Why I’m Sticking with AT&T (and Glad to See BUMPzee Back)

Sam Harrelson on January 15, 2011

My pal Scott Jangro had an amazing site in late ’06 and early ’07 called BUMPzee that I loved.

Basically, BUMPzee was an early hybrid of Delicious, Digg, and what would become the Facebook newsfeed. Scott and his team were a little ahead of the curve and the platform should have gone mainstream.

So, I’m glad to see BUMPzee back up and running as it allows for great conversations along the lines of this (my response to Scott’s question about staying on AT&T or jumping ship for Verizon for his new iPhone)…

Iphone 4: At&t Or Verizon? – Bumpzee: “I had the exact same thing happen with my 3GS and the mute button. It’s pretty annoying to be a teacher and not be able to mute your phone, btw.

However, beyond the concrete Faraday cage that is my school, I don’t have a problem with ATT. They actually have been improving things quite a bit here in the Western North Carolina region to the point that I get few interruptions in service. We don’t have 3G everywhere, but we chose to live in a pretty remote and non-metropolitan region of southern appalachia, so I can’t complain.

My contract was up on the 12th as well (how’s that for timing!). So, I went to the ATT store thinking I’d be treated like royalty for staying with them. Interestingly enough, the ATT stores here were all out of stock and playing catch up after the holidays. My 4 came in yesterday and it’s everything I imagined it would be.

So yeah… stay with ATT. The ability to browse the web while on a call has been a great feature (one I thought I would never use) and the wifi at airports or places like Starbucks is a great feature-add.

I think this has been a big learning opportunity for ATT as they continue to grow and scale their network, so hopefully the benefits will continue as some customers offload to Verizon. Truthfully, I think Verizon has behaved with too much hubris from their ‘Droid Does’ days to acting as if the iPhone is finally worthy of their great network.

The biggest plus out of all this is that iOS on Verizon will put a big dent in the Android market!”

Reality Shifts Aren’t Novelties

Sam Harrelson on January 14, 2011

Fantastic post that answers many of the “iPad is a fad and has no place in our schools” critics…

TeachPaperless: Novelty, Huh?: “As for the specific case of the iPad, it’s hardly an ideal device if you are looking for a catch-all. I’m especially concerned about the closed nature of the system and the emphasis on sales at the app store and on iBooks. But it is a device that speaks to several of the important features of our time, most importantly: mobile and accessible instant Internet connectivity. And I would argue that to see the iPad as a fad is to miss the bigger picture: the iPad only exists within the context of a mobile-connected world. That mobile-connected world is not a novelty; that’s a paradigm and a reality.”

Go read the whole thing.

Logic Behind Modern Schooling

Sam Harrelson on January 13, 2011

This is a long piece that I’ve had in my Instapaper account for a while and have intended to read for years.

After a few jolts of caffeine, I tackled the piece and wasn’t disappointed…

Against School, by John Taylor Gatto: “Now for the good news. Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they’ll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology – all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.”

Follow the link and read the whole piece. I don’t agree with many of the logic skips of Gatto when it comes to constructing a Prussian-Marxist structure of compulsory education but the spirit of the article certainly rings true.

Time for me to start being a teacher that encourages leaders and adventurers instead of employees and consumers in our classroom.

Meet the New Boss…

Sam Harrelson on January 13, 2011

One of the things I did like about Sanford were the bbq’s instead of gala’s…

The Governor’s Gala – Governor Watch – TheState.com: “Former Gov. Mark Sanford chose to forego a black tie gala for both his first election and re-election in favor of a low-key barbecue at the State Fairgrounds.

Haley’s event was paid for through private donations. Top sponsors included BlueCross BlueShield, Boeing, Duke Energy and SCANA.”

I dislike that we’ve returned to decadence in such a fragile time for South Carolina.

I especially dislike that we do so at the behest of large and influential corporations that will set the tone of state politics for the next 4/8 years.

83 Lines

Sam Harrelson on January 13, 2011

Trevor Turk put together a WordPress theme using only 83 lines of PHP and 75 lines of CSS. That’s pretty amazing.

And pretty.

I’m using it here as my theme for a very long time to come.

Yes, I love it.

iPads and Classroom Essentials

Sam Harrelson on January 11, 2011

This is a wonderful walkthrough by Fraser Speirs on how his school (Cedars School of Excellence in the UK)implemented an “iPad for Every Student” initiative and some of the resulting reflections the school has made.

I’m prodding my beloved Spartanburg Day School to do the same (at an annoyingly daily rate, I’m sure).

However, I was arrested for a moment when I came to this passage in the post…

An iPad for every child | Tablets | Macworld: “We are now at the stage where the iPad is embedded in the way we do business at the school. When we first started, we thought we could guard against misuse by threatening to take away the child’s iPad for a day or so. It turns out that doing so would now completely break the school day for that child. We might as well make them sit in the hallway and face the wall for the entire day. I did not expect that we would reach that point so soon.”

