Blackboard

My experience with Blackboard is pretty limited. I have used it in one of my classes this semester and see some advantages and disadvantages. It is helpful to post assignments and notes. I also would assume that a teacher could post webcasts or other video material for students to watch and because it is password protected the student can better take advantage of fair use. However, Blackboard is owned and operated by the school. The student has no ownership of the tool. Other disadvantages may include:

• mostly used for only academic purposes
  
• students can't upload media
• can't have synchronous or asynchronous video communications
  
• lacks collaborative learning tools

TCK

I think that this video shows a good example of history TCK (at least of my understanding of TCK). It shows a technology that a historian is using but that a teacher would never use in the K12 classroom.

Story Telling

J. S. B.

Can we get more done with less work and more learning? Can we figure out how learning naturally happen and how can be amplify that? We have to look at the social learning "we participate therefore we are." Understanding not knowledge is socially constructed. Social media can be a great way to do this and shows how design is so important. We have to look at the power of study groups. He was asked to find the single best predictor of success at college. He found that it was the ability to create or join a study group. It is more powerful than the teacher or attending class. Do study groups work virtually? It turns out that the study groups work just as well if the students know each other. In a study group each person is both a learner and teacher. Web 2.0 allows for distributed study groups. Can we make gen ed more personal though study groups? Can we be more efficient with the higher end courses by making it a more collective experience?

How to accelerate the learning to "be something" rather than learning "about something"?

Open Source as a Participatory Learning Platform

• writing code to be read not mysterious
• Engagement through useful additions
• social capital matters

Technology Integration in 1910

This article is a gem! I loved seeing how far we have come yet some issues have remained the same.

History in the Secondary School: The Use of the Blackboard in the Teaching of History

A Wave of Confusion

It seems that there is a lot of confusion about what Google Wave is supposed to do. What what I can tell it has to potential to be the greatest collaboration tool on the web yet people are just not using it. I think that there are several reasons for that. For instance it is hard to collaborate when no one you know has an account. I also think that in part it could be a sort of expectation failure.

To help people understand the tool they have actually come out with a user manual.
http://completewaveguide.com/guide/Meet_Google_Wave