Name: Adrienne
Web Site: http://msmichetti.edublogs.org
Bio: Adrienne Michetti is currently a full-time Masters student in NYU's Educational Communication and Technology program. Prior to that she taught at United Nations International School in Hanoi, Vietnam, an IB World School running all 3 Programs. Her experience has been mainly in MYP English A but has experience teaching many different disciplines and ages from K-12 in four different countries. She was also an MYP Workshop Leader for the Asia-Pacific Region and has been in international education since 2001 -- always MYP. She is passionate about learning, technology, music, writing, creativity, and her Mac. Adrienne blogs at connect. create. question. and Pockets of Change. If she's not Tweeting or blogging, you might find Adrienne doing updating her iTunes library, singing in her band, practicing yoga, or cooking up a storm at home with her cats.
Posts by Adrienne Michetti:
- Went to their website.
- Clicked the link where it says Step 2: email anything to post@posterous.com.
- My GMail account opened, from which I sent a very simple message to post@posterous.com.
- Within seconds, I received an email telling me that my post had been created.
- Clicking on the links brought me to my new post in my new and ultra-sleek blog.
Simple Sites
November 18th, 2009I’m a big fan of the KISS principle. Thus, my excitement to see that GoogleSites — already a simple way to create a website — now has templates. Could website creation GET any easier?? The vid below explains how to use them.
Cross-posted at Pockets of Change.
Why Technology Isn’t Reforming Education — Yet
October 11th, 2009From Clark and Salomon (1986):
General media comparisons and studies pertaining to their overall instructional impact have yielded little that warrants optimism. Even in the few cases where dramatic changes in achievement or ability were found to result from the introduction of a medium such as television, . . . it was not the medium per se that caused the change, but rather the curricular reform that its introduction enabled.
I am Here for the Learning Revolution by Wesley Fryer
Attribution-ShareAlike License
This is why, in my opinion, the state of education is so sucky today in some parts of the world. Our (educators’) use of technology for learning is hampered by the glass ceiling of curriculum. Only when the curriculum changes will dramatic changes in learning occur. Currently, too many schools are trying to fit square pegs into round holes; that is, teachers are using fabulous technology (IWBs, Tablet PCs, iPod Touch, VoiceThread, and more) to teach curriculum that is still content-based.
These technologies should be reforming curriculum. Why aren’t they?
How can we move this forward? How can we change curricula so that it allows teachers and students “dramatic change”? What is standing in the way, and how can we overcome this obstacle?
Clark, R.E., & Salomon, G. (1986). Media in teaching. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching (3rd ed., pp.464-478). New York: Macmillan.
Cross-posted at connect. create. question.
Round Two and Version 4: Diigo
September 29th, 2009The first time ’round, I wasn’t convinced. I tried Diigo more than whole-heartedly, for an entire month. I felt very much like it was good, but not really good enough — poor interface (not intuitive), clunky on the Flash / Javascript it relied on, a toolbar that got in my way, etc. I just generally felt that it wasn’t as slick and simple as other tools. I really wanted to like it, as I saw tremendous potential in its application — particularly being able to annotate and “mark up” the web. Its collaborative tools — groups, discussions, and more — also caught my eye. But it just felt too clunky; learning how to use it took time, and some things just didn’t work for me. Eventually, I grew to use Delicious much more and stopped using Diigo pretty much completely in June of this year.
However, now that Diigo’s been re-vamped — version 4.0, y’all — I may have to reconsider.
Start with Diigo’s very clear Tour. Here’s part 1, Research:
Diigo V4: Research ~ annotate, archive, organize from diigobuzz on Vimeo.
What do you think? Is Diigo changing the landscape of tools for collaboration, research, and archiving? How will its shiny-new version impact your teaching and learning? I look forward to your comments and suggestions. 
Note: There are two other parts of the tour available respectively: Share and Collaborate (which sound similar to me, but I didn’t come up with the labels!).
Cross-posted at Pockets of Change.
Easy Blogging 101
April 4th, 2009It’s not really new, per se, but it certainly fits under the heading of a simple tech tip: an ultra-lite blogging platform. What could be simpler than click-and-post? Yep, I am definitely talking about a small thing that can make a big difference.
I’m referring to a new blogging sharing platform called Posterous. Yes, I realize I called it “blogging” in the title of the post, but on 2nd thought, I’m not sure that it’s “true” blogging. It’s really just a place to post and share things, without all the bells and whistles. If you are an educator who has been thinking about blogging but not sure where to start, or maybe you’re intimidated by all the “techie” stuff associated with blogging, Posterous is for you. Heck, even if you’re not an educator and you just want a quick-and-dirty way to share stuff with friends or family, it’s worth checking out.
If I were new to all this Web2.0 tech stuff for learning (which I’m clearly not, but play along, now), I think that Posterous would be the hands-down simplest place to start. I mean, seriously — you don’t even need an ACCOUNT. All you need to do is send stuff to them from your email address and suddenly you’ve created a page. I don’t think it gets any easier than this! They say on their site it’s dead simple, and they’re not kidding.
Here’s what I did to try it out:
The lovely and simple email message from Posterous:
And here is the actual new post:
Now if that ain’t quick-and-dirty blogging, I dunno what is. Seriously — try it. You have nothing to lose but 30 seconds. It really couldn’t be easier.
[Note: a version of this post first appeared on Pockets of Change.]
