We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint

via nytimes.com

The New York Times put out We Have Met the Enemy and He is PowerPoint talking about how military commanders are spending inordinate amounts of time making and watching PowerPoint presentations. Anyone who knows me well knows I hate PowerPoints, usually because they're done so poorly. Now and then I've seen a great one, but there's something about the structure of the tool and the way in which we're teaching people to use it that drives me crazy.

I was struck by the fact that Bumiller (article author) missed referencing Edward Tufte's The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, which is the best $7 you'll ever spend if you use PowerPoint or any other digital presentation tool. Tufte makes it clear how the tool itself can lead you to present data in unhelpful, and in NASA's case, dangerous, ways. I have an old blog post titled, Is PowerPoint a Waste of Time for Teachers that became relevant for me again after reading the Times' article.

Do you use PowerPoint? How do you differ from the military use? Do you use it with your students? How do you get them to learn what a bullet point even means? Too many questions, too little time.

Workshop for K-12 computer science teachers working with under-represented populations (women, students of color, etc)

Agenda


K-12 Computing Teachers Workshop

“Overcoming Barriers, Boundaries and Bad News”
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
October 1-2, 2010
Hyatt Regency Atlanta
Atlanta, GA

Day 1: Friday, October 1, 2010

All Day GHC Conference Registration
All Day Attend GHC Sessions & Attend Lunches
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm Ignite Talks – Ignite Talks are short presentations given by various presenters working on outreach to various communities interested in collaboration.
3:00 pm – 5:00 pm Town Hall Meeting: Bridging Boundaries and Creating Capacity: Engaging Stakeholders to Address Equity in K12 Computing
7:00 pm – 10:00 pm Sponsor Night – This is a networking event to celebrate the conclusion of the 2010 Grace Hopper Celebration. The event features dinner, music and entertainment.

Day 2: Saturday, October 2, 2010

8:00 am – 9:00 am Workshop Registration & Networking Breakfast
9:00 am – 10:00 am Welcome & Keynote (TBA)
10:00 am – 10:15 am Break
10:15 am – 11:00 am Breakout Sessions I
Social Networking (TBA)

Dot Diva: Changing the Image of Computing: Julie Benyo

An Update on the New AP CS Course: Chris Stephenson and Jan Cuny

An interdisciplinary Approach to Introducing Computing in Grades K-5: Kathleen Larson, Sarah Pennachio, Donna Russo
11:00 am – 11:15 am Break
11:15 am – 12:00 pm Breakout Sessions II (TBA)
Open Source: It’s All Out in the Open…But Where Do We Start: Anita Verno, Bill Madden, Leslie Hawthorn

Teaching Programming is Easy with Alice: Steve Cooper

Teaching Computer Science with Toys: Robb Cutler

Modeling & Simulations: Betsy Frederick, Irene Lee
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Lunch
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Panel: Teacher Leadership & Advocacy as a Tool for Broadening Participation: Stephanie Hoeppner, Eugene Lemon, Daniel Moix
2:00 pm – 2:30 pm Wrap-up
2:30 pm – 3:30 pm Networking & Sponsor Activities
via gracehopper.org

This looks like a great program hosted by the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Get involved, people!

DAYTUM - another amazing way to interact with data online

via daytum.com

I think Dan Meyer would like Daytum. With the free account everything you post is public, so be careful what you track. Either way, how cool is this? I could see a sports team in a school keep tracking of statistics and encouraging people to check out their Daytum. Perhaps a biology lab collecting data making a page with their combined findings...

Anyone using this in their school?

My school's social networking policy

I've shared this with a few people and thought I'd share it more widely. Two years ago my school came up with a social networking policy for faculty and staff. This gives the adults in our school clear guidance about what is expected of them. If you use it, please credit it back to The Hewitt School. We fully expect this policy to evolve as our online lives evolve. This just happens to be where it is right now. If you're looking for other policies Alex Ragone recently shared this link, which has quite a lot on it. We've been thinking about this more and more as our school just launched it's official Facebook fan page.

