The Shoe on the Other Foot

I thought I'd surf the 'net and see what other institutions are doing with the the phrase "media services." I found this interesting site. It's called "Talk Shoe." 'Shoe' is a play on the old Ed Sullivan way of saying "show." If you don't remember Ed Sullivan - the Beatles first appeared on his TV show back in '63 or so. But try to figure out what this software creation is... Good luck. They're creating some strange dinosaurs out there.

The Second Colorado Study

The October 12, 2008 post might have been a little too ironic. I guess irony should be used in tiny doses. Anyway, to end this week I have a link to the second Colorado study of how media centers function in schools. This second study, like the first in 1993, is very positive ( But is anyone surprised?). This study is filled with stats and solid evidence. No opinions here. Show it to your principals and school boards. Just click on the title for the link. Thanks, RobertW

Two Score and Seven

It's Sunday evening and autumn - everything is mellow, the trees are losing their leaves and the like. Kids are making the usual gruesome Halloween costumes. This time of the year always makes me think about the future. Not the New Year - this time of the year. I think the Celts thought the same way. However, I did want to toss out another question. This one is big: what will education be like in another forty- seven years ( I believe that's two score and seven). I heard an opinion from a PhD. teacher and, the more I think about it, the more I agree. Education, she said, will be delivered through software-hardware designs. Children will learn at home, or in small groups. Public education will simply mean those people who give the test. That's it. Does anyone agree? Thanks, Robert W.

A Stroke of Luck: What's Your Story

This is just a brief entry to point out a very useful article I found in an on-line journal that I receive on my school email. The journal, Tech Learning, offers a free subscription. Later this week I'll find how to subscribe to it and mention that here. Click on the citation link below and you'll be taken to the article, "What's Your Story" ( 2008) which discusses digital storytelling and, what I think is most valuable, list inexpensive and free sources available to create a DST station on a school PC ( I'd like to do this for several station in our school computer lab).

What's your story. (2009, October 1) techLearning. Retrieved from http://techlearning.com/shared/printableArticle.php?articleID=196605451

A Swank Time: the Space Race

This entry is to ask one question: What was the first memory you have of media teaching something that couldn't have been learned otherwise? I have memories from grade school in the early 1960's of the television coverage of the first Americans being launched into space. Those tiny, one-man capsules, perched on top of spindly Atlas rockets, seemed impossibly frail back then. Seeing the event live on black-and-white television screen made us feel we were living the Buck Rogers life - with a little of the Twilight Zone thrown in. TV coverage droned on and on for hours. We watched from home; schools rarely had television sets. We were the first generation to see watch history happen from our livings rooms ( almost no one had more than one TV). The future had arrived and I think we knew it.