Quentin D'Souza has put together a presenation called RSS Ideas For Educators. He's giving the presentation twice; at the Leading Learning 2006 Conference in February and again at the 2006 ECOO Conference (Educational Computing Organization of Ontario) in May.

He used a wiki to draft the document and has now copied the whole thing into a pdf file that you can download (RSS Ideas for Educators 1.1). It's an incredible compilation of concrette applications of RSS technology in education. I was flattered that he included some of my work in the links he mentions.

If anyone has been asking you about RSS in education this will make a great companion volume to Will's guide. Drop Quentin a line and let him know what you think.

James Farmer's blog service for schools was blocked by the censors a while back. In the comments to the post he wrote about it a grassroots movement started to take shape. Here it is...

nonscholae.org is a site devoted to the responsible use of blogs, instant messaging and other social software in schools.

Non scholae sed vitae discimus
We learn, not for school, but for life - Seneca, Epistulae

We believe that these tools and resources should not be blocked or banned from schools. As educators, we should be familiarising learners with these technologies, supporting and facilitating their responsible use and equipping our students with the skills to keep them safe and savvy in the online world.

It's just been published so the content is a little lean, but the movement is growing. If you agree with the statement I highlighted above lend your support at nonscholae.org.

Cool Cat Teacher, in her very first post from December 2005, has given me the food for thought I've been looking for.

Here's and excerpt from her blog where she describes her first experience teaching using a wiki. It began with just her computer science class and then spilled over to other teachers and the rest of the school in just one day! Here she talks about the impact wiki wiki teaching had on the school:

I must say that I was impressed with the biology page. I also was quite pleased with their review material of the Scarlet Letter, King Lear, and their English Exam Review. They have several other projects that are really great. But my amazement came afterwards as I walked through the halls. Two girls attracted my attention with their squealing -- I asked what was up with them -- They were squealing about the English material going on the wikipage! It was going to help them on their project! They were so excited. They practically drove me crazy the rest of the day getting passes to come in and update the information for their exams and projects. Other teachers started coming to me and asking what was going on. They couldn't believe the amount of material synthesized and summarized in one class period!

My last period class heard from the others about the "do it yourself" project and then came the most astounding idea of all -- the 10th grade study hall! http://studyhall.wikispaces.com/ (Don't ask me how we got such a great domain -- I'm not sure.)

Read the whole post and follow the links. Man, my blogroll is getting awfully big. ;-)

I just read an article (Math Will Rock Your World) from Business Week. A few snippets:

Y'wanna get a good job?

But just look at where the mathematicians are now. They're helping to map out advertising campaigns, they're changing the nature of research in newsrooms and in biology labs, and they're enabling marketers to forge new one-on-one relationships with customers. As this occurs, more of the economy falls into the realm of numbers. Says James R. Schatz, chief of the mathematics research group at the National Security Agency: "There has never been a better time to be a mathematician."

Learn math!

How'd ya like a six figure salary?

...new math grads land with six-figure salaries and rich stock deals. Tom Leighton, an entrepreneur and applied math professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says: "All of my students have standing offers at Yahoo! (YHOO) and Google (GOOG)."

Learn math.

D'ya wanna to work on the biggest most cutting edge issues of our day?

This mathematical modeling of humanity promises to be one of the great undertakings of the 21st century. It will grow in scope to include much of the physical world as mathematicians get their hands on new flows of data .... "We turn the world of content into math, and we turn you into math," says Howard Kaushansky, CEO of Boulder (Colo.)-based Umbria Inc., a company that uses math to analyze marketing trends online.

Learn math.

Y'wanna make one of the most significant contributions to the betterment of humanity?

"The next Jonas Salk will be a mathematician, not a doctor."

Learn math.

What are the implications for k-12 education?

Outfitting students with the right quantitative skills is a crucial test facing school boards and education ministries worldwide. This is especially true in America. The U.S. has long leaned on foreigners to provide math talent in universities and corporate research labs. Even in the post-September 11 world, where it is harder for foreigners to get student visas, an estimated half of the 20,000 math grad students now in the U.S. are foreign-born. A similar pattern holds for many other math-based professions, from computer science to engineering.

