ACTE Trade and Industrial Education Division

A little more on Edin08 Blogger Summit

actemedia — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:23:08 +0000

Here are some video interviews from the Edin08 Blogger Summit:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hjzAT7Zp6b4

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cN29UJQ6Fw0

And other blog posts on the summit:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-brown/newt-gingrich-and-me-a-ch_b_102214.html

http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2008/05/blogger-summit.html

Edin08 Blogger Summit – Closing and Awards

actemedia — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:21:05 +0000

And the last portion of this Edin08 Blogger Summit: announcement of the best education blog award, voted on by the attendees and the public in general.

And the winner is:

1: South Titan Government Blog

2: Early Education is the Key

(Don’t worry, we weren’t nominated).

Thanks for letting me take over the T&I blog and for reading this liveblog of the Edin08 Blogger Summit! This is Catherine, electronic media coordinator at ACTE, signing off.

Edin08 Blogger Summit – Education Blogging at Grassroots

actemedia — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:08:39 +0000

The last session of the day was a breakout session on education blogging at the grassroots. Other people went to one on Blogging in the Trenches, with educator bloggers. That one might be more useful to my readers, who are most likely educators, but I’m trying to find how blogging works with ACTE and the issue of career and technical education. Actually both would probably be useful: how can we blog as the Association and how can we encourage/help you blog as educators? But I can’t be in both places.

Some tips I took from the panel: bringing a personal touch to the blog, including real-world applications and implications, combining promoting your product and a “real” post, using your blog to try out half-formed ideas or talk about peripheral subjects, and defining your purpose as aggregating what other’s have said and letting the conversation go or crafting each post and then being integrated in the conversation.

Joanne Jacobs talked about how bloggers live off the news reported by others, and that her readers show in the comments that they did not follow the links to the source material she used. Ken Bernstein noted that your blog can connect readers and policymakers, for instance, when a congressional aide finds something on your blog and shows it to their boss.

Panelists were Ken Bernstein, educator and blogger (“teacherken”); Kevin Carey, Education Sector; and Joanne Jacobs, blogger, reporter and author of “Our School.”

Awards ceremony next!

Edin08 Blogger Summit – Blogging the Election

actemedia — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:59:27 +0000

This second panel started talking about the nature of blogs: how personal blogs work differently from blogs by traditional news sources, the capacity of blogs to link and to make use of multimedia, the empowering and democratic nature of blogs and how politicians are being held more accountable because of blogging. Ramesh Ponnuru from National Review Online commented that liberal bloggers preferred Edwards, then Clinton, then Obama, making the point that bloggers don’t necessarily speak for everyone and that they aren’t that large a group. But he followed up by noting that bloggers are influential.

The panel also talked about the speed of news, the tendency to make every action of the candidates a mountain instead of identifying some as molehills, and the fact that blogs usually feature snippets, not broad views, that may (or may not) be pieced together by readers.

A conversation then developed on the quality of news and how to evaluate the quality of news: whether bloggers, especially bloggers who are journalists and write for news sources, should raise the level of debate (and whether they are raising the level of debate). Whether news on candidate gaffes or where the candidates send their kids to school is hard news or fluff news. And is it fluff news if people decide their choice for President based on that piece of information?

Panelists for this session were Chris Cillizza, Washington Post blogger (“The Fix”); Jonathan Martin, Politico; Michele McNeil, Ed Week reporter/blogger; and Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review Online. Moderator was Marc Lampkin from Edin08.

One more session to go!

Edin08 Blogger Summit – Newt

actemedia — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:17:47 +0000

I’m still reeling a little from my 5 minute interview with Newt Gingrich. More on that in an upcoming Techniques issue! And probably on the ACTE Web site, press release, etc.

Before the mini interview, though, Gingrich spoke and answered questions. He talked about the state of education as a national security problem and said that our greatest strategic challenge is education. He expressed his belief in a profound shift, leaving behind bureacracies and traditional curriculum frameworks. The shift is away from forcing people to learn and not incentivizing learning.

On NCLB, Gingrich called it a “an effort to improve and mop up a bureaucracy representing a terrific 1955 solution.” He also said that adolescence is a failed social experiment. Young adults should be out there earning, and he proposed that students who earn under the age of 17 be exempt from taxes. He also proposed scholarships for every year that students graduate from high school early.

He was also very pro technology and mentioned it specifically as a way to personalize learning for special needs students. He supports dual-enrollment and thinks learning should be faster. And to me he sounded anti-standards, talking about not forcing kids to learn about Versailles in 1799 when there was an earthquake in China that day.

