Steli Efti

Rubert Murdoch & Australian PM Join Education Revolution

Yes, it's true, Rupert Murdoch and the Australian Prime Minister join the education revolution. See what PM Kevin Rudd said:

"An education revolution is our response, investing in the quantity of money we put into the education system, the quality of that investment." (Source)

Now, should be noted that they might mean different things then we mean when we talk about an education revolution.

No matter what you think of Rupert Murdoch - he's a "big picture guy", and he says some things that we at Supercool School have been vocal about for some time already. For example - that we are still stuck with a 19th century education system in the 21st century.

Maybe we should recruit Rupert for SCS? (Na, wouldn't work... that guy has a different vibe) ;-)

Something more serious... experts warn that some of the steepest price increases in college tuitions might be just around the corner - pushing education yet further out of reach for many. Government always likes to cut the edu-budget. That's just another reason to take things in our own hands.

(I just have a friend visiting from Guinea. Education is basically being run by NGOs from what she told me, because the politicians are busy "mange l'argent" (eating money). But internet connectivity is really good in Konakry and lots of young people start to get into IT. That might be a good sign - maybe Africa will soon have it's own "Bangalore" success stories).

Ramin

Students Protesting In Italy - 1.5 Billion Euro Budget Cuts

Now we wouldn't be able to call us "education revolutionaries" if we'd not spread the word about this:
Students in Italy are protesting against huge education budget cuts - 1.5 billion Euro (that's about 1.9 billion US-Dollars).

Silvio Berlusconi's reaction to the students protests? He announced that any further protests will be broken up with police force.

You can see pictures and read more about the protests in Jared Katz's article, which has been featured by the Wall Street Journal & Newsweek online.

And I'm just gonna quote this one from freestate.tv:

"Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga has offered a solution to the Italian government in dealing with widespread demonstrations by students and teachers over a cut in state funding of education - use agent provocateurs to start riots and then have the police “beat the shit out of the protesters”."

Do you think students protesting because of budget cuts should be treated like that? That's more like something I'd expect from a conspiracy movie, quiet frankly...

It just shows that we need to find new ways to educate, teach, learn and share knowledge. Because if we leave it up to the government, this is what we'll get.

Be well,

Ramin

Online Marketing Education

At Supercool School we strongly believe not just in the power of education, but also in the importance of business.

If you look at the current education system all over the world, it's pretty clear that education should NOT be laid in the government hands. Because they are really not doing a good job at all.

Business and education should go hand in hand, because let's face it: that's one of the main purposes of school. To prepare you for making a living later on. But currently, what school does is basically churning out "factory workers", in a time when the demand for factory workers is diminishing rapidly.

Last week I talked with Nick Stamoulis from Brick Marketing. Nick is also in the business of education - educating people to succeed online.

And he very much believes in the power of learning, developing your skills and wrote about Supercool School on the Social Marketing Journal. If you are interested in online marketing, then you find a whole library of knowledge waiting there for you, that ties in perfectly with the online marketing classes at Supercool school.

Want to make your websites more search engine-friendly? Check out the Search Engine Journal. Or how about Email marketing? I found a guerrilla online publicity strategy that I'll employ to get the word out about Supercool School. Local advertising? I found the strategy to get a blog featured on national media really interesting. And the Brick Marketing guys shared a really interesting tip how you can even bid on highly competitive terms for lower prices than the competition.

If you're an information junky like me, there is some dangerous stuff in there, because with all the info he shares, you can really dig deep. That's why I just LOVE the Supercool Classes, because interacting in a class with others is really the best way to get clarity and counter information overload.

Talk soon,
Ramin
PS:I know some there are some education fanatics like us out there, but they view business differently. They often think that business and academics can't join together, and yes, there definitely is a big divide between schools and coorporations. But I think that's part of the problem - because if entrepreneurs and educators unite, that's a very mighty force for the good of the world. Don't you think so?

Supercool School on Twitter

In case you're wondering: the education revolution has gone underground. We're currently working overtime in Triple-S mode (Triple S stands for Super-Secret-Stuff) to get things going, don't be fooled by the quietness of this blog in recent weeks (it's the calm before the storm - just kidding, we'll be posting here more often soon).

So we decided to go on twitter, because it's easier to tweet than to blog, and we can squeeze that into our busy schedule: http://www.twitter.com/supercoolschool

Every single one of you is extremely important to us and the open education movement, and we found that twitter is a better way to stay in contact and interact with you currently.

Also, check out upcoming Supercool School classes (but remember to log into your facebook account first).

Here's our twitter link again, click it and follow us so we can stay in touch: http://www.twitter.com/supercoolschool

Best Of EduBlogger Event08!

Here are the posts of our amazing virtual speakers in this years EduBlogger Even:

• Vicki Davis aka CoolCatTeacher on Throw Down the Gauntlet: Break the Chains of Bad Practice
  
• Jeff Utecht on The Wacky Ways of the Wiki
• Jonatan Castano Munoz on The contradiction: Digital learning style & old teaching methodologies
• Dr. Daniel J. Guhr on Web 2.0 and knowledge acquisition
• Alfred Thompson on Going where the students are
• Mark Alier on Irresponsible teaching with ICT?
• Gabriel Kent on Shifting Focus in Education from the Answers to the Questions
• Cynthia Jimes on Collaborative Creation of Educational Materials: Lessons from the Field
• Alfonso Dehesa on Educating Creativity
• Alberto Elisavetsky on Brainstorming about how to use e learning to reduce digital gap in Latin America
• Alexa Joyce on Helping Kids become researchers
• Peter Bihr on Edublogs: Unite!

