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But they are NOT the only search engine out there, not by a long chalk. Here are some others, but be prepared to sit and wait a while, certainly compared to Google’s 450,000 server blink.

Healthline

Globalspecs

Like.com

Spock

Yahoo

Acoona

Ask.com

Clusty

Sproose

Nosyjoe

Wikia

KartOO

KooltTorch

Quintura

Squidoo

Hakia

Lexxe

Powerset

The irony of it is that in order to find these unfamiliar search engines I Googled them.

I wonder if any of them would suit student search better than GoogleKids.

The new New Zealand Curriculum landed in my cubby hole yesterday. I have been a diligent student of the National Curriculum (a geek if you ask my colleagues in school). But it is good to see that the language in the ‘Vision’ part of the document remains.

It sets high expectations of the future. It acknowledges the global community and the abilities that the next generation of New Zealanders are going to require if they are to thrive in this inter-connected world.

It will be interesting to see how schools around the nation interpret this revised focus:

What does confident really mean in the classroom/school? How do we ‘teach’ that? (infuse that?)

What does connected mean, outside the blogosphere? Should mean the same and what will the impact of that be on the schools and their operating budgets?

How are we going to contextualise our students learning in any meaningful, sustainable way? Social, cultural, economic and environmental are all great words which potentially have huge impacts on the way we ‘do’ school.

Life Long learning is something that many of us have been grappling with for sometime now and at the heart of the matter, I believe, is the emotional development of intrinsic motivation, how are schools moving towards this golden key to education in the 21^st century?

So are our students CCALLed into the bright shining 21^st century?

Confident

Connected

Actively involved

Lifelong…

Learners ….?

and if they are not yet what are we going to do about it? As I typed this question I realised that it is not a tick box answer, are they connected? Yes could they be more so? Yes. Are they Confident?Yes. Could they be…. and so it goes on.

Have you had times in your life like you wish it could be hyperlinked so you can do several things at once?

 Here’s my example, please just hover over the links (they are not real)

 Today, prepare for reliever, finish off NUMP snapshots for ‘non targeted kids’, prepare presentation on Higher Order Thinking (For real link click here),  review material for presentation at meeting for Interactive Whiteboard training, This afternoon teach my kids something, probably writing, final classroom preparations for ERO visit.

Tomorrow: teach my kids, welcome a visitor into my classroom and demonstrate PRS in use, Final preparation for Flaxmere ICT conference presentation, listen to Karen Boyes speak, DO my presentation, out tonight with my wife and friends.

Yep, I wish reality could be hyperlinked sometimes….

Ilminster Intermediate School

Pt England School

Check them out at the links provided and vote as you see fit…. I think they’re pretty special!

Howard Garder was quoted with his multi intelligences. What I found interesting was how, in 1984 students were asked which they thought school valued and to a kid they said logical and and verbal. Now, Julia was saying, The students tick all intelligences but they say that school is not good at helping students get better at the intelligences they are not so flash at. 

How we view the world, everyone sees the same picture but they see different things- their perspective has a huge impact.

I hope that some folk who also attended could enlighten this post a bit more…. If I find my notes I comment as well.

I want to talk about Explorers, I feel we are all explorers in new ICTs. We’re the ones experimenting in the classroom. The edublogosphere is filled with cases of people explaining and reflecting on their ever changing practises with ICT in their classrooms. We’re dealing with real experiences, real students, real observations. But what makes our observations valid? Are we engaging in critical thinking and and reflecting in the right way? Jane Nicholl’s work on Oral Language and podcasting is perhaps a good example. Many of Vicki Davies reflections are critical in nature. But much of our, mine most of all, observations and reflections are low level and classed by academia as ‘anecdotal’. My concern lies in the fact that we are all at the cutting edge, where today’s technologies meet today’s students. But the quality of our reflections, perhaps, needs to go up a notch as Falloon comments “ there has been little conclusive empirical research to prove” (Falloon, 2003, p. 23) that ICT enhances outcomes for students. If academia is dismissing our contribution as ‘anecdotal’ then that filters through to policy makers and curriculum designers. We have an opportunity to drag the educational perspective out of the industrial age and into the 21^st century, as noted by David Warlick , and others.

So do we need to be thinking about our practise in terms of Jonassen’s Mindtools, or Atkin’s papers? How relevant are these theoretical perspectives? Do we need to consider such things to draw our experiences out of the micro level and up to a macro level? Is that our job or is someone else going to pull all this anecdotal material together for us to present the 21^st century classroom perspective?  

If not us, me, then who?

Falloon, G. (1999). Developing exemplary practice: Why are some teachers better at IT than others? Computers in New Zealand Schools, 15 (1), 19-23.

You’re The Giver!

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Found this on Miguel’s Blog. Obviously I’m not as carefree and funny as I thought I was. Perhaps Allanah’s right I do need some sort of theropy.