Yes, you’re at the right place. I gave the blog a bit of a makeover. I started to feel like the old template was a bit dreary. This new theme is called GenkiTheme developed by Ericulous. Apparently, Genki means “cheerfulness, vibrancy and vitality” in Japanese. So, it certainly contrasts with the last theme. Other benefits of this new look:

• The posts are a bit wider, and I’m definitely using more of the screen with this templated.
• I like the tabs on the left that move while you scroll; people will think I’m a code monkey or something cool and nerdy like that.
• I LOVE how the dynamic WP Cumulus teg cloud (see “What I’m Writing”) looks here (even if it is a little small). It was at the very bottom of the page in the previous iteration and I don’t know that anyone saw it.
• I’m able to include my picture/avatar on here. As those who follow me on Twitter know, this is becoming part of my “brand.” I’ve been told by people who know me and who’ve seen the avatar that this is EXACTLY what I’d look like if transported to South Park.
• This theme/template is “widget ready.” To the non-bloggers out there, all that means, among other things, is that it is MUCH easier for me to add things to the two sidebars on the right. For the prior theme/template, I had to fiddle with the CSS and pretend I knew something about PHP codes (I don’t).

That said, the real reason I switched is probably because I’m terribly busy again and in the absence of time to write anything substantively meaningful, I figured I would at least make a cosmetic change.

Hope you like it.

Tags: theme, wordpress

In the not-too-distant future, LeaderTalk will transition to Education Week.  In other words, the blog will become part of the growing family of blogs under Education Week’s umbrella.  As an original contributor to LeaderTalk, I’m struggling with that transition.  The text of the e-mail I sent to LeaderTalk contributors is below.  If you, my dear readers of Ed. Insanity, have additional thoughts to help me think through my struggles, I’d appreciate it.

All,
Let me first echo Scott’s congratulatory remarks.  LeaderTalk has become an incredible communication space by and for educational leaders.  I’ve been proud to be an original contributor, though I haven’t written there lately.

That said, I have a philosophical conundrum that you smart people could surely help me think through.

I have always believed that there are too many educators (unlike you all) who are too locally focused and who would do well to consider their position within the larger world of public education. To that end,  I have always thought of Education Week as an incredible publication uniquely positioned to inform educators about important state, national and even international issues in education.  To me, they have always been THE trade publication in education.  When Al Gore invented the Internet…er, once Internet access became nearly ubiquitous, edweek.org was one of my very first stops for my daily reading.  I learned gobs by surfing through edweek.org on a daily basis.  However, some time not too long ago, edweek.org made a decision to go to a subscription service.    They have a few different access plans which you can see here: http://www.edweek.org/offer.html.

So, what’s my problem?  Well, I hate that I can’t read edweek.org fully without paying.  In fact, I think it borders on criminal that they charge for access.  There’s still plenty of content that’s available for free, but there’s lots of really good stuff that’s not.  And, if you play around on edweek.org for just a short period of time, you can’t help but notice the advertising on there. [NOTE: this week is not a good time to explore this issue b/c Ed Week is having a free open house; they've opened their site to everyone for a whole week...gee, thanks for the tease.]  I have no problem with ads.  Actually, the advertisements themselves are what should make edweek.org completely open access.  The cost of the top level of access to edweek.org is not enormous; it’s basically $80/year.  But, why should I pay that?  Couldn’t they pass that very minimal cost on to their advertisers who are making money hand over fist?  Shouldn’t they?

Surely, the vast majority, if not all of Education Week’s readers are educators.  And, quite frankly, I’m sick of private vendors taking money from education in this country.  Think about all of the hard-working public school educators who are probably underpaid to begin with who spend their own hard-earned money to equip their classrooms each year.  Now, to have access to THE premiere publication in the field, they have to pay Education Week.  Also, I believe that charging for access online is out of touch with the realities of the modern publishing world and also poorly models the idea of open access to information. eSchool News, easily the premier publication specific to the field of education technology is completely free in print form and online.

If you all can help me understand why I shouldn’t be bothered by Ed Week’s policies, I’d be happy to join you in the transition to becoming one of Ed. Week’s growing number of good blogs.  If not, I’ll have to bow out.  So, thanks in advance for your help.

