Blurts

This year is the 30th anniversary of NECC. This will be the last NECC next year the label will change to ISTE. The first NECC was at the University of Iowa.

A feature of this year’s conference is a sort of museum of tech artifacts. Looks a lot like my basement.

Mitch Resnick argues that Scratch offers students and teachers to meet President Obama’s challenge to “create and not just consume“.  As he relates this challenge to technology, he proposes that students move beyond clicking as a form of participation. Want to offer more learners of all ages the opportunity to create with technology and get beyond the assumption that creating with technology is reserved for programmers. The Scratch site receives a new upload nearly every second.

A new site focused on Scratch for educators, Learn, Share, Connect, is now available.

Replica of printing press from Newseum.

I have known about the Newseum for some time. As an online site, it offerfs a way to examine the front page from many papers .

We had an opportunity to visit the museum (Washington, DC) today. I was curious about how the museum would handle the change in the newspaper industry. Several multimedia programs dealt with this issue using the Rocky Mountain News and the  Christian Science Monitor as examples. Professionals will be able to offer higher quality multimedia content and better journalism, but will the public support/pay.

Waiting for NECC09 to begin.

We are driving to Washington, DC for NECC. It should be quite and adventure by the time we arrive. First stop was Kingsley, IA, for my mom’s 84th brithday. We stayed in Sioux City (view of bridge over Missouri). It happened to be the 125th Centennial for Kingsley. I took lots of pictures – the tractor is a John Deere A. I spent many hours cultivating corn and beans on our A.

This content from Frontline explores technology applications in education. Several themes – one to one, literacy, national scene. National scene topic is federal funding for education.

Reps. from Minnesota and North Dakota have joined with Senator Kerry in asking the FCC to “review the exclusive arrangements between wireless carriers and cell phone manufacturers”. I wonder if this is the type of initiative that will be necessary to get the iPhone to North Dakota.

This is an interesting post coming shortly after information indicating that California is seriously considering moving away from hard copy textbooks for K12. As a textbook author, I have posted frequently on this topic on my other blog. As a writer, some of the claims made by Godin seem strange. It may be true that there is some textbook author somewhere who has made enough to build a $20 million dollar house. There are also a couple of high school kids who have started Internet companies or made it to the NBA. If you earn 12-14% of the price before markup by the reseller on the first sale of your book, how many calculus books would you have to sell to pay for a $20 million dollar house? Has this individual cornered the entire market? I have found the book business to be extremely competitive – you find yourself in competition with other authors competing to write whatever number of books the company you work with decides to sell and then if your book is selected you compete with all of the other books published by the other companies. If you can make millions, you have somehow done a remarkable job. I am willing to say if you make more than you would make teaching summer school you have done far better than most.

As far as the content of textbooks goes, we write because we think we have unique ideas. It is something like a contractor building a spec house – you invest many months of your life in a project you believe in with no guarantee. I have written three books and I received an advance (can’t remember now if it was $3000 or $5000) for the first one only. Anyone who thinks this is an easy or glamorous business is certainly free to put in a proposal. I am thinking it is pretty easy to complain as an outsider. As far as quality goes – if you have a great idea and can remedy the faults of existing products, it should be an easy matter to convince a publisher to let you spend a year giving it a shot.

Any professor of intro marketing who is assigning a basic old-school textbook is guilty of theft or laziness.

Now there is an interesting statement – inflammatory, naive – hard to know. The web is a great place to publish, but a web post now and then is not the same as having the vision and commitment to develop and implement a plan to create the resources necessary for a final course. I have a great deal of admiration for those who generate such works without compensation or support from their institutions (see mine at Meaningful Learning and the Participatory Web). I don’t have much respect for complainers who offer their insights but no educational products.