Ten Things I Need To Do Better as a Teacher

Yesterday was the last day of school. All the handshakes and hugs have been dispensed, all the grades have been entered, and teachers and kids alike are out of the building in gleeful bursts of enthusiasm. As I look back on the year I feel the need to detail some of the things that I hope to improve on for next year.

1. Finish the curriculum mapping of my courses. I really need to have a better idea of the learning outcomes I want my students to achieve before the school year begins.

2. Work on alternative lessons. One of the struggles I had this year was with two classes where there were a number of students who were reading below grade level, a good indication that they would struggle with my classes. I need to be better prepared for these students with alternative lessons that allow them to have a measure of success.

3. Continue to develop my skills in ActionScripting. I'm decidedly right-brained, so this is a struggle for me, but if I'm going to teach the more interesting aspects of Flash I need to get a better handle on the topic myself.

4. Work more on graphic design fundamentals. I don't think I've been spending enough time on color theory and some of the more basic topics that a "regular" graphic design course would provide. Although teaching design concepts to middle school students sometimes reminds me of the old proverb of not trying to teach a pig to sing, I still think the kids need at least an introduction to these topics.

5. Do a better job with paperwork. I've been vowing to do that every year since I started teaching, so while the chances are slim that I'll keep my gradebook and lesson plans 100% up-to-date at all times, I guess it doesn't hurt to make the resolution one more time.

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Designing e-Learning for the Experience

A very interesting examination of the value of a learner's experience is provided by Ravi Krishnan and Venkatesh Rajamanickam from Singapore Polytechnic. In a lenghty article titled Experience-Enabling Design: An approach to elearning design published at eLearningPost.com, they detail how essential it is to think not only in terms of what people will learn, but also the overall experience they will have while learning.

Layout decisions like the course structure, navigation, media, etc., affect the experience of the product. For a learner, the ease and intuitive way of getting in, moving around and exiting are the experience factors. How do we bridge this gap between layout and experience? Four possible guidelines, which can help a designer ensure outcomes are experienced in an elearning product, are:

1. Embrace experience as an outcome
2. Create a shared language
3. Narrow the gap from idea to outcome
4. Drive constituent parts towards total experience

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Red Mars: a very belated appreciation (Boing Boing)

In one of those "oooh...spooky" kinds of things I just read Cory Doctorow's post at Boing Boing about the Sci-Fi novel Red Mars. I also just finished reading this terrific book and find Cory's estimation to be right on the mark. It is one of the richest literary works I have had the pleasure to read in a long time.

One of the interesting nuggets buried by the author--and there are literally hundreds of these moments--was a brief discussion of how the democratic process in his fictional future had been rendered obsolete by encouraging the populace to feel that all politicians were alike and that voting didn't matter. Sound familiar?

Like Cory I'm planning to hit the local bookstore as soon as possible to pick up the next two editions in the trilogy. If they are anything like Red Mars I'll be savoring these two books for some time to come.

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Web Design from Scratch

This one's a personal bookmark as much as anything else. A series of tutorials on designing a web site from the ground-up at Web Design from Scratch. I like the concept of a structured treatment of this topic, so I'll want to come back and take a closer look as time permits.

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The Al Gore We Wished For in 2000

I already posted this as an update to yesterday's note about Gen. Zinni's speech but wanted to link it independently here.

Al Gore gave an incredibly eloquent and fiery speech--the kind of thing I wish he'd done in 2000--as he spoke out against the mishandling of the war in Iraq by the current administration. You can download the full Quicktime speech, or view selected excerpts, at MoveOn.org.

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Trends in Blog Searching

Interesting information about how to effectively search within blogs is provided by Christina K. Pikas from John Hopkins University. In ther article titled Trends in Blog Searching she points out that a Google search can be restircted to blogs (more or less) by appending ~blog inurl:archives to your search tems.

Via anil dash's daily links.

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Ten Things We Got Wrong in Iraq

You may have caught the interview that Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of the U.S. Central Command gave to 60 Minutes this past Sunday, but this transcript of the speech he gave to The Center for Defense Information provides a more in-depth review of the mistakes that were made by the Bush Adminstration in its ramp up to war.