Just wanted to send out a big THANK YOU to all of our amazing speakers and participants!
You made this event very special with your fantastic posts and the great discussions. YOU GUYZ ROCK!!!!

There are so many passionate people out there who are devoted to improve the future of education and change the world to the better and bringing some of you together for one day, was a special honor for us!

Another big THANK YOU goes out to Max, who helped us organize this years EduBlogger Event08.
Without him this event wouldn't have been possible.

Much power to you!
Steli Efti

EduBlogs: Unite!

EXTRA BONUS SPEAKER: Peter Bihr - Web Strategist

Edublogging is blogging about education - no more, no less. So let's have a look at how we can harness the power of blogs to improve our learning & teaching experience, shall we? Let me give a summary up front: The two most important things I see are your network and your tools.

First and foremost: network!By networking I don't necessarily mean networking in a strategic let's-meet-up-and-start-something-big-together sense, although that might be very helpful at times. No, it's even simpler! Just look at what's out there and connect with them. There's plenty of blogs and blogging educators out there. Plenty of organizations. Maybe even a few of your students. Where to start? Have a look at Technorati. There are institutional blogs like the UNESCO Chair of E-Learning. And don't dare missing out on Vicky Davis' website, Vicki can be found online using the alias CoolCatTeacher. If there's one person to watch in this space, it's vicki. She's everywhere, from YouTube to Twitter and back. (More on these tools below.) And there's a very neat project called the Open Educational Resources Map, a Google Maps-based list of organizations and players who contribute to the ever-growing world of open educational resources:

Heather Ford (blog), director of the Icommons organization and one of the most active persons fighting for Internet rights along Europe and America, created some months ago this Open Education Map that seems to be a very interesting project.

Everybody can contribute to this map, it's a global collaborative effort. Once you start looking around, you'll find plenty of interesting stuff out there. Get to know the people who make it. If you get a chance, say hi. Start simple: For example by writing a comment on their blog. Have you networked your students yet? Says CoolCatTeacher Vicki Davis:

I find it ironic that pet networking would probably have a higher success rate than educational networking, and yet, Classroom 2.0 has almost 11,000 members, and I actually meet people on there.

Know your tools (and experiment)! Once you know who's out there, it's time to look at your own stuff. What tools do you work with? If they get the job done well, then all is good. No need to read any further. Still with us? Then maybe not all is quite perfect yet and you're ready to take a few new tools for a spin? Again, don't be afraid of new stuff. With a bit of commons sense you won't hurt anybody, and nobody gets everything right the first time they try. Be prepared for a mishap or two, and don't get discouraged. (Who said being a teacher means not learning any more?) There are plenty of tools out there that may make your life easier, and help you get your message across. Again, let's have a look at the Cool Cat Teacher - on her website you'll find 16 links to social media tools, sharing services or other web outlets. Just to name a few: On del.icio.us she shares links, on Flickr photos. Videos go to YouTube, small info bits on Twitter. Then there's a whole bunch of wikis she contributes to, a number of blogs, an event calendar. There's even more. The point is not to be on each and every service, or to drink all the Kool Aid: It's to think about what makes sense, and then just doing it. If you're facing problems, questions, obstacles, worry not: "When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout." Be prepared to experiment a bit, and just ask your friends, colleagues, or online acquaintances. Chances are they've run into similar problems and are glad to help.

Helping kids become researchers

BONUS SPEAKER: Alexa Joyce - Communications & Development Manager, European Schoolnet (www.eun.org)

Many kids find learning science dull and boring - but research (for example, the Rocard report) indicates that hands-on science, where kids "become" scientists in the classroom through inquiry-based techniques helps overcome this perception. By inquiry-based science education, we mean processes where children are investigating issues that they find interesting, and even designing their own experiments to help them verify hypotheses. At the same time, there are two great trends colliding right now: science is becoming more open and participative (the UK's Gardenwatch for the public schools is a great example), while the the technical tools for carrying out scientific work are getting cheaper and cheaper (for example, MIT's Scratch and Xplora's web experiment). Open source software, freeware and free online services, and open content for remixing are all contributing to this, along with the arrival of cheap electronic sensors and remote-controlled laboratory tools. These trends can only help in getting inquiry-based learning into schools, and help to create the next generation of scientists. Here are some examples of interesting "cool tools" for science education.

a) Climateprediction.net is "the largest experiment to try and produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century." It's a downloadable client based on BOINC, the same framework that was used to build the famous SETI@home tool. It's a British project from the University of Oxford. Schools can download the client, and run the global climate model. There are teaching resources for all kinds of levels a available and a discussion forum for school participants. The visualisation tools are great!

b) Concord consortium probeware Concord provides a wide range of exciting science methodologies and projects. Their probeware tools combine low cost sensors with analytical software, so that students can run experiments, and track their results in real time. Even a basic temperature probe can be used to run a huge variety of experiments and investigations, on thermal conductivity of skin, thermodynamics and more. Once kids get the hang of the tool, they can come up with their own ideas to investigate.

c) Sustain.no On this Norwegian site, teachers and students can join running experiments that other schools are involved in. Together, schools can collect and share data, and compare their results. There are lots of different projects available to join. An interesting one is Global POP. 31 schools so far collected data on the level of environmental pollutants in fish.

These are just a few examples of tools that combine technology with science to make the learning process more authentic and motivating. What other tools are out there that can help kids get more enthusiastic about science, and play the role of researcher while in the classroom?