Policy on Social Networking

Faculty and staff members are only to interact online with students in school-sponsored "spaces." Interactions on CourseWeb, Hewitt e-mail, and other Hewitt-sponsored online spaces are appropriate, while interactions via commercial sites such as Facebook, MySpace, etc, are not. If a faculty or staff member is contacted by a student via non-Hewitt channels, the corresponding division head should be notified. 

Powerful keynote on why/how/what schools need to do with social media

I just watched this excellent keynote by Ben Jones (his M.I.T. admissions blogs got NY Times attention) talking about how Oberlin (where he is now) uses social media for admissions purposes. It's an incredible testimony on how this can be done really well, and I might argue must be done.

This comes on the heels of a wonderful meeting I had at school with my admissions, development, archives, business, marketing, communications and other team members discussing our social media strategy. Tomorrow I meet with our academic leadership from the head of school to the lower school head to the academic dean. The conversations have been wonderful and we've been grappling with what the right use is for us.

Watch this video to see an articulate, clear presentation on the possibilities:

 

Is there really any privacy online? Even when "anonymous," like formspring or Chat Routlette?

How do I delete/disable my account?

Ryan Dec 30, 2009

You can disable your account by going to Settings > Disable Account and clicking on "Yes, Disable my Account". You can restore your account later if you choose.

All traces of your profile page and questions users have asked you will disappear.  Questions you have asked others will still appear, as there is no way to ever delete a question you have asked another user.  Only that user can delete it.

via formspringme.zendesk.com

I was reading How Privacy Vanishes Online in the New York Times which shows how computer systems can now analyze even seemingly anonymous data to get quite an accurate idea of who you are when a parent of a student asked how she could delete her daughter's formspring account. If you work in a school and haven't heard of formspring, you will soon, so get ready. Anyway, I looked up the answer to her question and came upon the FAQ response above. Wow, what a great lesson for students to read: "Questions you have asked others will still appear, as there is no way to ever delete a question you have asked another user." There is real confusion over what "anonymous" means online, and what "delete" means. For all intents and purposes, I'd argue that neither are a realistic option when online, so consider that the next time you're pressing 'send' or 'post.'

Also given to me recently was the news that there is a new mashup out there mapping Chat Roulette ("anonymous" video chatting) users. It's pretty scary that now your image and your location can be mapped for the world to find you. More on this at Mashable. Here's a previous post of mine on Chat Roulette, for context.

THATCamp 2010: the humanities and technology camp

via thatcamp.org

THATCamp is a humanities and technology "unconference" at George Mason University near Washington, DC. It seems like a great opportunity to involve history and English teachers in. The applications, however, are due today, March 15, 2010. Even if you can't make this year's conference, keep it on your calendar for next year.

On a side note, have any of you attended before? Do you recommend it?

Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls

Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls

David Cole of Georgetown Law was among the first professors in the Washington region to ban laptops for most of his students. A few are selected to use them to take notes, which others may then borrow.
via washingtonpost.com

In an unsurprising article an old media institution which is slowly withering away (the newspaper) discusses how a law school has to ban laptops in their classrooms because students aren't listening to the lectures.

"This is like putting on every student's desk, when you walk into class, five different magazines, several television shows, some shopping opportunities and a phone, and saying, 'Look, if your mind wanders, feel free to pick any of these up and go with it,' " [Professor] Cole said."

I can't see how this is any different than these future-lawyers desks are going to be. They'll be in their offices, having to do work, with a computer, Internet access, cell phones, desk phones, e-mail, instant messenger, Skype, etc, all available for their perusal.

Shouldn't law schools being teaching future lawyers how to minimize distraction, use modern tools to be better lawyers (like writing a collaborative brief via Google Docs), and embrace what modern technology has done for the legal field? Or perhaps the bigger problem is the modern legal field isn't moving to take advantage of the opportunities. My sense is that the field is, but the educational institutions training the new lawyers aren't.

I can't believe how unwilling educators are to change their practice. You've got to get to where your kids are, or you'll be irrelevant.

My rant for the day.