Blurts

LA Times review of Bauerlein’s “The Dumbest Generation“

I see that Tech4Learning is launching a social site. We have followed this company for years and they have great tools. I try to catch their tutorials at NECC whenever possible. I sometimes wonder how they survive in this day of moving more learning activities to free cloud apps. I guess they are good people and adapt their products to the specific needs of teachers and younger learners.

If you are fan of the multiple Leo Laporte podcasts, here is a nice video feature (part 1, part2) on Leo created by Robert Scoble.

This title from the Washington Post. I have written on this topic in Learning Aloud multiple times. The Post comments seem to draw a conclusion similar to Wolak and Finkelhour – actual threats are far more likely to come from peers and victims do play some role in their vulnerability. As I have suggested before, filtering school access is not a reasonable solution – dangerous access is far more likely at home (or the home of friends) and personal decision making rather than technical control is far more important in limiting damaging experiences.

The report that is described is available online (pdf).

I have frequently addressed topics under the heading of Flat World on my other blog. The phrase comes, I assume, from the writing of Thomas Friedman, and within the analysis there is a concern that the U.S. educational system and the effort level of students needs to improve to maintain a competitive advantage in contrast to emerging economic powers. Friedman\’s analysis is more nuanced and involves many interrelated issues, but one of the messages that seems to be seized upon by so many is the challenge to our educational system. I would not interpret what Friedman has to say as about blame – in fact many of the economic concerns he raises are a product of the differential speed of success (e.g., engineers in India may work for far less than the engineers in the U.S. – this is a function of where different countries are in general standard of living, but in the short term, it does indicate we may have to become more successful to maintain the economic advantage we presently enjoy).

I value this YouTube video from edwardseducational because it challenges some of the popularized concerns that many (perhaps me) raise to argue for change. As I have suggested in other posts, it is important to consider multiple perspectives and not focus exclusively on those with a similar message. Some of the arguments in this video remind me of a book published in 1995 by prominent educational researchers David Berliner and Bruce Biddle. Their book (The Manufactured Crisis) systematically addressed many claims demeaning the U.S. educational system and offered data refuting each claim. The international inferiority of the U.S. K-12 system was among the claims addressed. It can be difficult to sort out genuine concerns when there are incentives to point fingers or promote causes that can be economically self-serving.

The demands of the 21st century are often couched in dire economic predictions and somehow educational institutions are to save us. What is it that is to be developed – STEM, problem-solving, critical thinking, etc. How about a concern for equity and ethical behavior? The present economic down turn seems more related to greed, fraud, and lack of interpersonal responsibility than to a lack of scientific knowledge or entrepreneurial spirit.

It is fun to be able to play with tech. I learned about Boxee from a podcast (source now forgotten) and received an invitation to download the alpha some weeks ago (no longer an issue). I was interested in streaming video sources and Boxee appeared to be a way to integrate multiple sources. At about this same time, NetFlix began streaming to the Mac (using Silverlight). I experimented with these tools on my Mac, but wanted to be able to display the video on a much larger screen.

I somehow got the idea that the AppleTV was the hardware necessary to get the video to a HDTV and convinced Cindy it would make a great birthday present. I did have some of the details wrong – I assumed you could stream anything from your Mac to AppleTV if you made use of this strange hack that required to prepare a flash drive with some special software and boot to this flashdrive instead of the hard drive of the AppleTV. This may still be possible, but not with the software I used.

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I do need to read a little more carefully. You don\’t really stream everything from your Mac to the AppleTV and the flash drive is for installing software on the AppleTV (a little more risky than I had originally thought although there may be another technique out there that does not require modification of the AppleTV itself).

The method for modifying the AppleTV makes use of code written by the Google people so I was willing to give it a go (Hack technique). It took a little experimentation, but I was able to get it to work. The AppleTV works as originally intended and has the added features of Boxee. The unique benefit of Boxee as far as I can tell is mainly that it offers access to HULU. NetFlix works on a regular computer, but not on the AppleTV (at least not yet).

Fun project.