I hadn’t really considered how integrated a tool like an iPad could become to a classroom or a school. I have a “class” iPad that we use but we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of its possibilities and being that there’s only one to go around, it’s more difficult for students to dig deeper than note taking or quick reference searches with the device (although more and more students are getting iPads and bringing them to school).

However, I’ve purposely gone half the year now without renting the “laptop carts” which carry 18 white Macbooks for class. I have a very liberal policy when it comes to technology in my classroom (allow iPods, earbuds, iPads, mobiles… and even Androids to be used at a student’s discretion), but I don’t want the students to feel as if the laptops are a crutch to fall back on when we need to find material, make a connection or prove a point.

I guess that’s the same reason I keep a “mimimalist” look to my classroom with as few things on the wall etc as possible. It’s a science lab, but we’re just meeting in that room temporarily. I don’t want my students (or myself) to get fooled by the notion that the room itself is where science happens. Instead, I want them to look out the window at the beautiful dogwood just outside my classroom and realize that is their true classroom where all the lab supplies lie.

Everything in my classroom is very modular and utilitarian. The laptops could certainly serve as part of that utilitarian design, but I’d rather let student discretion and need drive the decision to use the web or an IM or a text message rather than saying, “Today, we will use the internet!” for a lesson.

I’m moving to a larger room next year with proper lab tables, gas lines, a chemical closet (and even an office). It will be interesting to see if my thinking changes then.

Regardless, I wonder if/when my dream of having iPads deployed across our school happens if we’ll have the same sudden realization about their essential nature to our character as a school. I also wonder about the ramifications if that does happen?

Keynote and Learning Experiences

Sam Harrelson on January 11, 2011

The new beta functionality of playing Keynote presentations anywhere (well, anywhere there’s a browser, iPad, iPhone or iPod) is major for me…

iWork.com – The Great Wall

Most of the lessons or quick points I want to cover with my students are done on Keynote. We’ve always been able to watch them over the projector at school, of course. I’ve also uploaded the slides to the iWork.com beta site.

However, they were never able to play the presentation and get the full experience of the transitions and effects.

Now that has changed. Plus, with more and more of my students getting iOS devices, they can have that same experience in a mobile or tablet context.

That’s awesome.

INFP

Sam Harrelson on January 10, 2011

Guilty!

Portrait of an INFP: “INFPs are usually talented writers. They may be awkard and uncomfortable with expressing themselves verbally, but have a wonderful ability to define and express what they’re feeling on paper. INFPs also appear frequently in social service professions, such as counselling or teaching. They are at their best in situations where they’re working towards the public good, and in which they don’t need to use hard logic.”

Search is the Card Catalogue of the Web

Sam Harrelson on January 10, 2011

I wrote this piece on April 25, 2007. I’m fishing through some old posts and had to revisit/repot this as I think we’re on the verge of a major shift in attention literacy and finding information on the web.

Enjoy…

—

Search is king.

We have conferences and we have an entire industry built around the idea that “search marketing” is the end all / be all of online marketing.

If you want to reach people and influence their buying habits, you include a large AdWords and keyword budget for search. If you want people to find your website in the vast chaos that are search results, you spend a great deal of time and money on optimizing your site (in some cases at the expense of user interface and aesthetics).

But what about discovery?

Why has “searching” for information outpaced “discovering” information online?

It’s simple… companies and platforms who monetize a user’s ability to find the information they want have found it easier to provide “search engines” rather than “discovery engines.”

This is not just semantics.

Instead, look ahead to the future and how the average web user’s experience has progressed so far. Finding information relevant to your query has forever been a struggle. We’ve made positive steps forward with the search engines, but users still complain about the amount of junk, garbage and irrelevant results they receive in a Google or Yahoo search on a particular topic.

However, as the price of user generated data continues to rise and the price of producing user generated data continues to fall, we see a market shift away from “search” and towards “discovery.”

Soon, we’ll all be paid by Amazon or Google to host our data with them as we do our daily web browsing on our computers, on our cell phones, in our cars and on our digital cameras. Instead of searching for information, you’ll be discovering information based on your user generated output.

Our children will laugh at us for how we sought out information online, just as we raise eyebrows at the thought of using a card catalogue to find a book in a library.

Survival of the Focused

Sam Harrelson on January 10, 2011

I would add that beyond the ability to “concentrate,” the ability to sift through the mountains of data, information, junk and propaganda will be the most essential skill for 21st century learners (an ability we’re still not doing a very good job at helping current students learn or sharpen)…

Book review: Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? – WSJ.com: “One theme emerges frequently from enthusiasts and skeptics alike: Precisely because there are such vast stores of information on the Internet, the ability to carve out time for uninterrupted, concentrated thought may prove to be the most important skill that one can hone. ‘Attention is the fundamental literacy,’ writes Howard Rheingold, the author of ‘Smart Mobs.'”

Attention is a new literacy, but there are also many other literacies out there we can’t ignore.