I was in Boston all of last week for the National Catholic Education Association conference. Here are some highlights.
NUMBER ONE
The opening days of the conference were excellent; I met a number of prospective students and principals who wanted their teachers to consider our courses, but the last day of the conference was dead. I’d given everything away and it was just as well because no one was interested in graduate study, and interest in my neighbors’ products was equally dismal.
So in comes two mid-career teachers and one gasped, “A hall-pass timer! This is the coolest!” Jim Wehrly of Stokes Publishing displayed in the booth next to me various kinds of timers for classrooms.
It was almost as big as the old fashioned board of education, so it would be hard to misplace. “It’s also water-proof,” says Jim—just in case kids drop it into the lavatory sink while washing their hands.
“Does it shock them if they’re late?”
Jim said it didn’t, but I looked to me like he was making a mental note.
“I’d like to record my voice on it,” said the teacher, “so when they’re late they’d hear my voice, ‘Get back to class, get back to class’—and only I could turn it off.”
Despite the excitement, they moved on without buying anything.
NUMBER TWO
I talked briefly with a teacher who looked amazingly like my doctor, except 20 years younger. I told her but she hardly knew what to say. In fact, she looked incredulous, as if her name had just been called for the Hunger Games. Two colleagues appeared and asked what she was doing. She lilted her head and said, “I look like a doctor.” Then they laughed at the assumed absurdity and wandered off.
NUMBER THREE
This is a great walking city, especially if you appreciate grand old buildings. On my three-mile walk to the convention center, I five-story mansion condos built in the late 1800s for the upper-middle class, I am told. Though you can still see the beauty in these great row houses, they have long since been chopped into apartments and now look like over-Botoxed movie stars.
And the grand old churches! They not as big and intricate as European cathedrals, but they are stone-craft works of art. I can’t even imagine how they built them without cranes.
As in many cities, people on the street generally avoid eye contact or look through you.
And yet—and yet—I saw a burley Black policeman (who was big enough to have been a retired New England Patriots lineman)—so here was this big guy making faces at a giggling baby in a stroller. What a great moment!
My next conference is the National Charter School Association in Minneapolis. That’s in late June. Then, it is off to New Orleans in October for the Virtual School Symposium. Students and alumni visits are always appreciated. Please contact me if you can go.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Monday, April 2, 2012
Like or not: Professionals expected to be role models
If you’re going to be a professional, you have to reflect the standards of your public. And if you’re a doctor or educator, your standards should be higher than the aggregate values of the community.
Yes, it’s your life, so why should you care what anyone else thinks? Because even if you don’t set yourself on a pedestal, others do, and like it or not, with the mantle of being a teaching or medical professional comes public expectations.
And now, social media are teaching more and more professionals hard lessons of life.
For example, resumes display your best side, so human resources professionals are now going to Facebook and other social media to get a truer picture of applicants. They fear that someone with one or more Facebook pictures showing alcohol consumption may have a drinking problem that could affect their work, or someone with sexuality-focused photos on Facebook might make inappropriate contact with patients or students. Questionable photos and text could keep professionals from getting jobs or could get them fired.
The case of a mortuary student at the University of Minnesota makes a poignant point.
She threatened her ex-boyfriend with a sharp instrument on Facebook, presumably so he’d leave her alone, and she was the one who got suspended from school and who became the object of a police investigation. Authorities take these things seriously. In the wake of Columbine and many other school killings since then, how could they not take threats seriously? And doing so on Facebook is the same as buying an ad in the newspaper or signing a confession.
What’s a professional to do?
Glori Hinck, a 2010 M.E.T. grad and an associate professor of chiropractic education at Northwestern Health Sciences University in Bloomington, Minnesota, suggests six remedies for potentially career-killing social media faux pas.
• Don’t make your personal Facebook site public.
• Further, understand that nothing on the internet is truly private.
• The new timeline function in Facebook allows anyone to see what you did in any given year, so old photos are no longer buried.
• Patrol your social media sites. There are ways to view how your site looks to others.
• Consider how many friends you have on Facebook. Most users have 533 friends, which is the size of a small town and, she says, they can’t all be friends in the traditional sense, so be careful what you share with these people.
• Don’t be friends with patients or students on personal FB sites.