Gen. Zinni lists these 10 mistakes that were made:

1. The belief that containment (of Saddam Hussein) as a policy doesn't work.
2. The strategy was flawed...The idea that strategically we will reform, reshape, and change the Middle East by this action -- we've changed it all right.
3. We had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support.
4. We failed... to internationalize the effort.
5. We underestimated the task.
6. Maybe the biggest one, was propping up and trusting the exiles, the infamous "Gucci Guerillas" from London.
7. Lack of planning.
8. The insufficiency of military forces on the ground.
9. The Coalition Provisional Authority had...no... planning for its structure.
10. A series of bad decisions on the ground.

The complete transcript is an eye-opening indictment of the failures of this administration, and should be required reading for anyone intending to vote in the next election.

Update:

Al Gore gave a fiery speech, sponsored by MoveOn.org, calling for the resignation of the architects of the Iraq war. Quicktime video clips of his speech are available here.

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In Praise of Discovery School's Quiz Center

As I sit here typing this all of the students in my 4th period class are taking their final exams on-line. As they finish, they'll click a submit button and their graded tests will land in my Inbox, corrected and e-mailed directly to me.

Am I running a sophisticated server solution that I built myself to get this done? Not hardly. That's a good thing since I really don't have the time or the resources (or the knowledge) to put one together myself, or the funding to buy a hosted solution to do testing like this.

Instead I'm using a free service from the Discovery Channel's on-line set of Teaching Tools. The Quiz Center is just part of their offerings, which include free puzzle makers, a worksheet generator, and even a lesson planning service. Along with the other resources that DiscoverySchool offers, such as their free clip art and Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators.

The Quiz Center is the one that I've really appreciated the most this year. While it may not offer incredibly sophisticated templates, and the setup of the tests can be a bit time-consuming, you have to love the fact that your tests are graded for you and sent directly to your Inbox. My students get almost instant feedback as once they've submitted their tests they can walk back to my desk where we can discuss their grades and any questions that they got wrong. And for me, all I have to do is write down the score in my gradebook and I'm all set.

I find that my students don't bat an eye at taking this type of exam. In fact, I'd say that many of them prefer an on-line exam with instant results over a traditional paper and pencil test that they won't get back from the teacher until the next class period.

Technology that is free, easy to use, just works, makes my life easier, and helps my students. Gotta love that!

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Blogging in Schools: "Slow Motion Distributed Car Wreck"

One of the more interesting--no, let's make that fascinating--experiments in reforming the use of technology in schools has to be the use of blogs and wikis for teaching language skills. One of the true evangelists of this emerging field is Will Richardson, Supervisor of Instructional Technology and Communications at Hunterdon Central Regional High School.

In his Weblogg-Ed blog Will talks about the successes, and frankly looks at the failures in an article titled EduBlogs as "Slow Motion Distributed Car Wreck". As Will puts it:

"Last year I was thinking blogs in the classroom were at the tipping point...my own results this year have been a mixture of some really great moments and a majority of fairly average experiences."

Don't give up quite yet Will. I agree that collaborative works like blogs and wikis have incredible potential for classroom uses. At the moment they remind me of how the Internet was viewed by teachers back in 1997. "What's that thing? I don't have time for that."

Meanwhile, some of us are doing e-mail exchanges between classes around the world, building basic web sites with our students, and developing new uses for that 'emerging' technology. The crux of the matter is that early adopters always help smooth out the wrinkles and take on more of the growing pains to accomodate those that come along later.

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Blog Technologies and Designs Compared

By way of Robin Good comes a link to a comprehensive listing of server-side blog software and services. An excellent primer for those thinking of getting into the whole blogging thing, including a glossary of terms. Available at Asymptomatic.

Once you've got a handle on the inner workings of each blog, head on over to Makiko Itoh's blog for a look at how the templates provided for some of the major blogging software products affect the design of each blog. As she points out, while each particular system can be modified in many ways, the starter templates often heavily influence the look that users of each begin, and often stay with. From Thomas N. Burg.

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Grades vs. Learning

In this article at The Christian Science Monitor, Professor Steven Byrd, who teaches Portuguese and Spanish at the University of Texas, Houston, discusses the differences he has noted between American students and the students he worked with during a teaching assignment in Brazil.

In particular, he notes the "obsession" that American students have towards getting good grades, As he says:

"Although I cannot and should not categorize all my students, many have reduced me to being the bearer of the good and bad tidings, not as their teacher. Throughout the semester, I have given my heart to these students to teach them about the wonders of Brazil and the language. Yet, in the end, have they watered down everything they have learned to a letter grade? Is this what all their stress is about: a result?"

