Comments on: Taking things a little more seriously

By: Conn McQuinn

Conn McQuinn — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:17:04 +0000

Mel, that’s the interesting part of balancing the whole thing. I like the idea that tech (and good teaching) should be exciting and engaging for teachers and students alike. (We just renamed a workshop “Web Gizmos and Gadgets” that had originally been called “Web 2.0 Tools” because nobody signed up for the latter.) And if I have to make a mistake, I’d rather it be on the sillier end of the spectrum rather than the boring end!

By: Mel Cooke

Mel Cooke — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:28:16 +0000

Conn, for the most part I agree with you. I can also see the need to get out of the traditional thinking that educational tools must be boring.

By: John

John — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:40:48 +0000

You should see it when I tell people they can embed their “Yammer into their Moodle and then RSS feed it all back to their iGoogle.” I feel like a stand up comedian! I think to get their attention I will stop referring to it as a open source solutions that allows you to extend the day and the walls of your classroom, and instead call it “Personal Online learning that Works.”

By: laurent

laurent — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:14:09 +0000

so true. what’s cute/quirky in the consumer world often doesn’t work in education - even if it’s “consumer” facing. That said, I think even in consumer/web2.0 technology, this is limiting adoption to some extend - which is a shame, because some of the tools (twitter, ning, wetpaint and facebook-connected apps) could have real promise in the classroom (I’m less enthusiastic about moodle and drupal for K12, but that’s probably a separate post)