Yes, it’s your life, so why should you care what anyone else thinks? Because even if you don’t set yourself on a pedestal, others do, and like it or not, with the mantle of being a teaching or medical professional comes public expectations.
And now, social media are teaching more and more professionals hard lessons of life.
For example, resumes display your best side, so human resources professionals are now going to Facebook and other social media to get a truer picture of applicants. They fear that someone with one or more Facebook pictures showing alcohol consumption may have a drinking problem that could affect their work, or someone with sexuality-focused photos on Facebook might make inappropriate contact with patients or students. Questionable photos and text could keep professionals from getting jobs or could get them fired.
The case of a mortuary student at the University of Minnesota makes a poignant point.
She threatened her ex-boyfriend with a sharp instrument on Facebook, presumably so he’d leave her alone, and she was the one who got suspended from school and who became the object of a police investigation. Authorities take these things seriously. In the wake of Columbine and many other school killings since then, how could they not take threats seriously? And doing so on Facebook is the same as buying an ad in the newspaper or signing a confession.
What’s a professional to do?
Glori Hinck, a 2010 M.E.T. grad and an associate professor of chiropractic education at Northwestern Health Sciences University in Bloomington, Minnesota, suggests six remedies for potentially career-killing social media faux pas.
• Don’t make your personal Facebook site public.
• Further, understand that nothing on the internet is truly private.
• The new timeline function in Facebook allows anyone to see what you did in any given year, so old photos are no longer buried.
• Patrol your social media sites. There are ways to view how your site looks to others.
• Consider how many friends you have on Facebook. Most users have 533 friends, which is the size of a small town and, she says, they can’t all be friends in the traditional sense, so be careful what you share with these people.
• Don’t be friends with patients or students on personal FB sites.
Monday, March 26, 2012
How Facebook reflects your professionalism, or maybe the lack of it
Glori Hinck, a 2010 graduate of Boise State’s M.E.T. program and an associate professor of chiropractic education at Northwestern Health Sciences University in Bloomington, Minnesota, has been analyzing Facebook sites maintained by chiropractic students and has a curious tale to tell.
And it is a tale that EdTech students should think about, as well.
Her research shows that almost half (42%) of the 308 Facebook sites she visited featured unprofessional behavior. Using definitions of professionalism gleaned from peer-reviewed journals, Hinck says 34% of these Facebook sites allowed unrestricted public access to pictures featuring alcohol consumption and 26% provided access to photos exhibiting overt sexuality.
javascript:void(0)
She asked an important question in her recent presentation to the Association of Chiropractic Colleges, “Would you hang these photos on your office wall?” All pre-professional students, including EdTech students who are already practicing professionals, should think about it.
What are the ramifications? What do certain pictures mean to certain people and should you care? In a word, yes. Professionals, whether teachers or chiropractors, are very public people whose employment to some extent depends on community approval.
The problem with potentially offensive material is its subjectivity. For example, photos of a big game hunter with his or her trophy animal are well received by some people but may be offensive to others, as shown by the recent hullabaloo related to posting of big game trophy pictures by Donald Trump’s son.
The hunting picture might be fine in rural Minnesota where hunting is an accepted way of life, but the same photo may not be well received by clients in downtown Minneapolis.
The same is true of party pictures. A professional may drink with friends, but is it professional to make such images public?
That’s the question that professionals of all stripes need to ask themselves.
And here’s another.
What’s on your Facebook site?
NOTE: Next week, we’ll take a closer look at the role of Facebook in hiring practices.
And it is a tale that EdTech students should think about, as well.
Her research shows that almost half (42%) of the 308 Facebook sites she visited featured unprofessional behavior. Using definitions of professionalism gleaned from peer-reviewed journals, Hinck says 34% of these Facebook sites allowed unrestricted public access to pictures featuring alcohol consumption and 26% provided access to photos exhibiting overt sexuality.
javascript:void(0)
She asked an important question in her recent presentation to the Association of Chiropractic Colleges, “Would you hang these photos on your office wall?” All pre-professional students, including EdTech students who are already practicing professionals, should think about it.
What are the ramifications? What do certain pictures mean to certain people and should you care? In a word, yes. Professionals, whether teachers or chiropractors, are very public people whose employment to some extent depends on community approval.