I see the same kind of attitude in students as young as 11, concerned more with what letter grade they'll be getting rather than what they have, or will be, learning. At the beginning of each year I tell my students to focus on learning and the grades will take care of themselves--with only limited results.

Still, grades serve their purpose, as a way to provide feedback for students, to let them know when they are achieving those things that are expected of them, and as a reward or punishment for those who are really focusing on their work or those who are not. I'm an easy grader, and I tend to give few grades in my project-oriented classroom, although I do give almost daily feedback on my students' progress. Hopefully my students can see the grades for what they are intended to be, but I know that in many ways I am alone among my colleagues, and as much importance as students put on grades, there are teachers who also place a disproportionate amount of emphasis on grades and grading.

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Leadership is key to meeting ed tech challenges

By way of Education Leadership comes a recap of a conference hosted by Intel with some educational technology trend-setters. Not surprisingly, the message of the confernence was that it takes leadership at the school and district levels to effectively implement sound, educationally relevant policies for the use of educational technology. As summarized by the report:

"Among the attributes speakers used to define "effective leadership" were the recognition that ed tech is really about education, not technology; the ability to establish and communicate a clear and common vision for technology's use in schools; and the ability to change and manage change."

The full story is available at eSchool News.

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Encouraging Women Engineers

At Smith College, an all-women's school, a new program has been developed to encourage women to get into the usually predominately-male field of engineering. As someone who has always been interested in the transformation that bright young girls go through during the transition from middle school to high school, and then college, it's encouraging to see that steps are being taken to allow these young women to follow their interests without the social stigmas that usually discourage them from entering traditionally all-male fields.

The full story is at L.A. Business News.

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On School Choice

One of the ongoing debates we have here in Florida is the matter of school choice. Parents should be the ultimate authority when it comes to choosing a school for their kids many say, while others, myself included, decry the politicization of the issue. In a state where public schools are inadequately funded year after year, siphoning off funds so some children can receive scholarships to attend any school they'd like, even religious schools, seems wrong-headed.

Still, as someone who teaches at a magnet school, and who has a child who will be attending a prestigious magnet school in our district next year, I have to be honest about the school choice issue. If it's OK to syphon off funding so the students in my school can take classes in web design and animation, and so my daughter can attend an arts magnet, shouldn't it be OK for parents to have other choices as well?

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Design by Fire: Jakob Nielsen gets a makeover!

Here's a great example of a conceptual web design makeover from Design by Fire.. Their target? None other than the supreme guru of web usability, Jakob Nielsen. Part tongue-in-cheek, part serious look at improving writing content, adding meaningful graphics, and stripping away old outdated markup. Jakob, are you listening? Here's some good advice from the Web Design fab Five:

"A large part of good design is simply about effective communication, which is one part what you say, one part how you say it, and one part how good you look while saying it."

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Incongruous Title #1

Browsing through the education section at Barnes and Noble today I came across this:

Idiot's Guide to Home Schooling

Right. There's a good idea for you. Let the idiots stay home and teach their kids.

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Macromedia Announces Breeze Update

Macromedia Breeze, the on-line meeting and presentation software that takes advantage of the Flash player, has recently been updated. The new features, including screen sharing, virtual shared whiteboards, and even the ability to remotely control a viewers desktop, are sure to generate even more buzz around this product. Having given a Breeze presentation (Called a "Breezo" in the Macromedia world) and been in on several Breezos myself, the technology is certainly fascinating, and opens up some very interesting applications. I plan to run a trial next week with one of my classes, where I'll talk them through a tutorial while they watch the Breezo right at their machine.

The new edition is summarized in this story from ZD Net News, but a better overview can be seen in a Breezo presented by Megan Stewart from Macromedia Education.

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On Brown V. Board of Education

I've been thinking about school integration and all that those two simple words imply a great deal over the last two weeks or so. Most of that has to do with the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. But some of it has to do with some observations I've made about myself and my own behavior and attitudes too.

Where I grew up, school integration didn't take place until 1971, almost 20 years after the Brown v. Board decision was handed down. Florida was still part of the Deep South in those days, and it took a while for all the political fighting and fussing to be over with and for actual desegregation to take place.

I was in 9th grade the first time I had a fully integrated school where I could expect to sit next to, or even be around other kids who had different color skin and a different cultural background than I did. It was not an easy transition at first, but after a couple of years of forced busing, the closure of most of the historical black schools in my county, and the uprooting of many African-American students, our schools were finally calm and could get on with the business of learning.