Best,
JB

Tags: blog, commercialism, Education Week, LeaderTalk, open access

A few days ago, Gary Stager sent out a bunch of tweets (on Twitter, for the uninitiated) about an Edward Tufte seminar he had attended.  In responding to my response to one of his tweets, Stager wrote: “any info lit pundit/keynote without a thorough understanding of Tufte’s work is a Ginsu Knife salesman not a serious educator!“  I told him that I agreed and that he should add the word “leader” to his list of info. lit pundit/keynote.  In other words, as I continue to explore what it means to be an educational leader in the 21st century, one set of competencies that, to me, is clearly more important than ever before is the ability to speak and persuade with the aid of visual presentations.  However, that doesn’t mean supporting a speech/presentation with the standard (typically awful) PowerPoint presentation.  In the technologically-advanced world in which we now live, if you combine the brilliant ideas of someone like Tufte with Web 2.0 tools, the ability to craft incredibly appealing and powerful presentations is easier than ever.  Furthermore, in the information age, where data and information are more available than ever, the possibilities of representing data in aesthetically-pleasing and meaningful ways are nearly endless.

As one example, I point you to a website I’ve been touting via Twitter for about a week now.  Fivethirtyeight.com is a blog developed by a couple of data analysts who originally worked as baseball analysts.  They’ve taken many of the analyses and approaches they used to analyze data from baseball games and used them to make projections of the presidential election (and other federal elections).  In a nutshell, as I understand it, the projections are based on a sort of meta-analysis of polling data from various polls.

The formulae or algorithms they use are certainly complicated, but the way they present the data is what is so interesting…and SO simple!  First of all, believe it or not, the site is built on a basic Blogger.com template (free!).  Second, they write that the graphs are designed in MS-EXCEL 2007.  I don’t know what they use to create the maps like the one below, but it’s not that difficult to get an outline map of the U.S. and color in some states.  You could probably do it with something as basic as MS-Paint.

I create a lot of images in PowerPoint these days (just insert an image or clipart into a blank slide and save it as a picture file; that’s it).  The graphic design capabilities added to PowerPoint 2007 are excellent.  You don’t have to be a trained graphic artist to create powerful digital images anymore!

I know a bunch of folks decry or bemoan the use of tag or text clouds, but that’s mostly because it’s hard to find real pedagogical value in them.  But, as visual representations of data, I think they can be very powerful.  For example, in keeping with the presidential election theme, here’s a text cloud representing Michelle Obama’s speech from the DNC last night.  From this picture of the text, you get a really good sense of the foci of her speech.

How did I do that?  Not exactly magic.  I found the text of her speech on the Internet.  Then, I copied and pasted it into a free service called TagCrowd.  TagCrowd generates the HTML code for you to use in your own website (NOTE: it didn’t work for me and I had to do a quick workaround, but nothing fancy).  That’s it.

For our new Ed.D. program in educational leadership, I’m going to insist that we work with our students on presenting or representing data.  Next time you have to make a presentation to your school board or your superintendent, please consider the power of visual imagery and the free and easy ways we now have to (re)present data.

Tags: data, graphic, presentation, Stager, TagCrowd, Tufte, Twitter

Haven’t been writing/posting here much.  Had to prioritize putting together my tenure portfolio.  Having rid my shoulders of that weight (literally and figuratively), I look forward to writing more here.  For now, I thought I’d let you know what I wrote about my blog in my tenure narrative.  First, I began my section on “scholarship” with the following quote from Dewey’s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry:

In scientific inquiry, every conclusion reached, whether of fact or conception, is held subject to determination by its fate in further inquires…The conditional status of scientific conclusions (conditional in the sense of subjection to revision in further inquiry) is sometimes used by critics to disparage scientific “truths” in comparison with those which are alleged to be eternal and immutable. In fact, it is a necessary condition of continuous advance in apprehension and in understanding.

Then, in making the claim that a blog can be a form of scholarship, I wrote:

Since January 2008, I have explored a new mode of publishing. As a blogger at Educational Insanity (http://edinsanity.com), I have come to firmly believe that I am engaging in a relevant and important form of scholarship. Consistent with Dewey’s theory of inquiry and my beliefs about scholarship, I use my blog as a space to make knowledge claims; assertions that are conditional on their fate by further inquiries. Those inquiries come from peers, most of whom are educators in one form or another. In other words, blogging affords a pure form of peer review. The “blogosphere,” and especially the “edublogosphere,” is wonderfully rigorous and relentless in its review process; knowledge claims without sufficient warrants are regularly challenged. Blogging, for me, is very much a scholarly endeavor and satisfies me as a public intellectual.