The problem with potentially offensive material is its subjectivity. For example, photos of a big game hunter with his or her trophy animal are well received by some people but may be offensive to others, as shown by the recent hullabaloo related to posting of big game trophy pictures by Donald Trump’s son.
The hunting picture might be fine in rural Minnesota where hunting is an accepted way of life, but the same photo may not be well received by clients in downtown Minneapolis.
The same is true of party pictures. A professional may drink with friends, but is it professional to make such images public?
That’s the question that professionals of all stripes need to ask themselves.
And here’s another.
What’s on your Facebook site?
NOTE: Next week, we’ll take a closer look at the role of Facebook in hiring practices.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Let's get together in Minneapolis or Boston
I hope to see those of you in the Minneapolis and Boston areas this spring.
I’m going to be in Minneapolis in mid-April for the National Charter School Association conference and in Boston in June for the National Catholic Educators Association conference.
We ALWAYS have a good visit when EdTech students show up at our booth at conferences. I think they do it, you know, to see if I’m real. Most prospective students meet me on the phone and expect me to act like a corporate stuffed shirt, but, as you know, that is the farthest thing from reality. It is always something of a treat to show up to get a good look at me.
When I introduce them to conference goers who may be only vaguely interested in the EdTech program, our students step in and tell about their online experience in the master’s program. They are the best salesmen we have.
Here’s a deal that’s hard to beat.
If you bring a friend interested in the EdTech master’s program to one of these conferences, I’ll buy dinner for the both of you.
I’m going to be in Minneapolis in mid-April for the National Charter School Association conference and in Boston in June for the National Catholic Educators Association conference.
We ALWAYS have a good visit when EdTech students show up at our booth at conferences. I think they do it, you know, to see if I’m real. Most prospective students meet me on the phone and expect me to act like a corporate stuffed shirt, but, as you know, that is the farthest thing from reality. It is always something of a treat to show up to get a good look at me.
When I introduce them to conference goers who may be only vaguely interested in the EdTech program, our students step in and tell about their online experience in the master’s program. They are the best salesmen we have.
Here’s a deal that’s hard to beat.
If you bring a friend interested in the EdTech master’s program to one of these conferences, I’ll buy dinner for the both of you.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
April edition of EdTech Faces now available
I was talking with EdTech grad Lynn Longenecker on Skype one evening when a movement behind him caught my eye.
It was a gorgeous little girl in pajamas and she was peering at me through the bars of a stairway banister. I don’t know if she thought I was Uncle Fester from the Addams Family or what, but she kept slinking down the steps to get a better look.
I turned my attention back to Lynn and before you know it, she was right beside him. So I said, “Are you supposed to be in bed?” Maria flashed a mischievous smile and nodded. Then, like a hawk on a rabbit, something flashed across the screen and Maria was gone. An instant later, she was in the background again and still smiling at me as her mother carried her up the stairs to bed.
I had helped Lynn join the EdTech master’s program five or so years ago, but this was my first introduction to his family. I mention all of this because when Lynn Longenecker graduated, he quit his teaching job and moved his family to Bolivia for a three-year stint of peace-building.
You’ve got to read how he used instructional design principles to curb ethic violence in Bolivia. The story is now available in the April edition of EdTech Faces. Find it at http://issuu.com/edtech-boisestate/docs/edtech_faces--edition_2 >.
It was a gorgeous little girl in pajamas and she was peering at me through the bars of a stairway banister. I don’t know if she thought I was Uncle Fester from the Addams Family or what, but she kept slinking down the steps to get a better look.
I turned my attention back to Lynn and before you know it, she was right beside him. So I said, “Are you supposed to be in bed?” Maria flashed a mischievous smile and nodded. Then, like a hawk on a rabbit, something flashed across the screen and Maria was gone. An instant later, she was in the background again and still smiling at me as her mother carried her up the stairs to bed.
I had helped Lynn join the EdTech master’s program five or so years ago, but this was my first introduction to his family. I mention all of this because when Lynn Longenecker graduated, he quit his teaching job and moved his family to Bolivia for a three-year stint of peace-building.
You’ve got to read how he used instructional design principles to curb ethic violence in Bolivia. The story is now available in the April edition of EdTech Faces. Find it at http://issuu.com/edtech-boisestate/docs/edtech_faces--edition_2 >.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Want a new job? Want to travel?
