Technology+Leadership+Summary



Miguel Guhlin is a well-known advocate of educational technology inTexas. Being a former educator and Instructional Technology Director modeling the use of technology in the classroom and administration levels, he has great vision and goals for where educational technology should evolve. His goal is “to use powerful technologies to transform practice and enable learners to communicate and collaborate with each other” (Guhlin, 2006). I have followed Guhlin’s blog, Around the Corner, this week and have found some interesting topics and discussions.

Guhlin promotes a discussion in February 2010 that aligns with this week’s readings on Internet safety. He opens a discussion on teaching students to problem solve and understand the importance of cyber ethics so they practice online at all times, especially when at home (February, 2010). Rather than filtering web 2.0 sites that foster learning in the “real world” (such as Facebook), teachers should be entrusted by their Administrative team to teach ethical behaviors online and still have access to websites that provide students with the ability to make ethical choices just as they would in real-life. We have to be sure we’re not opening doors to potential harm with cyberbullying and/or online predators to students who may not be mentally mature enough to understand the extreme ramifications of these issues.

Guhlin advocates many different technology tools for education, one of which is Moodle. Moodle is a free application that educators can use for Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). Guhlin founded an organization called Moodle Mayhem that focuses on sharing of Moodle ideas via listserv and wiki ([]). Moodle has skyrocketed since it’s inception in the education world and more and more districts are inquiring about hosting their own Moodle server in-house. Guhlin recommends that the district use a GNU/Linux server or Mac server when running Moodle 2.0. Through conversations with other techies, he finds that it might be necessary to have more than one server setup to handle Moodle as he is still “woefully ignorant” (Guhlin, March 2011) about all the intricacies of GNU/Linux server management. OnMarch 24, 2011, he shares how to utilize Moodle (version 1.9.11) on an iPad by using a browser called Terra and tweaking the settings to select FireFox 3.6 which will allow you to take advantage of the HTML editing on Moodle. He continues to share further ideas of integrating Moodle and problem solving, which is incredibly useful for districts that need collaborative discussions and tutorials for optimization.

Guhlin is also a big proponent of podcasts in sharing and guiding uses on educational technology. In April 2011, he posts a podcasting workshop called **//Podcast Pizzazz//** on its various uses and tools. The handouts for this workshop can be found at []. He explains how to create and share podcasts and how to insert them in blogs, wikis, and other social networking sites. You can record any audio presentation on a video or voice recorder and edit the sound file to your liking. Dropbox.com is a free site that allows you to post podcasts and then setup RSS feeds using the public link. Voicethread.com offers a free application to record audio presentations and much more.

In July 2011, Guhlin discusses accomplishing running Wordpress RSS feed through your own social networking sites whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Plurk or others. There are several tools available to help manage all your social networking media and he recommends three different choices: Hootsuite.com, Tweetdeck.com, and Seesmic Web. For example, Hootsuite.com will allow you to drop an RSS feed and have it publish content to your designated social networks of choice. He provides steps on how to do this on his July 31, 2011 blog.

It is apparent how far-reaching many of the applications are for learning and the more teachers and administrators can collaborate and learn about their uses and successes, the more they will be able to fully integrate these tools into their curriculum.

Reference List Guhlin, Miguel. //Around the Corner.// Retrieved August 6, 2011, from http://www.mguhlin.org/