Vote With Your Feet

Scott McLeod blogged about leaving a 2 hour workshop because the facilitator did such a poor job. (http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2009/06/walking-out-on-bad-presenters.html)

I, too, find myself giving a presenter about 5 minutes or so to "engage me or enrage me", to borrow Marc Prensky's term. And yes... I drift off, check e-mail, think about other things. But not when I'm watching TED videos. Or Seth Godin.

Perhaps it's because I've been so smitten with Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds (blog is here) and his common-sense approach to presentations and how humans process information.

My question for this post: what ramifications does this have for our 21st century learners...students AND adults. Is this OK?

Do You Twitter?

I'm not a Twitter-er, but I do see the power of social networking. Enjoy this post by Karl Fisch about how one of his students needed help with a research report.

David Pogue, NYTimes Technology Columnist, also conducted a Twitter experiment while live on-stage during a conference presentation. The comments on this one are interesting ~ people feeling USED by his appeal for help.

Guy Kawasaki found himself on an island without his MacBook power supply. You guessed it, Twitter to the rescue. (This post also has some innovative ways to market yourself on Twitter).

...and if you need ME, just call my (un-webbed) cell phone... :) Derry

Energy and Passion

Those of you in South Kitsap have probably heard our new superintendent, Dave LaRose, give his passionate speeches about the "whole child". I think he's right on target, and yes, I'm probably biased.

However, Chris Lehmann (Principal at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia) gives Dave's energy a run for the money in this GREAT presentation about schools. Two reasons I share this:

1. I think the content is spot-on. Oh sure, he doesn't recite a lot of facts, but look into the eyes of any of our 21st century learners and tell me if the question of "relevance in light of Google" isn't one of the filters they're using.
2. The presentation format (Ignite) is very intriguing... 5 minutes, 20 slides, 15 seconds a slide. I think you get to the crux of what's important very quickly. (Oh, and no, you don't get a remote clicker - it's automatic every 15 seconds...)

Whaddya think?

Making Life Easier...

Just a few random updates from over the summer...

Seth Godin points us to Fonolo (http://fonolo.com/learn) -- an innovative service that is too cool for words. (But I'll try... it scans/transcribes the phone tree of a company and lets you quickly skip the menus, THEN it keeps an audio recording of the call. Check out the link above...)

I just learned that Jott is now charging for their service, but there is still a free version available.

And the ponderous question of the month...
I use Google Mail (gmail), and Google is famous for 'ad-word' placement based on what's in the message. Whenever I go into my Spam folder, the ads start popping up with "Spam recipe book" or "Great deals on Spam". Um...no...not THAT kind of Spam. I'd think it would be smarter than that? Or maybe the people at Google are like the folks in Hawaii and just have a real affection for processed meat!

Out Of The Office?

Tomorrow I'll be "out of the office" at a workshop, so I was setting out to do my out-of-office messaging ritual (voicemail, Outlook) when I realized......I'll be physically out of the office, but I'll still be connected.

So who cares if you e-mail or call me and I'm out of the office? I'll still be checking e-mail. With our Cisco Unified Messaging, your voicemail will show up in my e-mail box. You won't know the difference in an asynchronous sense.

The "Out of the office" concept is irrelevant now.

...well, unless I'm hiking, then I'm *really* out and, more accurately, "offline"...

...Bigger Than My Teacher Gives Me Credit For...

(...to the tune of John Mayer's Bigger Than My Body Gives Me Credit For...)

Ian Jukes posted a link to this article to his blog:

Jon Beasley-Murray, Assistant Professor of French, Hispanic and Italian
Studies, the University of British Columbia, has decided to replace term papers
with something more challenging. He has asked students in his Latin American
literature to do their projects on Wikipedia, the biggest multilingual
free-content encyclopedia on the Internet.

Beasley-Murray told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in an interview published on
Sunday, May 11, that writing for Wikipedia "seems like a much larger stage, more
of a challenge.""The vast majority of Wikipedia entries aren't very good," he
admitted, adding that the site aims to be academically sound.

The professor promised a rare A+ grade to students who manage to get their
projects accepted as a "Featured Article," the top rank on the online
encyclopedia.

Imagine... if students showed their learning (language, critical thinking, media bias, etc.) by putting their work before a worldwide audience. And I don't think it's just for post-secondary, either.

WASBO 2008

I was privileged to present today to the Washington Association of School Business Officials annual conference in Tacoma, and had about 50 people in attendance. The two-hour session was titled It's a Flat, Fast, Creative World: Change or Die and built on previous presentations about The World Is Flat, The Long Tail, and other core ed tech principles.

I tried to record the sessions in Elluminate, but my apologies ~ I forgot to hit the "record" button, so there's no audio! AAARRRGGHHH!

At any rate, the slide deck is available at SlideShare (http://www.slideshare.net/derrylyons) and supporting links on del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/derrylyons/wasbo2008)