Dallas Becker has a job for you.
He’s looking for an energetic self starting educational technologist for an American school in Berlin, Germany.
Without asking my opinion, my wife says we'd take that job in a heart-beat, if only I were an educational technologist.
Her grandmother emigrated from the Schleswig-Holstein region of Germany between the two wars. My wife has visited her second-cousins there and they’ve visited us here, and she thinks living in Germany for two years would immerse her in her roots. Undoubtedly.
But I am not an educational technologist, so one of you has to take the job.
Dallas is looking for an EdTech grad, or student, who can teach teachers how use interactive white boards effectively and creatively.
But wait! There's more!
Dallas will want someone who can work effectively with teachers in curriculum development, and introduce new ideas and methods. Yeah, and when something doesn’t work, you’d be the person to fix it.
I first met Dallas six or seven years ago at a conference—in Dallas, as it turns out. He was a school technology coordinator in Texas and wanted a master’s degree. Well, I knew where he could get one and after graduation, he went to work for a university in Cairo. Now, he’s turning to his alma mater to find a technologist for his elementary school.
“The salary doesn't look like much,” he says, “around $43,000, until you realize that you aren't paying any taxes.” He says the first $120k earned out-of-country is tax free in the United States, for the first two years, anyway. He’ll pay you 1500 Euros for air fare and another 500 for shipping—that’s both ways, once for going to Germany and once when departing. Housing is not provided.
About 20 percent of the salary goes for health insurance, retirement, unemployment, etc., part of which can be reclaimed after leaving the country for 2 years, so long as the length of employment was less than five years.
Cool, huh?
Knowledge of German is not necessary because it is an American school, but here is what is necessary:
--Degree in Educational Technology (preferably in the last 5 years)
--Master’s degree in Educational technology a plus, but not required.
--Ed. Tech experience in a school setting is helpful, but not required.
--Experience with Instructional Design.
--Experience with Teacher Training.
--Experience in a school with interactive boards (Promethean a plus)
--Experience with classroom management systems (Moodle a plus)
--Experience with help desk services is helpful.
--Experience with Google Apps or Live@edu is helpful.
--Web mastering/design experience is a definite plus.
--Professional technical skills and certifications are a plus, but not required.
--Must hold a valid teaching certificate in one of the 50 United States.
Send a resume or vitae along with links, portfolios, or samples of your online work to:
Dr. Dallas Becker
Director of Technology
The John F. Kennedy School Berlin
www.jfks.de
dbecker@jfksberlin.org
Tentative hiring schedule is March 15-20. Interviews will be conducted via Skype prior to these dates.
And tell him Jerry sent you.
He’s looking for an energetic self starting educational technologist for an American school in Berlin, Germany.
Without asking my opinion, my wife says we'd take that job in a heart-beat, if only I were an educational technologist.
Her grandmother emigrated from the Schleswig-Holstein region of Germany between the two wars. My wife has visited her second-cousins there and they’ve visited us here, and she thinks living in Germany for two years would immerse her in her roots. Undoubtedly.
But I am not an educational technologist, so one of you has to take the job.
Dallas is looking for an EdTech grad, or student, who can teach teachers how use interactive white boards effectively and creatively.
But wait! There's more!
Dallas will want someone who can work effectively with teachers in curriculum development, and introduce new ideas and methods. Yeah, and when something doesn’t work, you’d be the person to fix it.
I first met Dallas six or seven years ago at a conference—in Dallas, as it turns out. He was a school technology coordinator in Texas and wanted a master’s degree. Well, I knew where he could get one and after graduation, he went to work for a university in Cairo. Now, he’s turning to his alma mater to find a technologist for his elementary school.
“The salary doesn't look like much,” he says, “around $43,000, until you realize that you aren't paying any taxes.” He says the first $120k earned out-of-country is tax free in the United States, for the first two years, anyway. He’ll pay you 1500 Euros for air fare and another 500 for shipping—that’s both ways, once for going to Germany and once when departing. Housing is not provided.
About 20 percent of the salary goes for health insurance, retirement, unemployment, etc., part of which can be reclaimed after leaving the country for 2 years, so long as the length of employment was less than five years.
Cool, huh?
