Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Changing the Template
How can something that sounds so easy have such disastrous results? The instructions for adding a template that is not a blogger template seemed so straight forward. Copy and paste. I am really good at copying (I am a teacher after all.) The pasting is also pretty simple, just where do you paste it? Perhaps if I wasn't reading Will Richardson's weblogg-ed on my other monitor while waiting for the downloads I would have been able to salvage my profile and flickr. I guess I started to fade from the source code when I read this on Will's March 27th posting:
Not every student needs a blog or a podcast or a wiki to be engaged, I understand that. Blogs and podcasts and the audiences they facilitate will not engage every child. But are we not at the point where we can honestly say that the learning potential of these tools is such that every teacher should have them as a part of his or her toolbox?
My little instructional technology group is engaged in a debate about whether to purchase the new and improved Inspiration 8.0 for next year's student computers, or try to purchase Inspiration 7.5 so the students' computers will be the same image as the teachers' laptops. In reality my group has very little decision making power and the district will probably purchase whatever is cheaper - sad but true. But after rereading Will Richardson's words, how can we not choose the latest and greatest if it holds more learning potential for our students? Don't we owe it to our students, our community, ourselves to continue learning and growing? If Inspiration 8.0's Word Guide, or symbol search allows users to be more successful - why wouldn't we buy it?
Not every student needs a blog or a podcast or a wiki to be engaged, I understand that. Blogs and podcasts and the audiences they facilitate will not engage every child. But are we not at the point where we can honestly say that the learning potential of these tools is such that every teacher should have them as a part of his or her toolbox?
My little instructional technology group is engaged in a debate about whether to purchase the new and improved Inspiration 8.0 for next year's student computers, or try to purchase Inspiration 7.5 so the students' computers will be the same image as the teachers' laptops. In reality my group has very little decision making power and the district will probably purchase whatever is cheaper - sad but true. But after rereading Will Richardson's words, how can we not choose the latest and greatest if it holds more learning potential for our students? Don't we owe it to our students, our community, ourselves to continue learning and growing? If Inspiration 8.0's Word Guide, or symbol search allows users to be more successful - why wouldn't we buy it?