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Language Log: Google/Googol Owned?

From the Language Log, Bill Poser writes an opinion piece on the flap over the ownership of the word Google. In Google/Googol? he comments on the ridiculousness of the claim that a family can own a word coined by an ancestor. As he says:

"Allowing people to own words would make life as we know it impossible. Only certain people, those with the appropriate licenses, would be able to talk about certain things....The mind boggles at the insanity of this idea."

Better watch it Bill. I intend to license the word boggle and charge a hefty fee for its use.

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Free Tutorials for Fireworks, Flash, and more

I've been writing for Community MX for over a year now, and have racked up a pretty long list of articles and tutorials on Fireworks, Flash, Contribute, Freehand and Dreamweaver. That's gonna happen when you write one every 10 days or so.

So, in a toot your own horn sort of way I thought I'd point to the freebies that I've published so far. Of course, there are more available to subscribers, but I'll keep to the free ones this time around.

Creating a Comical Music Video in Flash and Fireworks--Had a lot of fun with this one, taking pictures of some of my compadres and Community MX and turning them into actors in a music video. More of a "best-practices" kind of thing than a tutorial, but the video came out pretty well, and is funny to boot.

The Basics of Flash Buttons and Navigation Bars--Answers the question: "I made a Flash button but how to I link it to pages in my web site?"

Understanding the Pen Tool--I wish this had been around when I was learning to use the Pen tool. This one is a video tutorial.

Quick and easy Photo Galleries in Fireworks and Flash--Another one of my favorites. Shows some production techniques for processing a large number of images and then getting then into Flash for an interactive slide show movie.

Attaching text to a Circular Path--A common Fireworks technique is covered in this one. Title sort of says it all.

Creating Composite Masks in Fireworks--Shows some fun creative uses of masks in Fireworks.

Customizing the Site Window in Dreamweaver--A very useful technique for customizing the way the Site panel appears in Dreamweaver.

Creating Custom Commands in Fireworks--I can't imagine getting along in Fireworks without being able to whip up my own commands. They're awfully handy when you're facing repetitive tasks.

CMX Dash Pack Styles for Firreworks MX--Before Fireworks MX 2004 came along making dotted and dashed lines was a real chore. This set of styles helped address that need.

Fun with Webdings and Wingdings--Looks at some of the creative uses for the miniature pictures that these fonts create.

Power Searching with Mozilla Keywords--Not specifically related to web design, but it sure helps to be able to speed up your Google searches.

Exploring Preference Options in Fireworks MX/MX 2004--Some "I didn't know you could do that in Fireworks" moments.

Those are the freebies folks. Of course, there are bunches more that I've written, 65 total as of this writing, but there are some goodies in that list. Enjoy!

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Scholarly Research on Blogging

By way of jill/text comes a link to one of the first "scholarly" takes on blogging and the future of this kind of hyper-textual technology. (By scholarly we mean peer-reviewed with all the footnotes and the like.)

A quick read-through of the article, titled A Personal Information and Knowledge Infrastructure Integrator shows that the authors have given thought to some of the more far-ranging implications of blogging technology. While not geared for the education field per se, the conclusions they come to are quite interesting. For example, they see the future of blogging for business purposes to be especially ripe for forther development:

"The technologies described to this point have obvious implications for businesses or commercial purposes. Weblogs should move towards being the common format for corporate knowledge exchange. Each individual's work can be published with permissions for particular group members, for internal corporate consumption or eventually edited and approved for external use as altogether new information or as additional content for commercial Web sites. Business desktop operating systems will gradually evolve into content management and creation toolkits, using open Web standards to network and store both personal and corporate business data. These new formats for data access and storage will enable a more open development path for extending systems, no proprietary lock-in and extensible, customizable interfaces at the client or content level."

There's much more at this article, and while the acronyms and references might be a little off-putting for those not used to reading this kind of article, the ideas they express are certainly worthwhile.

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Kaplan Expanding On-Line Course Offerings

Kaplan College and Kaplan Higher Education Online are headquartered a few miles down the road from me in Boca Raton, so as I was sifting through the local newspaper the news that Kaplan will be expanding their course offerings and hiring more folks caught my eye. Wonder if they have a position for a connected teacher who needs a bigger income?

The full story is at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

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Mini-photo essay

The rigors of the school year do tend to wear you down. This Mini-photo essay shows how dramatic the change can be.