Tags: blogging, Dewey, scholarship, tenure

Been blogging less frequently lately, mostly because the tenure application deadline looms LARGE.  But, I got a bit riled up after reading an article that Kevin Jarrett pointed out via Twitter.

Blogging under the auspices of The Wall Street Journal (a highly respectable publication), John J. Edwards III wrote about a forthcoming book by two sociologists at the University of Texas-Arlington.  He surely learned of this book through a press release issued by the Office of Media Relations at UT-A.  I think it’s great that the folks in that office are promoting this book.  In fact, the public relations guru that works in my unit at VCU will be publishing an article about me and my blogging/professional networking in the next issue of our alumni magazine.

I do, however, have a couple of problems with this press release and the associated blog post by Mr. Edwards.  First, Edwards notes only that the book is “forthcoming.”  The press release says that “[t]he book is being published…with the release date to be announced.”  So, not only is the book not available to the public yet, but there isn’t even a date for release yet.  I don’t have a ton of experience with book publishers, but I have plenty of data from experiences with colleagues.  And I’m guessing that without even a date for release, we won’t see this book for a while.

That’s highly problematic.  When I read articles about educational research in the popular media, I’m instantly skeptical.  Not skeptical as in doubtful; but skeptical as in “I’m going to have to see the actual text of the report/article/book myself” so that I can make my own meaning of it.  Here, all I’ve got to go on is one blogger’s account of the book.  Furthermore, there’s no indication that Edwards read the book himself.  He quotes directly from the press release.  YET, amazingly (maybe not considering the usual credibility of the WSJ), there are dozens and dozens (I couldn’t count) of comments to the post.  I understand that Edwards used the press release to ask a couple of otherwise banal questions to his readers, but wouldn’t we all be better served if we had access to the book itself?  Wouldn’t the discussion within the comments be a more interesting and more informed discussion?

My department is launching a new Ed.D. program in educational leadership this coming fall semester.  In planning the program, we’ve had some really good and really important discussions about the sorts of skills and dispositions school leaders need to have.  I’ve been most interested in our conversations around “inquiry.”  There, we’ve concluded that school leaders need to be informed and critical consumers of research.  In fact, we’re working on a case/module where the doc. students will be asked to consider, for example, new math software.  There will be various activities built into that case/module, and among them will be an exploration of the research base on math software.  In an era where schools are mandated to implement only research-based programs, it’s crucial for educational leaders and policymakers to not just accept what others say about the research base for a given program.  They need to know how to find and critique the research base themselves.  This becomes particularly important in the digital age, where access to information is not bounded by space or time and where anyone with an Internet connection can provide information.

I recognize that the media relations folks at UT-A were doing their jobs by creating advance buzz for a book to be published by two of their faculty members.  And, I realize that there’s nothing inherently wrong with using a press release as a departure point for a blog post.  But, I just think a disservice has been done to the educational community here.

My second problem has to do with the book itself and the way it’s portrayed in the news release and the blog post.  The language used suggests that these researchers have devised some kind of novel argument.  Consider: “The authors explore topics like time-use in schools; the confinement and physical disciplining of young bodies as they carry backpacks and sit at cramped desks; the stress on fine motor skills; the performance principle and grading; the performance principle and testing; the disunity of mind and body; vocationalism; a fetish of facts and factoids; rote learning and regurgitation; worksheet-driven learning; classroom authoritarianism and competitive school sports.”  Isn’t the verb “to explore” usually associated with charting new terrain?  Perhaps this stuff is new to the researchers, but haven’t they ever read anything by the likes of Alfie Kohn?  Even Gary Stager?  According to the UT-A website, Dr. Agger is a professor of sociology and the humanities housed in the Department of Sociology.  Same with his co-worker and wife, Dr. Shelton.  They are sociologists and apparently not especially sociologists of education.  So, maybe they are not as versed in the literature on progressive education.  Maybe they do reference that literature.

And, is their argument/contention based on new data they’ve collected and analyzed?  Or, are they synthesizing others’ research?  Or, are they simply theorizing?

But, see I can’t know any of this for sure.  And, apparently I won’t know for sure for a while because it’s not clear when the book will be available.  That’s what’s so infuriating here.  Rather than creating advanced buzz, the fine folks at the Office of Media Relations have just thoroughly annoyed me.  They’ve treated you and me as uncritical consumers of information.

Tags: blogging, digital, educational research, information