XplanaZine

Here’s a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.David Warlick has a great line in his post on video games from Wednesday — “‘Hack the system.’ Turn our classrooms into learning engines. That’s what games are.” He follows up with a post on Thursday suggesting that gaming can be utilized to make the learning experience richer and more about conversation than transmission. If you’re interested in educational gaming, take the time to listen to the Learnitology podcast on educational gaming. This is a nice, succinct overview based on the Horizon Report (2006).

Clarence Fisher asks specifically about the form of the Read/Write Web when we says, “If not blogs, what?” Chris Sessums contributes to the meme with a good overview on the value and uses of blogging in education.

“The appropriate use of weblogs can learning on multiple levels. Weblogging
enables reflection both individually and collectively in systematic ways that
allows individuals, colleagues, and others to tap into a network that gives
“something back, something more than the good feeling of simply articulating what’s in our brain in writing.” (see his follow-up post here)

Dave Cormier adds to this discussion by talking about what is is that we are actually trying to accomplish in this first wave of the Read/Write approach to education. In his own evaluation of blogging’s value as an educational tool, Darren Kuropatwa writes a long and passionate post regarding “Resonance and Dissonance.” He tackles the complex subject of teaching and learning strategies and how to do the best job of reaching all learners in a class with different methods or styles of instruction. In this light, blogging is a great tool for engaging conversation and thinking. I love this quote.

“I firmly believe that all students are capable of succeeding in advanced math. Their marks measure the amount of time, energy and effort they put into learning; not their intelligence. If you want to know how smart someone is have a conversation with them. (Get them to blog.) If you want to know how hard they’re working in school, look at their grades. Learning is largely dependent upon the learner. I have never had an able bodied student fail my class after they have tried their hardest.”

Tom Hoffman responds to Wes Fryer’s enthusiasm about the possibility of blogs in teaching with a reminder that great teaching is not about specific tools or technology.

Speaking of educational theories, Clark Quinn’s post on Universal Learning Design is definitely worth the read.

Finally, Ben Vershbow has a post on e-books and says that one of the great features of the open source platform Sophie (to be released soon) is the ability to have conversations inside of books.