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The Misuse of Educational Technology

In a recent book review posted at Slashdot, Todd Oppenheimer's "The Flickering Mind" is reviewed by Lloyd Dalton.

(I previously posted about this book in an article titled Is technology Bad for Education?)

Mr. Cutler does a good job of pointing out the high points and low points of the book, and rightfully zeroes in on the troubling conclusions that the book makes--that we're spending too much money on technology without insuring that teachers are prepared to effectively use it. Too little research is being done on the impact that computers have on learning, and we still cling to the notion, in many schools, that simply plopping computers into a classroom will somehow transform education.

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On Abu Ghraib

Like most Americans, I've been in a state of shock after seeing the deplorable behavior of our soldiers who were charged with the detention of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. So many emotions have bubbled to the surface for me that it's hard to get a handle on all of them.

I've been finding an awful lot of thoughtful commentary coming out of this tragedy. From Time magazine, to Leonard Pitts, the Army Times, and even (God help me) George Will, the thoughts on this national disgrace have helped me formulate my own opinions, and helped me to see things a little more clearly.

I guess that my personal discomfort has a lot to do with who I am and who I've been in my life. As a former U.S. Army officer, and the commanding officer of an artillery battery, I am ashamed by the behavior of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib, but more importantly, I am appalled by the lack of leadership that they were afforded. Many jokes are made about what exactly it is that military officers do, but one of their primary jobs is to see that lawful orders are obeyed, that their soldiers have clear guidance on their duties, and that the moral and ethical principles of our nation are adhered to. Clearly, the officers in this military police unit failed their soldiers.

As shown in this detailed analysis at the Q and O blog , the command of this unit was beyond lax. Quoting the Inspector General Taguba's report, prior problems in this command were noted, but:

"There is no evidence that the majority of her orders directing the implementation of substantive changes were ever acted upon. Additionally, there was no follow-up by the command to verify the corrective actions were taken. Had the findings and recommendations contained within their own investigations been analyzed and actually implemented by BG Karpinski, many of the subsequent escapes, accountability lapses, and cases of abuse may have been prevented."

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Art and Graphic Design as the Hub of Curriculum

By way of a couple of my favorite Education Tech blogs, an article at Tech Learning discusses how art and graphic design courses can be integrated into and support learning in traditional academic topics.

As I've seen in my own classes, computer graphics software can be used to demonstrate many prinicples in both math and language arts. For example, students studying geometry get instant reiniforcement on plotting points when they see the effect that changing X and Y properties in programs like Flash and Fireworks has. Drawing a path to connect the points and changing the properties of the path further reiniforce those principles.

But what I find most exciting about the possibilities is the direct correlation that working with technology has to the ways that students interact with their world in the 21st century. To them the computer is relevant and meaningful in ways that more abstract, traditional examples of mathematics applications are not. As the article states:

"The relevant interests of everyday life for today's student are different from those of past generations. Today's students are increasingly involved with technology in all forms. Computers have given them access to communities far beyond their home and school environments. Statistics gathered by many researchers demonstrate that the younger children are, the more they are involved in computer activities. Computer technology has become a relevant component of curricula in other disciplines and it is essential to bring it into art as well. Moreover, Arts and Technology projects have proven to be new life source for supporting curricula in all disciplines."

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FCAT 2004

Yesterday morning school administrators and teachers across Florida turned from their usual duties to pore over Excel spreadsheets as this year's Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) results were released. In some schools, like mine, there were huge sighs of relief and even cause for celebration. Scores were up, teachers and administrators can be assured that their jobs are secure, and all is right with the world.

Except the reality of the situation is that despite the high-stakes testing, or perhaps because of it, not much has really changed. Incremental changes to test scores have come at the expense of countless hours of instruction, millions of dollars in redirected spending, and the loss of everything from elective classes to simple recess. We put more and more pressure on schools, and the results are marginal at best. In fact, knowing the economic makeup of school populations in my county, I believe I could have easily guessed what the scores would be in most of the schools of Palm Beach County.

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Beginner's Guide to RSS

The other day I had a brief discussion with one of the more connected teachers at my school about blogging, and in particular, the syndication model--RSS--that drives it. As I recall, her reaction was something like "People post their journals on-line? And other people read them?"

Well, yes and no. Yes, there are millions of people posting blogs, and many of them are not much more than personal ruminations. But the wealth of news, delivered directly to you almost instantaneously, and based on subscriptions that you determine, makes RSS an incrediblly powerful tool. In an article at Learning Circuits, Eva Kaplan-Leiserson discusses the particulars of RSS and why teachers should be paying attention to this emerging technology.

