How much do Credentials Matter?

So, I guess I've been sleeping or something, but apparently Jon Stewart has been shaking the tree again. This time calling out the Republicans on their filibustering of a bill to help 9/11 first responders. Now, I don't want to ge all political here. What I want to address is a passing quote I heard on the the news.

Stewart has been called a journalist by some, but on the news report that I heard only in passing a professor (not sure who, or from where) said Stewart is not a journalist. When asked what it took to be a journalist, he responded that journalistic training was required. He did not talk about what a journalist does, only how they are trained. So in a sense, you can only be a journalist if you went to school to become one. I wasn't aware that there was any sort of journalist certification.

How many jobs today are ones that our students could do in the future without any formal training. There is this great wealth of material available on the net totally for free. I could take computer programming classes from universities such as Stanford or MIT just by downloading them. I could get 90% of the benefit of those courses without leaving my house. So, what do credentials really tell us today?

They seem to tell us only that the holder of them spent the money required to get them. They also tell us that these people ostensibly took the courses and got the training. Now, if we put them next to a really motivated person who went to all the trouble to learn the material themselves... Personally, if I was running a company I'd rather hire the person who trained themselves to do the job. But, how does someone demonstrate they have the skills?

Well, I suppose you start to do the job you want, but do it for free. The web today really makes this a possibility. Want to be a journalist? Start a blog. Want to be a film maker? Make some films and put them on YouTube. Want to be a musician? Do what JoCo did. Want to be a computer programmer? Write some code and release it on the net. The web today is an amazing platform that can allow the best to rise to the top. All you really need is to be good and be willing to work for free for awhile. What better time to do that then while you're in school living at home.

I mean what will look better on a college/scholarship application? "I know how to program in Objective C," or "Here's the app I created in Objective C"? (Monarch Express, created by two of my students)

Now, how do we teach our students to do this? How do we get them to be the entrepreneurs they can be? All you need today to start your own business is a computer, a connection to the internet, and persistance!

New Direction

So, I haven't really been blogging as much this past year. So, what's the solution? More blogs to update. I'll be starting another blog or two that have a slightly different focus than this one. I wanted to keep this blog mostly focused on teaching with technology, but I often have good science ideas that aren't really technology based and I haven't had an outlet for sharing them.

So, I'm starting a brand new thing. I bought a domain from GoDaddy and set up Google Apps and Blogger to point at the new domain. So for the cost of $10/year (domain registration) I get free web hosting (10GB of storage), as many email addresses as I want, and easy to update web pages (both through Blogger and Sites). The whole set-up process, while not 100% pain free, was relatively simple. I could also easily add a couple more web services and have free audio and/or video hosting/podcasting (that way I wouldn't have to eat into my 10GB).

This idea has been percolating around in my brain since last year's NECC. Where I was presenting some of my science stuff in the Math/Science Playground. Someone recommended that I become the Open Source Science Guy since I was showing how to use Audacity to teach sound. Well, opensourcescience.com was already gone, so I bought FLOSScience.com. (FLOS = Free/Libre Open Source)

As of writing this I haven't posted any FLOSScience blog entries yet, but I have been working on the Google Site side of the new site, just in case you're interested. Needless to say, developing this is my summer project.

I've been playing with an online word processor called Writely. So far I have to say I like it. It is by no means the most powerful word processor and that is one of the things I like about it. I use it as a fairly clean text editor that I can access from anywhere. There is no software to install, it runs right in your browser.

I use many computers on a daily basis. Heck even my MacBook is really two computers (OSX and WinXP). Writely allows me to easily share my most important documents among all my computers. This is good as I've been keeping my lessons plans on Writely this year and my MacBook seems to have died (note, I tried my MacBook again before I posted this and it has recovered). I freaked out at first, until I realized I'm still under warranty and all my most recent work has been on Writely and so is safe.

So far I have not really used one of Writely's most touted features, namely collaboration. You can set Writely up so that other people have access to your documents making collaboration much easier. This could make group projects much easier. I'm working on a lab manual (more on this in the future) with a retired teacher (my Physics mentor) who now lives in Colorado. I've uploaded the documents we've created so far and given him access to them, but so far he hasn't modified them, so I don't know how well the collaboration bit works yet.

I'm going to test out one of the other features as soon as I'm done typing. When I was making my last entry into my lesson plans I noticed a Blog tab at the top of the Writely window. Apparently I can blog directly from Writely. Being a Google product, Writely will apparently post to Blogger directly, but can also post to a number of other sites as well.

Technorati Tags: weblogs, blog, education, falconphysics

Scribes - Blogging in my Science Classes

About a month ago I decided I'd try Scribes this year in my Physics class. I decided the first few days of school were overwhelming enough, so I saved Scribes for a bit. I just got the ball rolling this last week. So far it seems to be going well and they seem to enjoy it.

Scribes involves having students keep a class blog. Each day a different student is given the responsibility of updating the blog. They will post class notes, pictures, upcoming assignments and useful links.

I started by having students email me and then I send out invites (from blogger.com) to invite them to participate. So far I've managed to get a third to half of my students added in this way. Next week (and next year for that matter), I'm going to have the remaining students type their own names into blogger from my computer in class. Thereby turning a two part process fraught with lost emails into a one part process.

My Classes can be found at:

http://physics1st.blogspot.com
http://physics2nd.blogspot.com
http://physics8th.blogspot.com

Technorati Tags: bloggingbestpractice, weblogs, blog, education, falconphysics

How do I use Blogs in Education? - Part 1

There are innumerable links out there that explains what blogs are and why you should use them in education. What I see less of are specific example of how to use them in education.

Personally, I have only used blogs as a way to communicate with students and parents, but I have not had students blog. The main reason for this was I didn't have a good reason or lesson idea that would be enhanced by blogging.

This is my first posting giving a specific example of how blogs can be used in education. I have at least one more and I'm sure I'll find others as I go along.

I'm contemplating having my physics students blog this year. It will not really be a journal of how their life is going or share lots of personal information (as they always seem to want to do). I'm stealing an idea I found on the web (I can't remember whose blog I found it from). I'm going to have my students be Scribes.

Used and maybe developed by Mr. Kuropatwa, Scribes focuses on having students share class notes through a blog. Each day one student is selected (by the previous Scribe) to take excellent notes and post them to the class blog. The posting must include notes on topics covered, list activities done, give homework, and mention upcoming tests and quizzes. Mr. Kuropatwa describes the process as creating a class specific textbook for the course.

Mr. Kuropatwa creates the class blog and then adds the students as collaborators to the blog. In this way he still maintains control of the blog and can hold students accountable for what they write.

Scribes can be used in any class in any curriculum area. When I implement it I may change the selection mechanism. I will probably select students randomly and only tell them who the day's scribe is at the end of the lesson. I'll post links to my Scribe Blogs once school starts.

Technorati Tags: bloggingbestpractice, weblogs, blog, education, falconphysics