Beyond School

Scott McLeod from Dangerously Irrelevant tagged me with this interesting meme, so here are the rules, followed by the last five educational podcasts I listened to and/or watched:

Meme guidelines

1. Choose five of your favorite education podcasts. Any kind of education podcast is okay - students, teachers, administrators, professors, etc. - feel free to pick ones that you’ve made yourself! Try and pick specific podcasts, not podcast feeds.
2. Tag others for the meme. Feel free to participate even if you haven’t been ‘tagged.’
3. Please use a Technorati tag of educationpodcast or podcasteducation.
4. Please add your selections to the Moving Forward podcasts wiki page (and create categories as needed) so that others can benefit too!

My Last Five Podcasts or Videopodcasts:
1. David Warlick’s K12 Online Preconference Keynote, 2007: More on that in a later post, as a follow-up to this immediate take-aways post (just a k12 chatroom copy-paste) from a few days ago. You can also read the conversation about the keynote in the comments to the K12 page linked above.

2. David Warlick’s K12 Online Keynote, 2006: I loved watching last year’s keynote right before watching this year’s. I’m so new to the edublogosphere (only 10 months old), I didn’t know about last year’s event. Doesn’t matter: I went back in time 12 months and caught myself up on the K12 website.

3. Jessica Yun’s “audiobook” of “Roots,” her published 1001 Flat World Tales story: (from last year’s first edition - more to come from new schools and writers at the end of this school year, and every school year following). Jessica was 15 when she wrote this story, and podcasted it. She tells her stories as well as she writes them. Watch out for this one - she’s got a future as a writer, if she wants it. (And check out her blog, and tell her to get back to writing. Actually, she won’t have a choice: we’re launching our re-tooled schoolwide student blogging program in two weeks.)

4. Wesley Fryer interviewing Scott McLeod: Podcast 151: Dr. Scott McLeod on Administrator Idea-Sharing on Blogs, [etc], and Educating Others for the Transition to 21st Century Schools: on school 2.0 and school administrators 1.0: I sent this one to my admin. Wonder if they listened to it. Interesting on many levels, from Scott’s perspective on ivory tower educator-leaders’ oblivion and/or resistance to the edublogosphere’s vibrant and up-to-date discourse, to Scott’s own thoughts about the growing - but by no means new - irrelevance and inconsequentiality of much peer-reviewed academic publishing. (Lucky you, Scott: I’m not making this up. A free plug )

5. Robert Green Ingersoll: “Improved Man”: (Ingersoll podcasts channel on iTunes): Ingersoll was a late 19th century secular humanist - a better word than that strange “atheist” word (am I also an “a-horoscopist”?) who wrote powerfully and elegantly about all the ways in which religion is most often a tragically misguided attempt to “be and do good.” It’s frustrating to think that America and much of the rest of the world have only gone backwards in their heroic “March into the Middle Ages” since Ingersoll wrote his passionate, erudite, and “radically sane” critiques and visions a century and a quarter ago. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Friedrich Nietzsche readers really should subscribe to these podcasts. My favorite educational quote from Ingersoll:

“Schools should be today’s churches, and teachers, today’s preachers.”

He wrote this around 1890, and today I’m watching America’s Intelligent Design proponents attempting to expand their virulent attacks on science and reason around the globe - including here in Korean international schools. So I can’t say I’m hopeful about the future of reason in education. It seems America - the majority of its people and its disastrous political leadership - is intent on praying for an end to Global Warming (or indifferent to it, since heaven is the real world anyway), while at the same time continuing to ignore or attack science - and good, hardworking, life-saving, true miracle-working scientists.

It’s not easy, and certainly not fun, risking alienating my religious readers out there. But a commitment to science, enlightenment, education, and the fate of our planet make me feel it’s a duty. As a former Baptist and lifelong student of religious texts and religious history (see my LibraryThing widget in sidebar), I feel more qualified than most to confidently take on that duty. I’m just trying to do good by my own lights, not tradition’s.

More on Ingersoll from James Carr’s Ingersoll Podcasts page on Podcast Directory - a magnificent resource, with dozens of Ingersoll’s works, which Carr delivers with sterling quality:

Robert Green Ingersoll was an eloquent spokesman for free thinking, reason, and science in 19th century America. His intelligence, logic, humor, and clear thinking still speaks to us today. This podcast will include readings from his speeches and writings. Robert Ingersoll has an important place in American history, although, due to the weakness and politicization of our educational system, most of us have never heard of him. [emphasis added]

I tag (and apologize to, if inopportune):

Darren Kuropatwa (nice to talk to Darren for the first time in Warlick’s Fireside Chat)
Stephen Downes
Wesley Fryer
Will Richardson
Kim Cofino
Vicki Davis
Clarence Fisher
Doug Noon
Graham Wegner

Scott, this meme is a good idea. I’ll be checking out that wiki for human-filtered podcasts by the minds I admire the most. Thanks for the opportunity.

Technorati Tags: educationpodcast, podcasteducation, k12online, k12online07

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

What’s that handy remote David is using? and is he filming with a webcam?

Clay Burell (KR) : Was watching online, but paused to wait for download so I can chat and watch at same time.

Clay Burell (KR) : Where are you, Jennifer? (”The borders have changed,” Dave is saying as we chat.)
JenniferW (US) : SoCalifornia — and you??
Clay Burell (KR) : Seoul

I sent this to my principal and director at an IB conference in Singapore.