Read this article, and follow the link to What Are Webfeeds (RSS), and Why Should You Care? from Amy Gahran's Contentious blog, and you'll have a good feel for the things that RSS can do, and a glimpse into the future of what the Web may become.

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A Wealth of Resources From Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes has had a prominent place in my personal Blogroll for some time, but I never drilled down too far into his offerings until today. If you're an educator working in the field of instructional technology you need to be aware of the wealth of information available here.

The Edu_RSS feed that is offered is a terrific tool. As the service says, Edu_RSS is "your one-stop source for today's top writers in educational technology.We retrieve weblog RSS feeds from across the web and store them here." Good lord! I somehow knew that there were educators blogging and posting content via RSS, but who knew there was so much! Check the Today link to get the latest content that has been harvested by the 300+ education-related blogs that are indexed by the service, or check the Topics Page to see posts in categories ranging from Academic Journals to XML, and everything in between.

Also not to be missed are the articles that Stephen has posted, going all the way back to 1998. I personally like the title of this one: How to Create an RSS Feed With Notepad, a Web Server, and a Beer, but there are plenty of other good articles there as well. Much reading to be done!

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School Year in Review

We have 15 days of school left as I write this, and it seems like a good time to reflect a bit on how the year has gone.

The transition to my new school has gone about as I expected. It's a little odd to go from being one of the campus "players" to being the new guy. At my last school I was, at various times, the chair of several committees, a department head, the school technology coordinator, and one of the longest serving faculty members. In the new assignment I am none of those things, and it's been a bit frustrating at times not to be able to affect school policies, to be able to walk into the boss's office anytime I needed to talk, or even do simple things that I was accustomed to, like ordering supplies without having to sort through the inter-school hierarchy. Not to say that my coworkers haven't been supportive, but it's definitely different.

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Roosevelt Middle Case Study

One of the goals I had in moving to a new school was the large-scale implementation of a teacher web site project. As someone who's been using the Web for school to home communication since 1997, I've seen first-hand the impact that improved communication can have.

The problem has always been that for the vast majority of teachers, the process of getting classroom web pages on-line was just too time-consuming to be practical. First you had to learn the web design software, no mean feat in itself, then arrange for hosting, understand how to FTP your files, work through the bureaucracy to get links added to your site, and finally, when all that was done, actually design and update the pages themselves. That much work was a huge barrier to the process for a teacher already up to their necks in the day-to-day job of educating their students.

Macromedia Inc. released a new software product called Contribute two years ago that removed many of those barriers. Now, with the help of a school webmaster who completes the site design and structure in Dreamweaver, the teachers have access to a simple to use interface that allows them to add new content to their own pages any time they'd like. With an interface that is intentionally similar to Word, even non-techies can add their own web content.

Macromedia has published a case study on our project in it's Showcase section of the site. You can get a broad view of the project there, and see examples of the kinds of things our teachers are doing with the software.

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Language Log: The Dan Brown code

Geoffrey Pullam wites at the Language Log that he found Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code, to be "staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad."

I haven't actually read that particular book yet, which according to Geoffrey's estimation makes me one of about 3 people in the world who haven't, but having read Brown's Digital Fortress, also on a long flight, I have to concur about the "style" employed by Mr. Brown. And yet, he's laughing all the way to the bank. What is it that makes his books so popular? Plot? Character development? Thrills and spills? I can't say from the one book I've read, but give me a good John D. McDonald or even a Clive Cussler. At least they can (or could in the late John D.'s case) put sentences together that don't land with a sickening thud.

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The Vendor's Curriculum

By way of theEducational Technology blog comes a link to an article at techLearning.com.

Neil Mercurius reports on the movement among vendors to align technology education to state standards in his article titled Redefining the Role of Computers in Education, The Vendors' Curricula. As he points out, "Vendors and educators are partners; they are working together to make learning come alive by engaging all students with technologies that are relevant to them."

There are some great links in this article, and I'm proud to say that some of them point to the work that I've been doing with the good folks at Macromedia. I can't say anything concrete about upcoming projects, but suffice it to say that the curriculum development team at Macromedia "gets it" when it comes to aligning standards with outcomes, and understands that technology is something that cuts across all academic disciplines, and is not something that just focuses on the tools, but rather on the broad spectrum of learning.

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