Edin08 Blogger Summit – Time to Learn

actemedia — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:57:50 +0000

Chris Gabrieli, co-chair, National Center on Time & Learning, and author of “Time to Learn,” just spoke on the successes he has seen in increasing the learning day by 2 hours. He cited statistics about successes, including a school in Massachusetts (the only state implementing this), where an all-minority school that implemented the longer day is the best school in the state. Other schools are performing 2.5-3 times better than comparable schools with regular days. He also mentioned that crime, I’m not sure if meant youth crime in particular, is higher weekdays from 2pm-6pm and that police think the best deterrent for this is keeping kids in a supervised environment.

It sounded good to me, but the reaction from some people sitting near me indicated that it was like treating allergies with cold medicine. Thoughts?

Newt is next!

Edin08 Blogger Summit – Shaping Education Reform Panel

actemedia — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:08:21 +0000

Wow, too much happened in the panel on Shaping Education Reform for me to get all of it. I will provide a more detailed report later. But the big issues were: need for standards, the likelihood that the new Administration will move on pre-K because it’s a fairly non-contentious issue, the likelihood that the new Administration won’t make a major move on NCLB, the perennial disagreements on NCLB, the need for the kids who are least likely to perform well being assigned the best and most experienced teachers, and “teaching in the dark” when standards and assessments aren’t aligned.

Panelists were Richard Whitmire from National Education Writers Association, Sara Mead from New America Foundation, Amy Wilkins from Education Trust and John Mitchell from AFT. Moderator was blogger Alexander Russo.

Edin08 Blogger Summit – Roy Romer on Standards

actemedia — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:06:28 +0000

Gov. Roy Romer just opened the conference. Gov. Romer was the 39th Governor of Colorado and served as the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District from 2001 to 2006.

He talked about how education is not a focus on the campaign, and on the sad state of American education in comparison to other countries. He described steps that he found success with in his education administration career: changing expectations—that all children can learn; setting standards, subject by subject; rigorous curricula; training and retraining teachers; and diagnostic testing every 90 days.

He noted that politicians are afraid of stepping into education because it’s seen as a states’ rights issue. But he suggested that the next President ask 15 states to come up with standards benchmarked to the 10 highest performing nations in the world. The President will then find funds, pay for administration of tests, and arrange an exception under NCLB for additional time for some states to implement these standards.

(Check out the post before this to see the Summit agenda.)

Special series: Liveblogging Edin08 Blogger Summit

actemedia — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:04:03 +0000

This is Catherine, electronic media coordinator at ACTE, and I’m taking over the Trade and Industrial Education Division blog to liveblog about the Blogger Summit I’ll be attending tomorrow. The keynote speaker for the daylong summit is Newt Gingrich, which is a bit of surprise and I’m curious as to what he’ll have to say on education blogging. Other speakers and panelists include … well, a lot of bloggers from the DailyKos, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Politico, National Review Online and This Week in Education. Authors include Dan Brown (“The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle”), Chris Gabrieli (“Time to Learn”) and Joanne Jacobs (“Our School”).

The summit will focus on the role of education blogging, its challenges and impacts, and the role of blogging in the current Presidential election. Check out the agenda.

They will have WiFi on location so I plan to blog throughout the day on what I’m learning. Come back and visit! You can also subscribe by e-mail or RSS to get updates. Click on one of the Subscribe options in the right sidebar of this blog and follow the instructions. If blogging about education blogging proves popular, maybe a new ACTE ed tech/Web 2.0 blog will be born!

We’re all listening so tell us what you learned in Washington.

Ed Chipalowsky — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:32:00 +0000

Ok you’re back from a fantastic conference in our great nations capital with hopefully many politicians listening and chiming in fresh new ideas for CTE; you’ve had a restful weekend with family and friends; you’ve caught up on your duties and chores that were put aside while away; >>>>>NOW GET THOSE FINGERS PLUNKING ON THE KEYS AND TELL US ALL ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, here are some ideas of what we want to know:

1- What are some good restaurants you ate at?

2- How was the weather?

3- What the heck are those politicians thinking in Washington about CTE?

4- Where are we headed in CTE?

5- States who are in the forefront?

6- New CTE strategies?

7- New best practices?

8- Should I shut up now?

I hope I have given some ideas of what we want to here from you. We need your feedback to create more dialogue among the educational community, industry and Washington. Coming back from conferences, you are filled with excitement and a renewed exuberance for the future of CTE and your students, and to stifle such enthusiasm would be a sad waste.

Let’s get those ideas going, and comment, comment, comment back to ACTE on what’s going on for all of us in CTE. Remember that the advancement of CTE also provides job security for all of us. I’ll be close by my computer to keep in touch. Thanks Ed