XplanaZine

Here’s a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.Will Richardson posts about an ongoing digital storytelling podcast at Long Elementary in Dearborn, MI. Will says that these wonderful creations are “a perfect example of why teachers need to explore these technologies.” Tom Hoffman responds to Will’s saying he thinks “It is a little early to peg it as a “best practice,” as Will does. Let’s see if they can complete a few more chapters, or if they’ve made their process a bit too complex to finish, which seems like a real risk.”

Miguel Guhlin continues the discussion about technology as a tool in education. His admonition is to invest in people not things. By this, he means looking to low-cost, open source solutions so that we can provide common and quality technology access to all students.And, speaking of the human touch, Clarence Fisher has a good post on why he blogs with kids. From his post: “I blog with kids to help them realize they are part of the conversation and so that they learn in a protected space how to become part of that conversation. I
do not believe we do kids any favors by sheltering them or filtering the world for them.”

Are kids too plugged in? George Siemens ponders this question as does Kathy Sierra. Christian Long weighs in as well. This is all in response to Time Magazine’s cover article on multitasking kids and the dangers such multitasking poses. Really? Yes, I understand that social researchers have conducted studies that show “adverse” effects. My inclination, however, is to think that those studies have a pre-conceived baseline (a prejudiced one) of what is normal and good. Let’s face it — the current adult generation does not multitask naturally. We worry about our kids often because what they do seems unnatural to us. Now we have studies that say it might be bad for them. How surprising! I wonder what kid researchers would come up with if they did social studies on the dull linear tasking we practice. They would like find that it is harmful to creativity and building cognitive capabilities.

And, Ben Vershbow has some interesting thoughts on the search for control over the definition of e-books. “What’s interesting is how the Google/Amazon move into online books recapitulates
the first flurry of ebook speculation in the mid-to-late 90s. At that time, the discussion was all about ebook reading devices, but then as now, publishers’ pursuit of legal and technological control of digital books seemed to bring with it a corresponding struggle for control over the definition of digital books.”