total the count and display it for all to see.

Enjoy ....