Knowledge of German is not necessary because it is an American school, but here is what is necessary:
--Degree in Educational Technology (preferably in the last 5 years)
--Master’s degree in Educational technology a plus, but not required.
--Ed. Tech experience in a school setting is helpful, but not required.
--Experience with Instructional Design.
--Experience with Teacher Training.
--Experience in a school with interactive boards (Promethean a plus)
--Experience with classroom management systems (Moodle a plus)
--Experience with help desk services is helpful.
--Experience with Google Apps or Live@edu is helpful.
--Web mastering/design experience is a definite plus.
--Professional technical skills and certifications are a plus, but not required.
--Must hold a valid teaching certificate in one of the 50 United States.
Send a resume or vitae along with links, portfolios, or samples of your online work to:
Dr. Dallas Becker
Director of Technology
The John F. Kennedy School Berlin
www.jfks.de
dbecker@jfksberlin.org
Tentative hiring schedule is March 15-20. Interviews will be conducted via Skype prior to these dates.
And tell him Jerry sent you.
EdTech professor featured on MIT website
EdTech Assistant Professor Yu-Chang Hsu’s course, Mobile Apps Design for Teaching and Learning, uses a web-based tool called App Inventor, which allows non-programmers to design applications for mobile devices.
Hsu (pronounced Shoe) says App Inventor provides pre-programmed digital “blocks.” With training and practice, non-programmers can piece the blocks together to make working apps for mobile devices. Think of App Inventor as a computer version of Lincoln Logs.
Hsu taught the course last fall and wrote an article for the British Journal of Educational Technology. Well, you never know who’s going to read a journal article.
But Hsu knows.
He was contacted by Hal Ableson, an MIT professor and lead developer of—-you guessed it-—App Inventor. He was also contacted by a Google employee representing the CS4HS (Computer Science for High School) team.
Ableson and Google’s CS4HS team recognized Hsu as an early adapter of App Inventor in teacher education and asked him to share his story in a new MIT website that highlights how non-programmers are successfully using App Inventor to create functioning and useful mobile applications for various purposes.
Some people say you can’t teach programming with blocks, those pre-written packages of code that (gasp!) non-programmers can piece together like a picture puzzle. And just as exasperating is the idea that it might be taught online.
So here is Hsu, a professor at a university best known for its blue football field, who’s successfully teaching App Inventor online and, with co-authors Kerry Rice and Lisa Dawley, is telling the academic world how he did it.
Hsu told the MIT website audience that, “Many students in the class commented on the potential of AI for engaging K-16 students in developing logical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and of course--fun and useful apps.”
You can see all of Hsu’s comments at: http://appinventoredu.mit.edu/stories/teaching-mobile-app-design-app-inventor-boise-state-university and if you want to see the comments of other contributors, click on the Stories link at the top.
Hsu (pronounced Shoe) says App Inventor provides pre-programmed digital “blocks.” With training and practice, non-programmers can piece the blocks together to make working apps for mobile devices. Think of App Inventor as a computer version of Lincoln Logs.
Hsu taught the course last fall and wrote an article for the British Journal of Educational Technology. Well, you never know who’s going to read a journal article.
But Hsu knows.
He was contacted by Hal Ableson, an MIT professor and lead developer of—-you guessed it-—App Inventor. He was also contacted by a Google employee representing the CS4HS (Computer Science for High School) team.
Ableson and Google’s CS4HS team recognized Hsu as an early adapter of App Inventor in teacher education and asked him to share his story in a new MIT website that highlights how non-programmers are successfully using App Inventor to create functioning and useful mobile applications for various purposes.
Some people say you can’t teach programming with blocks, those pre-written packages of code that (gasp!) non-programmers can piece together like a picture puzzle. And just as exasperating is the idea that it might be taught online.
So here is Hsu, a professor at a university best known for its blue football field, who’s successfully teaching App Inventor online and, with co-authors Kerry Rice and Lisa Dawley, is telling the academic world how he did it.
Hsu told the MIT website audience that, “Many students in the class commented on the potential of AI for engaging K-16 students in developing logical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and of course--fun and useful apps.”
You can see all of Hsu’s comments at: http://appinventoredu.mit.edu/stories/teaching-mobile-app-design-app-inventor-boise-state-university and if you want to see the comments of other contributors, click on the Stories link at the top.
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