The Great Parenting Debate: Should School Kids Rely on Computers?

This FoxNews.com article presents a variety of quotes from two sides of the one-to-one computing debate including comments by parents, educators, and corporate executives.

By John Brandon, Published December 21, 2010 | FoxNews.com:

As you consider whether to arm your child with a laptop computer or iPad this Christmas, consider also which battle line to stand behind, as the fighting grows over the increasing reliance on digital devices in the classroom.

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Photo by Pia Waugh via Flickr

Survey solution for a student project?

A seventh grade student just came to me looking to electronically administer a survey to about 150 students. My first thought was a Google Form. The problem is that about 10 of her questions require the respondent to look at an image and select a multiple-choice, text answer. As far as I can tell, Google Forms does not support an image in the question. (I did find a reference to people editing the HTML of the form and hosting it elsewhere, but that is overly complicated for this case as I want a solution the student can own.)

We have Blackboard's course management system, but you can not link directly into a Blackboard survey (or even a particular course) in our system. Emailing students directions to go to Blackboard, login, select a specific course, and go to a particular survey are enough hurdles that many students probably won't bother to fill out this optional survey. The student doing the project would like to just send her prospective respondents a link, which seems the wise choice to me.

So the best solution I came up with so far is to use a Google Sites web page with an embedded Google Form. The Sites page will contain the 10 images in a 2 x 5 table at the top of the page. Each image will be labeled with a number:

Picture 1

The questions will then say something like "Identify the bird in Picture 1." If the embedded form is sized properly, I believe the images can stay on the screen while the survey requires scrolling through the questions.

What do you think?
I would be happy to hear suggestions for a different solution that would allow the image to be located right in the question. Please post a comment, reply via Twitter, or email me via campbb at d-e.org if you have a suggestion.

HotW: Interview with William Kist, author of The Socially Networked Classroom

The book The Socially Networked Classroom by William Kist was recently been brought to my attention via a recommendation by Steve Hargadon. As my potential reading list outweighs my reading time, I plan to read the couple of chapters available via Google Books and listen to this interview with the author, which I can do during "down time" in the car, before I decide to buy it. (If there were an audio book, I would have probably already made that purchase.)

According to the forward, the book "asks us if the social interactivity of the Web -- Web 2.0 -- has transformed the way we 'do' school and then shows us, with care and specificity, the way to transform our schools."

So far, it looks promising.

This MP3 has been published by Steve Hargadon and/or Elluminate so they retain the rights to the recording, which appears to be All Rights Reserved due to a lack of any indication otherwise. I make no claim to the rights to use this file, am only linking to it, and will take down the link if asked to do so by the owner of the recording.

HotW: PBS/Frontline Digital Nation discussion

Heard on the Web: I'm adding the audio recording of the Digital Nation Classroom 2.0 Live discussion to my listening to do list. In addition to the hosts, it includes special guests Sandy St. Louis, Ramona Pringle, and Kim Flack.

Image via Wikipedia

I found the Frontline Digital Nation documentary interesting to the point that I shared it with one of my students as part of an independent project and am thinking about doing something related to the program with the rest of my class especially with regard to the multitasking segment. However, I've not really discussed the program with other teachers so I've been interested to hear other opinions about the research presented especially after hearing negative comments over lunch at TEDxNYED by two of the speakers. (Unfortunately, I didn't have time to ask them to elaborate.)

This MP3 has been published by Classroom 2.0 Live, which retains the rights to the recording. I make no claim to the right to use this file, am only linking to it, and will take down the link if asked to do so by the owner of the recording. You can subscribe to Classroom 2.0 Live in iTunesU by searching for it in the iTunes store.

Interview with Dan Pink about his book Drive and the educational implications

For a year or so, I have been using the Delicious social bookmarking service to create my own "custom podcast" of recordings I want to listen to. Basically, I have a Delicious tag dedicated to this, and I download my custom podcast in iTunes by subscribing to the RSS feed of the tag. (If anyone would like less technical directions on how do this, let me know.)

This Delicious list was my alternative to subscribing to the entire set of episodes for each show/series, which I used to do, because I found that I never end up listening to more than a small portion of what I downloaded. Therefore, I used this custom podcast via Delicious to pick out only selected episodes that grabbed my interest at the time.

(Update, 1/30/2012: Unfortunately, Delicious no longer seems to support including enclosures such as mp3 files in the RSS feed it generates. Therefore, the method I mentioned above to create your own podcast feed using Delicious no longer works. If someone know a similar alternative, please let me know!)

As an experimental next step, I've decided to start publishing my custom podcast list through this blog instead so I can more easily link back to the original source and, at times, elaborate on the subject of the recordings or link to related information.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Cover via Amazon

I'm starting with this recorded interview of Dan Pink discussing his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Dan was interviewed by Steve Hargadon on February 17, 2010 as part of his Future of Education series of interviews. More information about the interview from Steve is available on his blog.

This MP3 has been published by Steve Hargadon and/or Elluminate so they retain the rights to the recording, which appears to be All Rights Reserved due to a lack of any indication otherwise. I make no claim to the rights to use this file, am only linking to it, and will take down the link if asked to do so by the owner of the recording.