tracyrosen.com

Strong communities often develop around popular OSS. You may have heard of an operating system called Linux. There are different ‘distributions’ (or versions) of this - perhaps the most popular being Ubuntu. The PCs in my classroom run Edubuntu, a derivative. You’d be amazed at what a community can put together and make available free of charge!Doug Belshaw, dougbelshaw.com, Aug 2008

Go read the whole article to find out more about open source.

open source community, open source, software, teaching, ubuntu.

Papert’s principle

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August 24th, 2008 by TracyRosen

“ Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows. ”

Papert’s principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

teaching learning.

Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment By Black and Wiliam

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August 24th, 2008 by TracyRosen

In terms of systems engineering, present policies in the U.S. and in many other countries seem to treat the classroom as a black box. Certain inputs from the outside — pupils, teachers, other resources, management rules and requirements, parental anxieties, standards, tests with high stakes, and so on — are fed into the box. Some outputs are supposed to follow: pupils who are more knowledgeable and competent, better test results, teachers who are reasonably satisfied, and so on. But what is happening inside the box? How can anyone be sure that a particular set of new inputs will produce better outputs if we don’t at least study what happens inside? And why is it that most of the reform initiatives mentioned in the first paragraph are not aimed at giving direct help and support to the work of teachers in classrooms?

PDK International | Phi Delta Kappan: Black & Wiliam.
…found via Hugh O’Donnell at RepairKit

teaching assessment, reform, systems.

Close your eyes and let yourself be taken away…

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August 22nd, 2008 by TracyRosen

(Saw him in Seoul in 96?97?)

music ahmad jamal, floetry, herbie hancock, jazz, kd lang, music, piano, spirit.

Off the Hook is…off the hook…

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August 21st, 2008 by TracyRosen

One of my favourite things about Thursday mornings this summer has been my early morning soundtrack - narrated by Revolution (my good friend Orion), Budda Blaze, and Flow - Off the Hook.

Rev and Budda: Taking it to the streets (Flow is the eye of the camera). Once a month the show goes live from Jupiter Room and sometimes the street out front.

It’s a radio show, plays on CKUT 90.3 in Montreal every Wednesday night/Thursday morning from midnight to 2. Me being on teacher schedule even through the summer vacation (go figure) I can rarely make it up that late. Lucky for us early to bedders we have the podcast.

So guess what - you can also

*** LISTEN ***

Go here for the playlists and news.

Take a listen. Fun stuff. For real.

music montreal, music, off the hook, radio.

tweactions to my dissent ;)

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August 20th, 2008 by TracyRosen

(Still hating the Dark Night.)
Twitter is great. Last night and this morning I had conversations with 3 people I would never have met had it not been for blogging and tweeting.

Jose (@jlvblogger) has become one of those people whose words I look forward to reading every single day and Nezua (@nezua) is getting there. There can NOT be too many of those people in your life. for real. And Dennis (@dhharter)? He just doesn’t write enough lately! But I know he’s been busy getting all principaly on us so I’ll give him some slack