Some of you already know that this week I submitted my Google Teacher Academy application for this June’s session on the 25th in Mountain View, CA. I was pretty excited, as this is the first time that Google is accepting applications from outside of the immediate area of the GTA, and indeed, outside of the U.S.A. Woo hoo! (I heard about this Google news via the Infinite Thinking Machine Blog, btw. If that blog isn’t in your reader, get on it!)
What an experience for me just to put together the 1 minute required video. Fun, but definitely challenging. For my reflection and for your enjoyment (or perhaps mockery!), here are a few things I learned:
It is impossible for me to put my entire teaching philosophy about Classroom Innovation into 1 minute. Impossible! Perhaps I have too much to say…?
I can definitely type faster than I can write. The screen vids of me inking those memorable quotes across the screen of my tablet didn’t make the cut because I can’t ink three words in less than 9 seconds. But I can type three words in 4 seconds! (Thanks to my university days as a temp, I tell you!)
I have an incredibly talented partner who knows more about making music than I do, even on a computer. And I promise next time I will not ask him to do the music edits at 11 p.m. on a school night.
I have a lot to learn about using video software, though I have discovered that it doesn’t get much easier than iMovie.
The end of May is not a good time for me to be making movies (exams, report cards, people leaving, etc.). Mental note taken, stored, and written in cyberstone here. Amen. I think this vid would have been much better if I had not had 2398989712 things going on.
The difference in quality from my raw mp4 file (pretty good) to the Google Video / YouTube upload is REMARKABLE. My exported mp4 (using iMovie’s “Expert settings”) looks great — super sharp and clear. Upload to Google Vid / YouTube looks grainy and all around sucky. Anyone have tips on this? (Note that I am new to this kind of thing; most of my contributions to the digital world have happened via written text and photo. Video is a whole new (fun) ballgame.) Sadly, what this means is that the Google Earth portions of my video are not viewable in the way I intended. Wah.
I do not know enough about recording screen shots on video. Need to learn more about this.
And for those who are interested, the software / hardware I used:
Check out this article and the many references to bloggers who think that comments should be disabled on blogs. Read through those posts and consider whether or not you think it’s better to build community through comments or through conversations occurring across blogs–or maybe a combination of both. What, to your mind, is the purpose of comments on blogs and are we better served by encouraging people to respond to ideas on our blogs or over on their own blogs?
I read the article. Interesting. My short answer to the big question “Should we be commenting?”: it’s up to the blogger. Perhaps you want interaction on your own blog. Perhaps you don’t. Consider your purpose and audience and go from there. Incidentally, lots of non-blog websites offer a space for people to share and interact. Again, it depends on the purpose and what you hope to achieve. And perhaps you can turn on / off comments for a particular post, allowing you to play it by ear.
My perspective
If I didn’t want people to interact with me, I wouldn’t have started blogging in the first place. Whether that interaction comes via a trackback, a Tweet, or a comment makes little difference to me — I just want to connect. And enabling comments is an easy way for that to happen. As I said earlier, I have also realized recently that I often say more interesting and substantial things on other people’s blogs than I do on my own. I’m better at being invited than being the invitee, I guess.
I find this article from the New York Times slightly disturbing.
If you haven’t read it, please do — it is long, enlightening, and profiles one family in particular from Beijing who was able to send their daughter to university in Ohio. But if you don’t have time to read it, here are the basics:
Student overseas wants to go to American, Australian, Canadian, or UK university.
American, Australian, Canadian, and UK universities want students from overseas because
• they pay way more tuition, and
• it diversifies their school culture, and
• they pay way more tuition, and… wait, I already said that.
So, Student pays X amount of USD to Agent to find him an appropriate university in the western world, and
American, Australian, Canadian, and UK universities pay Y amount of USD to same Agent to find them Z number of international students because
• they pay way more tuition, and
• it diversifies their school culture, and
• did I mention that they pay way more tuition?
Agent finds appropriate fit, Student applies to University recommended by Agent, and is admitted.
Student happy (found tertiary educational direction), University happy ($$$ + cultural diversity = better learning?).
Agent happiest, because X + Y = BINGO.
The article states,
. . . [M]any agents collect hefty fees from both sides — the students they advise, and the universities they contract with — leaving some to question whose interest is being served . . .
To be fair, the next sentence implies that some people are working towards changing this perception:
Even some advocates of recruiting agents see a need for an ethics code.
And further,
“We should be doing this, but we should be doing it right,” said Mitch Leventhal, vice provost of international affairs at the University of Cincinnati, which has contracts with agents. “And I don’t think it’s right for students to have to pay a lot if the agent is also getting paid by the university. I don’t think it’s ethical.”
Umm, but you’re still doing it, aren’t you? Did the University of Cincinnati cut their contracts with the agents because Mr. Leventhal said it was unethical to pay them? (Note that the sentence above does not say if the University of Cincinnati pays the agents they have contracts with.)
At least one university representative thinks it is unethical and does not pay agents they have contracts with:
Throughout Asia and to a lesser extent other parts of the world, thousands of agents offer help to students seeking admission to an English-speaking university, charging them fees that may be a few hundred dollars, or far more. “Some agents charge as much as $30,000,” said John Robert Cryan of the University of Toledo, which works with agents, but pays no commissions. “There’s a lot of gouging going on.”
[emphasis mine]
Apparently, Mr. Leventhal (of the U of C, above) is an advocate of ethics in this field, but get this:
Mr. Leventhal is also advocating a code of ethics, modeled on Australian practice, under which American universities would pay agents a 10 percent commission, if the agents agreed to charge students only a nominal fee.