The challenge facing the U.S. now is twofold. On one hand, the country must breed more top-notch mathematicians at home, especially as foreigners find greater opportunities abroad. This will require revamping education, engaging more girls and ethnic minorities in math, and boosting the number of students who make it through calculus, the gateway for math-based disciplines. "It's critical to the future of our technological society," says Michael Sipser, head of the mathematics department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the same time, school districts must cultivate greater math savvy among the broader population to prepare it for a business world in which numbers will pop up continuously. This may well involve extending the math curriculum to include more applied subjects such as statistics.

Learn more math!

"But I don't like math. Besides, I don't need it. I'm going into the humanities or business!"

As mathematicians expand their domain into the humanities, they're working with new data, much of it untested. "It's very possible for people to misplace faith in numbers," says Craig Silverstein, director of technology at Google. The antidote at Google and elsewhere is to put mathematicians on teams with specialists from other disciplines, including the social sciences.

Just as mathematicians need to grapple with human quirks and mysteries, managers and entrepreneurs must bone up on mathematics. Midcareer managers can delegate much of this work to their staffers. But they still must understand enough about math to question the assumptions behind the numbers. "Now it's easier for people to bamboozle someone by having analysis based on lots of data and graphs," says Paul C. Pfleiderer, a finance professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "We have to train people in business to spot a bogus argument."

Ya gotta learn more math!

Yes, it's a magnificent time to know math.

'Nuff said.

We had a great conversation last night! I've been getting mail from Wes, Ewan and Miguel about how much fun we all had. (This is the first chance I've had to write anything about it. It's been such a crazy busy day -- TGIF!)

Kudos to Wes for getting us organized and moderating the discussion last night. We had decided to keep the discussion limited to one hour. We cut off our conversation after only hitting on the first three of the five questions.

Thanks also to Ewan (he made the heroic effort of participating at 4 am his time!) and Miguel for including me and their tremendous professionalism. Our positions on some issues are close, on others not. Miguel, Ewan and Wes are all real gentlemen. The level of discussion was entirely focused on the issues. When we disagreed with each other it was always based on the merits of our arguments. I feel fortunate to be part of this group.

We're planning a follow-up podcast in the next week or so to round off the discussion and touch on the last two questions. We managed to work in the replies Bud and John left in the comments to my earlier post. Wes suggested we invite Bud, John and any other interested educators to participate by submitting text or podcast responses to these questions:

• 4. Will corporate interests (Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc) overpower the energy of web 2.0 technologies in their drive to monetize the Internet?

5. How much should our enthusiasm for web 2.0, technology specifically and modernism in general be tempered by the "costs" we hear and know about regarding globalism?

It was really great sharing ideas with educational leaders from two other countries -- I've started thinking of this as the "From Three Countries Across One Big Ocean Podcast." ;-) If anything illustrates how education is going global, the simple fact of the four of us getting together this way to share ideas and learn from each other does.

Email any one of us or leave a comment on this post or Miguel's post or Wes' post or over at Ewan's post. We'll edit them in or play them live at our next get together.

So without any further ado, here it is:

The From Three Countries Across One Big Ocean Podcast

Show Notes
The Other Side of Outsourcing (Thomas Friedman, "The World is Flat" - Video)

John Pederson

Bud Hunt

Excellence and Imagination (Clarence Fisher's class)

Darren's classes: Pre-Cal 20S, Pre-Cal 30S, AP Calculus AB

What If Your Blog Was Gone?

OLÉ (Darren's workshop)

Ellie's Math Blog (Darren's Niece)

Remote Access (Clarence Fisher's blog)

Island Bloggers at the ECML (Scotland)

Luddite Literacy (Wes' podcast)

The Impact of the Gutenberg Printing Press

Korean blog list

Levels of Technology Implementation (LOTI)

Dr. Chris Moresch Ed. D.

