Tryangulation

Roughly the equivalent of banning pencils

Another foreigner-in-Turkey blogger just sent me an email with his new url, explaining that Wordpress is now blocked in Turkey. Not just his blog, mind you, but everything that has wordpress in the URL.

My friend's blog is just an innocent bystander caught in a legal dispute over a jailed cult leader and the press both for and against his cause. Since one blog in English that is hosted by Wordpress was deemed inflammatory, a judge decided that it would be best to just block Wordpress than try to get Wordpress to ban a single blogger (although that strategy did work in a similar debacle with YouTube a few months ago.

As the smoke which rises from such virtual blog bonfires becomes visible to more and more, we can expect the court decision to be reversed. How those who are threatened by such freedom will respond can still apparently go either way, but they are bound to learn that there is now no closing the door to borderless blogging.

This certainly puts the my-school-blocks-my-blog woes in perspective.

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iPrices and iWorldviews

When the iPhone came out in late June, the retail price was $599. Now they're going for $399. While that's still out of range for anyone's dreams of a one-iPhone-per-child school project, we can see the gadgets slide down a little closer to the intersection of demand and supply.

According to Steve Jobs, "there will always be people who pay top dollar for the latest electronics but get angry later when the price drops". True, but few expect next generation technologies, and lower prices for the displaced technologies, to hit the market in only three months. Bill Gates seems to always get worse press for his capitalist ventures, but maybe Bill's got some things right about the world that Steve still hasn't learned.

Link: Apple responds to backlash, offers store credit - Wireless World - MSNBC.com

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How can ICTs benefit learning environments?

Here's another resource I'm adding as a footnote to my post from 6 Feb 2006, How much have we learned about ICTs in education. This one's entitled Information and communication technologies in schools: a handbook for teachers on how ICT can create new, open learning environments.  To quote the Eldis summary,

This handbook is principally designed for teachers and teacher educators who are currently working with, or would like to know more about, ICT in schools. The handbook focuses on how ICT can create new, open learning environments and their instrumental role in shifting the emphasis from a teacher to a learner-centred environment -- where teachers move from being the key source of information and transmitter of knowledge to becoming a collaborator and co-learner.

Click here to read a summary and download the PDF document.

20 Tech skills for every teacher

T.H.E. journal has an article titled 20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have. I'll bet that when you look at the list, you will find several that many teachers would not consider essential. Nevertheless it's a great website to start learning about some of those technologies you've been curious about, since it includes links to online tutorials and other web-based resources. Click here to read the article.

How much have we learned about ICTs in education?

A report was released recently by the World Bank's Infodev program which attempts to assess how much has been learned so far about the use and effectiveness of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education. Such a report could be useful in setting priorities, planning new initiatives, and making sure program funds go where they will have the most impact.

Sadly, even though so much has been done, ICT programs have tended to operate in relative isolation from what's gone before. Lessons learned in one program don't get applied in other programs, and there are disconnects between theories about ICT's potential contribution to education and the actual design and implementation of programs. 

Just as there is a frequent disconnect between education and learning (and even between education and our learning about education), it seems there is also a disconnect between using ICTs and learning how they might be used as a tool for education reform. Instead, they have become a more expensive vehicle for the same old education.

Click here for an Eldis summary of the report Knowledge maps: ICTs in education, and to download the report in PDF.

For more on this topic, click here for another Infodev report, Monitoring and evaluation of ICT in education projects: a handbook for developing countries.

Update (26 Feb 2006): Eldis now has available another publication, Information and communication technologies in schools: a handbook for teachers on how ICT can create new, open learning environments. Click here for the summary and link to the PDF.