Wasn???t really aware of this inquiry amongst bloggers but Wes tagged me so I???ll oblige.
The question of how the blogging process works for me is likely not vastly different from others but in an effort to be somewhat original, here goes:
1. Originality. It doesn???t take long for a topic to hit the blogosphere and in no time becomes old news. Unless I feel I can contribute something really unique, I???ll likely leave it alone. On the other hand, there???s a bit of a journalistic appeal to be the first to post a breaking story or least present something new.
2. Brevity. The nature of the web requires a different style of writing. Personally I almost am disappointed when one of my regulars decides to write a short dissertation. Not that there isn???t a place for that but I???ve become accustomed to very concise writing that DOESN???T fill in all the gaps. That???s what comments are for. I don???t think I???ve written many posts over 500 words.
3. Emotion. Some might call it passion but often I???m simply compelled to write out of a reaction to a post, news story, or other observation. That doesn???t mean that I write it immediately. Often I???ll start it, leave it, think some more, read some more and finish it.
4. Coolness or Humor. These are certainly less in depth but I think our blogs should reflect our personalities. Injecting the less than academic posts are important. I like bloggers who let their hair down once in a while.
5. Personal. While many of the things I write about are reflections on things I read the stuff I experience with teachers, students and administrators is the most important. As someone who is not dealing with kids everyday, the fear of being out of touch concerns me. I find most pleasure sharing what I???ve done and seen.
Netfixer will allow you to take a screenshot of a website page. Not just what you see on your screen, but the whole thing.
Paparazzi is a freeware app that will do a similiar thing, but Netfixer has an extra option that I really like. They offer a bookmarklet that you can drag to your bookmark bar and that makes it really easy to take the shot. When you are on a page that you want to grab, just click on the bookmarklet and the program will open up VERY quickly with the URL already filled in. That makes it simple.
Also, NetFixer will let you decide the dimensions of the screenshot.
Lithium is a very powerful app for monitoring servers and just about everything else. This app won???t be for everyone, but for those of you who need something like this you???ll LOVE it.
I saw this application in a demonstration at Macworld. I was so impressed with it and I was really happy to see that they offer a ???lite??? version that only limits the number of devices you can monitor. But if you have a small network in your house or you???ve used our tutorials to set up a Mac mini as a server then this will work just fine. It does take a bit of a set up, but they offer videos for setting it up on Mac OS X.
From the developer???s site:
LITHIUM Network Monitoring Platform is an integrated and feature rich network, server and appliance monitoring and management platform. Designed to provide an end-to-end solution, Lithium includes automated device monitoring, out-of-the-box support for SNMP and an integrated trouble-ticket case management system.
The platform is built around a scalable, modular architecture that incorporates a Unix-based server-side component (Core) to perform automated device monitoring, data collection, analysis and storage and to manage the multi-user case management system. Core is available for Mac OS X (Client/Server) and Linux (Debian, Fedora, RHEL and CentOS).
Windows and Mac OS X clients (Console) provide the user with a graphically rich and interactive monitoring and management console that delivers integration and efficient work-flow beyond the capabilities of web-based applications alone. A web-based interface (Web) delivers an anywhere, anytime, portal to view all network monitoring data without the need for client applications from any web-enabled device.
This is a thought-provoking article/post from Cathy Sierra.
Got me thinking about what we do with assessment for kids - aggregation to the point of loosing the individuals - why is it that assessment and reporting are pretty much the only places we don’t focus on individuals in primary education?
Cathy defines the dumbness of crowds like this …
What’s the difference between Collective Intelligence and Dumbness of Crowds? A few examples:
“Collective intelligence” is a pile of people writing Amazon book reviews.
“Dumbness of Crowds” is a pile of people collaborating on a wiki to collectively author a book.
(Not that there aren’t exceptions, but that’s just what they are–rare exceptions for things like reference books. I’m extremely skeptical that a group will produce even a remotely decent novel, for example. Most fiction suffers even with just two authors.)
“Collective Intelligence” is all the photos on Flickr, taken by individuals on their own, and the new ideas created from that pool of photos (and the API).
“Dumbness of Crowds” is expecting a group of people to create and edit a photo together.
“Collective Intelligence” is about getting input and ideas from many different people and perspectives.
“Dumbness of Crowds” is blindly averaging the input of many different people, and expecting a breakthrough.
(It’s not always the averaging that’s the problem it’s the blindly part)
The dumbness of crowds seems to me to be what we often do in our assessment, particularly in aggregating data for reporting purposes.
I am a big fan of scatterplotting for this reason - coming back to my assessment question at the beginning of my thoughts. I believe it is the ‘trajectory of learning’ that is important; even more than the amount of progress or whether they are ‘above’, ‘at’, or ‘below’ so-called expectations. An able child can be cruising and a less able one making fabulous gains and our aggregation of data looses this sense of individual progress and success.
So we need to plot where the child was last time, and where they are now. Join up the points and you have a trajectory of learning. John Hattie’s meta analysis would tell us that beinbg alive and present in a classroom has a 0.4 effect so we would be expecting to see a better than this in our results for any particular child. The ones we can target for support are then obvious, as are those needing extension.
The collective picture is there as well ….. now I just need to find an SMS that can do this …
or with the big Mac Keynote this week:
http://theappleblog.com/2007/01/05/playing-keynote-bingo/
… can be fun at education conferences too …. ‘reflection’, ‘integration’, ‘feedback’ …..
Next time you stumble onto an unlinked URL while browsing in Firefox (i.e., the text of a URL that’s missing the link anchor to make it clickable), highlight and then drag and drop the text to the address bar and be instantly swept away to said URL.
Of course you probably already knew that you can drag and drop text (and even clickable links) in this manner, but what’s neat about this little trick is that after you drop the URL text in the address bar, it instantly executes the URL (provided it starts with http://); regular text won’t execute in the address bar. On the other hand, dragging and dropping regular text to the Firefox search bar will automatically execute the search, offering another quick way to perform a text search. None of this will rock anyone’s world, but these are nice tricks to have on hand for the right situations. Thanks Murray! ??? Adam Pash
I am the proud husband at the moment as Jane has just had her first article published.
We have been doing quite a lot of work over the past few years on the contribution oral language makes in literacy learning. As a Speech Language Therapist, Jane’s knowledge of this is much more extensive than mine and I never cease to be amazed at all the stuff she has at her fingertips.
Her article is focusing on teachers personal knowledge of phonological awareness. There are some profound implications in the article for ALL teachers and I would recommend everyone has a read.
eg - teachers are saying to kids “what is the first sound in that word?” when teachers themselves (as a profession) are not able to consistently and accurately able to do this.
One of the things I believe very strongly is teachers being able to identify the ‘next SMALL steps’ in children’s learning. Phonological awareness is a critical skill for literacy acquisition and anything that informs our pedagogical knowledge in this area has to be good.
So …. check out the latest SET.
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