Research

Can you tell I’m in love with Google forms?

I’m collecting data on the range of sites blocked at schools for educators and I would greatly appreciate it if you could take a minute or two and fill out my survey (seriously, REALLY easy and fast!). All you need to do is click on the link below.

Blocked Web Applications

Please include any sites or applications that you are unable to access at school for either student use or professional development use (Classroom 2.0, other nings, twitter, gmail, etc). Please add as many as apply to you. I really hope this will help shed some light on the broad range of educational resources unavailable to teachers in many K-12 institutions today.

Thanks so much for taking the time to do this - I will publish the results here and in a public Google Spreadsheet after it seems as if results have stopped coming in. Any input on suggestions for the survey would be appreciated as well, just throw it in a comment here!

Additional Related Reading 

Letter to the NYS Board of Regents - Diane Cordell (added at 2:00 pm 4/1/08)

Well, the numbers are in for the age surveys I posted a few days ago!

Twitter Age

The results were very close to my estimate (37) of the average age of my Twitter network (right now I have 378 followers, although it was less when I first started the survey). I had an amazing 226 responses (and yes, I did delete the input number of 128). Here’s what my Google form results showed……..and remember just how unscientific this poll was - completely anonymous and publicized via twitter and my blog. Nothing stopping anyone from posting a gazillion times and nothing to stop anyone from lying about their age. But honestly, who would bother messing with the results of this? Well, except for the 128-year-old. I was just going to post the average, but @ijohnpederson decided to push a little harder, so I went to the trouble of a bit more analysis. Didn’t go too far, though - I know when enough is enough!

Average = 39.6
Max = 61
Min = 17
Mode = 36
Median = 39.5
Count = 226

You can view the actual data here: Twitter Age Results

Blog Reader Age

I only had 28 responses to this, so results aren’t quite as interesting, but here they are:

Average = 35
Max = 55
Min = 20
Mode = 35
Median = 35
Count = 28

You can view the actual data here: Blog Reader Age Results

The most intriguing thing I learned here was that a certain someone (Diane) didn’t partake…….and probably didn’t read my post………..see, truly EVERYTHING you do on the internet is tracked. No, really. Your friends are watching you.

I’m eating my words - see comments, she obviously reads my blog - she read it before it was even posted :-) 

I do have to admit that I did the analysis in Excel - old habits die hard!

So, do with this what you will - a thought-provoking post on my interpretation of these results will be coming soon.

For now, what do YOU think these numbers mean?

Ken Rodoff commented on my post yesterday with a recommendation for M. T. Anderson’s “Feed”:

Ken wrote:

“…….if you’re looking for a raw take on our tech-infused adolescents, grab yourself a copy of M.T. Anderson’s ‘Feed’. It’s YA, but it’s worth noting that it has a lot of vulgarity. Makes a nice companion piece for a unit on dystopian fiction…or with any Paco Underhill tome.”

Publishers Weekly on Amazon says:

“In this chilling novel, Anderson (Burger Wuss; Thirsty) imagines a society dominated by the feed a next-generation Internet/television hybrid that is directly hardwired into the brain. Teen narrator Titus never questions his world, in which parents select their babies’ attributes in the conceptionarium, corporations dominate the information stream, and kids learn to employ the feed more efficiently in School. But everything changes when he and his pals travel to the moon for spring break. There Titus meets home-schooled Violet, who thinks for herself, searches out news and asserts that “Everything we’ve grown up with the stories on the feed, the games, all of that it’s all streamlining our personalities so we’re easier to sell to.” Without exposition, Anderson deftly combines elements of today’s teen scene, including parties and shopping malls, with imaginative and disturbing fantasy twists. “Chats” flow privately from mind to mind; Titus flies an “upcar”; people go “mal” (short for “malfunctioning”) in contraband sites that intoxicate by scrambling the feed; and, after Titus and his friends develop lesions, banner ads and sit-coms dub the lesions the newest hot trend, causing one friend to commission a fake one and another to outdo her by getting cuts all over her body. Excerpts from the feed at the close of each chapter demonstrate the blinding barrage of entertainment and temptations for conspicuous consumption. Titus proves a believably flawed hero, and ultimately the novel’s greatest strength lies in his denial of and uncomfortable awakening to the truth. This satire offers a thought-provoking and scathing indictment that may prod readers to examine the more sinister possibilities of corporate- and media-dominated culture. Ages 14-up.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.”

I just ordered a copy from Amazon (have I mentioned how much I LOVE their used book prices and 1-click ordering? Love, love, love it) and am slightly nervous about venturing outside of my light, chick-lit YA world. All in the name of research, though! Any insight from others who have read this book?

I have been asked on twitter and various other places for links to this and links to that, and I just thought I’d make it easier for those of you who wish to follow my research on blogging, social networking, and other web tools. I don’t always have time to blog about the information I find, so here are some other ways to find out what I’m reading or watching:

1) Add me to your del.icio.us network - I’m kolson29. I tag everything worthwhile that I read, but I have to warn you that my tagging needs work. I plan to tackle that soon, I promise!  You can also add my del.icio.us feed to your aggregator.

2) Follow me on twitter - kolson29. I tweet many of the articles that I’m reading or resources that I find. If for some crazy reason you think I have REALLY great stuff to say or resources to share, you could do a tweetscan for kolson29. I’d be honored :-)

3) I am constantly updating my Parent Workshop wiki with links to social networking resources. I just added a section for educational uses of social networking. Right now the wiki is geared toward the sessions I’m leading at my middle school, but after that I plan to just keep adding to it for interested educators and parents. Please request to join if you think you have great stuff to share! If you are interested in just finding out about the new stuff when it’s added, you can create a wikispaces account and then visit the space-wide notification page to sign up for email notification of changes. If you don’t want to create an account, you can visit the notification page linked above and grab one of the feeds for your aggregator.

4) If you want to contact me, you can email me at kolson29@gmail.com or through the contact form on the About page on this blog.

I’m always looking for resources, so if you are on del.icio.us, add me to your network (see above) and tag links for me - I’d love you for it! Many of the resources I use for blog posts, in my courses, or on my wiki are from members of my PLN - thanks to you all :-)