This is ethical? Am I missing something? Maybe an Aussie can explain it to me, as apparently this is Australian practice. To my mind, none of this is ethical. For students AND universities to pay for placement at “the right” university? Where does that leave the international (or local, for that matter) student who wants and rightly deserves a place in a university? Well, apparently, unless he has between $500 and $5000 US to spend — that leaves him nowhere.
On the last page of the article, Philip G. Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, is quoted as saying:
“In a globalized world, where some people need a lot of guidance to get here, there may be a legitimate place for responsible middlemen,” he said, then added, “although I really hate it.”
And I agree — perhaps there is a need for a middleman. But, but, but… here are my buts:
Universities should NOT be paying them — what if instead they were simply “regular” university employees, out and about recruiting for their university as normal?
Students should not have to pay them very much (like, less than $50), or even better nothing at all
Basically, I think that universities perhaps need to beef up their own recruitment practices, and aim to recruit international students the old-fashioned way — by making their university look like the best place to go, rather than by paying a middleman thousands of dollars.
Does anyone else think this is unethical? Or am I being too old-fashioned and curmudgeonly?
Whatever happened to open and honest application procedures? Whatever happened to applications requiring that the person with the best fit (based on grades, SAT scores, and whatever else the university deems necessary) gets in on his/ her own merit, rather than simply because he/she is from China and has thousands of dollars to spend?
Should people be making money from international students’ desire to go to university in the Western world?
[Edit: if anyone can help me properly use footnotes, I'd be much obliged! Thanks!]
Ok, so we’re on what, Day 10? And I am still thinking about Day 7.
Here’s the thing: I’ve been falling behind because I am, on some level, not finding the Comment Challenge to be such a challenge.
Let me explain. The purpose of the Comment Challenge is to:
. . . [become] better blog citizens . . . by actively participating in conversations and [share] your learning, especially with those new to blogging . . .
And I get that, I really do. That is, in fact, why I signed up for the challenge. Indeed, I even was initially intimidated by the challenge:
And I even understand the purpose of the Daily Activities, which is to
challenge our thinking, writing and . . . aid in the process of becoming better commenters.
But here is my problem: I think I am already a good commenter, without the Daily Activities. Task 1 was a good starting place, and definitely uncovered some areas for me that I need to focus on in my commenting. Basically, after the Self-Audit I felt more mindful of how I make my presence understood as I go about life in the online world, interacting with people who have never met me. I realized that at times, my tone is unclear and perhaps not accurate, and so I have been more cognizant of what I say and how I say it.
Tasks for Days 2 through 6 were things that were not unusual for me — i.e., I do these things anyway, fairly regularly. So I didn’t really, officially, do them as part of the Comment Challenge.1And then I got to Day 7 (even though today is Day 10) and thought, Hmm… what am I really learning here?
Answers:
I often make comments on others‘ blogs that are perhaps even more insightful than what I post here on my own blog. Therefore, I think I am better at responding to others’ ideas than coming up with my own. Question: What does that say about me? Am I not that innovative? Or am I just too social?
I don’t need prompted tasks to make sure I am expanding my PLN, communicating with the people in it, and respectfully disagreeing with people. Perhaps others do, but I don’t.
I comment enough, but definitely since the challenge began, I have been commenting more — which I guess was the point, so … ta-da! Mission (thus far) accomplished.
And one more question for anyone reading this: Is there a word which means “not having discovered something new and epiphanous2 when one was expecting to?”
1(Even coComment was already installed on my Firefox browser at home, though I had not enabled it in a while. The only new thing I needed to do was enable it on my tablet at school.) 2Ok, I made that word up.
Tags: comment08
So, I’ve been reading a few things about blogging. And I’ve been reading a few things about writing. And I’ve been reading a few things about both blogging and writing, and I’m starting to think I’m missing something. Or need clarification, at the very least.
I’m going to keep this philosophical, much like my assessment post a while back.
First, a question:
If (text-based)1 blogging is a kind of writing, then aren’t all bloggers writers?
And now, the statements:
I (foolishly, perhaps) believe that all my students can become good writers2 of some kind.
I therefore believe that all my students should try their hand at blogging, just as I believe all my students should try writing poetry, maybe a short story, a personal narrative, an e-mail, and oodles of other writing types.
I do not believe a great writing teacher needs to be a great writer; he / she simply needs to “know the ropes” and be great teacher, period.
I therefore believe a great blogging teacher does not need to be a “master blogger”, but that he / she just needs to know how it works, and be a great teacher, period.
And finally, more questions:
Those of you out there who use blogs with your students, how do you use them?
Do you assess them? If so, how?
And if you don’t use blogs with your students, why not?
The background
I am changing (quite drastically) the way I use blogs with my students for the remainder of this school year, and next. And so, I’m looking for ideas and anecdotal feedback… errr.. feed-forward… from those who have walked this path before me.
1Of course, the visual-types of blogs aren’t really writing, but a different kind of communication
2I define the term “good writer” as one who creates “good writing.” And for the definition of “good writing,” I turn to one of my most influential mentors in both teaching and writing, Carl Leggo, who once stated, “Good writing gets the job done. It works.” I should also note that I have different definitions of “great writing” and other comparative terms.
And I promise next time I will not ask him to do the music edits at 11 p.m. on a school night.
I find 
So, I’ve been reading a few 
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