I’m gonna focus now and listen. Chime in later.

“our task is to find the new boundaries” - beyond filtering all?

“I do a lot of my work here at Starbucks” - funny example of change lol

“I was the last generation who looked at his father…”…and believed he was seeing his own future.” Quotable.
Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach (US) : Clay–I loved that part
Marie Coleman (US) : @clay I loved that quote, too!

one of the hard things: talking about this world, our experiences, and……communicating that the point is not to boast, but to testify! David seemed to feel that danger a minute ago.

“Their world is not stable.”

That “natives” thing: my “kids” are digital slackers. RSS? What’s that?

“magical, alien powers…hear and see through walls”

meanwhile Ning AP Lit student auto-notify email appears on desktop
multiverse

Quotable: “We want the students to be the children we want to teach…”"…rather than teaching the children that they are.” [I wish we could call them people, but I teach high school so it's my own thing.]
Always true, but now it means “cutting off their tentacles.”

Funny thing: my kids resist school 2.0. They don’t know how to use this to learn.
Justin Medved (Th) : those who are here have already “cut their tenticles” Why did you cut yours?
dharter (th) : @clayb why do you think they resist?
Kim Cofino (TH) : that’s interesting clay - only a tool for fun?
Clay Burell (KR) : Kim: no, I think it’s just conditioning. School is for books and paper, and…
…yes, digital is just for fun. Again: blogging? RSS? Connective writing? Skype? Not a clue for them.
Ståle Brokvam (PH) : Some kids have bad experiences with teachers trying to use computers for school, I guess
dharter (th) : A kid the other day said to me that he hates the term Web 2.0…makes sense, it’s 1.0 to him!
Dharter: LOL. So true. But does he rss and feed read, podcast, etc?
dharter (th) : Read a great editorial about facebook and how it was just a fun place for kids until adults got a hold of it and started using it to really network.

Ståle Brokvam (PH) : Teachers trying to force computers into a very limited model
Clay Burell (KR) : Stale: I think it’s psychology too: they can’t envision how real learning can happen anew
Clay Burell (KR) : Like, “Cellphones in the classroom is like farting in church!”
gradster(1)/ (US) : I need to talk to them
dharter (th) : Lazy? Doing it at home anyway?
gradster(1)/ (US) : alright clay get me together with them
mrsdurff (US) : i have kids making video games
Clay Burell (KR) : Gradster, see me at burell.blogspot.com if you’re serious.
gradster(1)/ (US) : Okay everybody please tell me how anyone would have bad experiences with using a computer for education
mrsdurff (US) : well it does happen grad
Ståle Brokvam (PH) : True - they may not have be very clear about their own learning process

bye jo - i’m way late about 1001 Tales or other collab - haven’t forgot.

Kim Cofino (TH) : The ISB team learning together: http://www.flickr.com/photos/superkimbo/1514396561 /

Justin Medved (Th) : “the part of learning that should define our students education experiences are the “side-trips”
Clay Burell (KR) : Justin, I want to learn more about your curriculum work at ISB. The learn20cn ning a good resource?
Justin Medved (Th) : Clay - www.newliteracy.wikispaces.com/ please come aboard
Clay Burell (KR) : I will, Justin, thanks

“find it, evaluate it, organize it into ‘personal digital libraries’”- concise

“we’re overwhelmed” - LOL - boy, are we. planning PD is best example.

Another rr-web literacy skill: “The art of noticing.” Nobody looks at the website. They ask for help instead (my own quote)
Kim Cofino (TH) : @clay absolutely
Clay Burell (KR) : People get annoyed when I say, “Look for it. It’ll be there.” (Smiling, lips bleeding)
Then they say, “Oh, there it is.”
Kim Cofino (TH) : @clay was just talking about this today - we need to cultivate a problem solving attitude - you can figure it out
Clay Burell (KR) : yeah, A. November talked about posting schoolwide “problem-solving process” in……all classrooms.

“It is so much within the grasp of those of us who are paying attention.” HUGE qualifier after “us.” The challenge.

Quotable (wry): “You could rely on gravity to drive the curriculum.”

BAM: “Our students are now more literate than our teachers.” Did I hear that right? I agree [re: DIGITAL literacy], but…BAM.

A bit of an epiphany there. Though still, I’m more digiliterate than most of my HS students.

I don’t see the “native” wizardry as much as gaming and facebooking.

3 convergences > new boundaries? 1. Info-savvy students (nice qualifier - “They need us……to help them learn to use and drive it.”) Conclusion at 39 minutes ff a MUST-WATCH.

blog: “we are not afraid”

just finished. David lists his gear in credits = thanks!

I look forward to discussions of setting those “new boundaries” as we go.

Technorati Tags: k12online, k12online07

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I just saw this photo on Edge — The Third Culture, my very favorite science and culture online magazine. The Cassini satellite snapped it of Saturn. Steven Pinker gives more background.

Notice the speck of light (inset upper left) between the rings?

Say hello to home. And say a word of thanks to hard science for Revealing to us its Wonders.

Just had to share the most sublime digital photo, and the most miraculous feat performed by man on earth, I think I’ve ever seen. I need to start supporting the scientists more.

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)