Assessment For Learning site

Assessment is For Learning (Scotland)

Scottish Schools Digital Network

Ewan's pilot project (MLFE)

Guidelines for ethical behaviour online (from Darren's classes)

John Pederson's blog post - 2006 Online Edublogger Conference

Ewan's students podcasting

Bob Sprankle - Room 208 (Grade 4, USA)

Ewan's Jordanhill U. presentation

David Muir

Pong

Time For Knowledge and Wisdom

Oversold and Underused by Larry Cuban

Writely

Open Source Applications (Free): Open Office, Think Office

TECSIG (Technology Special Interest Group - Texas)

NCLB, Title II Part D

My Access

Integrated Learning Systems

SuccessMaker

PLATO Learning

Compass Learning

Read/Write Web Reading List by Will Richardson

Alan Levine’s blog: CogDogBlog, a recent workshop

Brian Lamb’s blog: Abject Learning, some wiki based workshops

Modern Foreign Languages Environment (MFLE) (Scotland)

Redefining Literacy by David Warlick

Darren Kuropatwa’s blog: A Difference
Ewan McIntosh’s blog: edublog
Miguel Guhlin’s blog: Mousing Around
Wesley Fryer’s blog: Moving at the Speed of Creativity
Our skypecast planning and idea wiki

A couple of days ago Will wrote about how Thomson Peterson is organizing a Higher Ed BlogCon and suggested a Lower Ed BlogCon might also be a good idea. John Pederson volunteered to do some of the heavy lifting to get it organized and true to his word he's set up a blog and a wiki with RSS feeds.

John has suggested the month of May (so as not to conflict with the Higher Ed folks in April) for the first ever 2006 Online Edublogger Conference. This is a real grassroots movement so it's going to take a lot of volunteerism to get it off the ground and make it a real success. I think John's still setting up The blog (when last I checked the link failed) but and the wiki are up and running. Drop by, share your thoughts for the planning, find something you're comfortable doing to help get this going -- I can't wait to meet you all in May! ;-)

UPDATE
John has added a forum with an RSS feed. Register here first.

The Go For Gold! assignments went out to all the grade 10 pre-cal classes in the school yesterday; due next Friday. On Monday all the grade 11 pre-cal students will get theirs to be handed in the following Monday. That will give everyone a week to do their own preparation for the final exams.

Some of you may be wondering what's a Go For Gold! assignment?!? The idea is to get the students to focus all their energies on learning. Here's how it works:

I reproduce an old exam, slap a cover page on it, and tell the students that they have a week or so to do the whole thing. It's worth 5% of their class mark. (In my class anyway. Other teachers handle the marks differently.) They're allowed to get help from each other, other students in other classes, me, other teachers in the building as often as they like. They can even submit it early, ask me to review it and check if there are any errors. If there are they can redo the work until it's perfect. Here are the Assignment Conditions from the cover page:

• » You Must Get 100%

• »You must solve all questions perfectly showing all work; even for multiple choice questions.

• »You may get help from the teacher as often and as much as you like.

• »All work must be presented clearly, neatly and easy to read.

• »Anything less than EXCELLENCE is unacceptable!

Remember, luck has nothing to do with it.
It's all about doing your best!

This is a little different from how I did this last year. Firstly, I was the only teacher doing it; now there's three of us. Also, last year they could only get help from me. This year we've decided to blow that right open and let them get any help from anyone, any way, any time. The stakes are a little higher though. There are only two possible marks for this assignment: Excellent! (100%) or Unacceptable (0%).

The school is buzzing, the kids are excited and after only one day they're working hard at learning. Ba da ba ba baaaa, I'm lovin' it! ;-)

---

Update

The grade 10's are talking about Go For Gold! in the chatbox tonight. Some of their comments:

Mathy
6:39 PM Jan 12, 2006 IP 79:88

woah, im getting sucked into the "go for gold" i just cant stop :P

omg
7:38 PM Jan 12, 2006 IP 77:26

haha same here

........

janet
10:11 PM Jan 12, 2006 IP 161:156

I started on the go for gold assignment, and it's really not that bad! I am liking it so far.. except, I haven't reached the long question part yet...

Cool.