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Showing posts from 2008

My Bookmarks and Annotations 12/19/2008

YouTube - The Girl Effect Great example of a powerful digital story from thegirleffect.org tags : digitalstorytelling YouTube - Tropfest NY 2008 winner, "Mankind Is No Island" by Jason van Genderen Winner of TROPFEST short film festival. A great example of a short digital story "filmed" using a cellphone. tags : digitalstorytelling , cellphone Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Chumby!

My coworkers gave me a Chumby today for Christmas. Here is my virtual Chumby on the news channel I like my coworkers :)

Enough Already with Duncan - Educate Yourself!

This blog post is not meant to be cry of rallying support for Arne Duncan. It is meant to be an educational primer on who he is. I put this together because I can no longer see respected people (people that I respect) put together blogs posts like these, that do nothing to help their readers, yet put out an opinion for others to follow: http://www.stager.org/blog/2008/12/arne-duncan-is-harriet-miers-of-obama.html http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/meet-the-new-story-same-as-the-old-story/ At least some are giving "Equal Time" Since others are not willing to do what we require (or inspire) our students to do - here goes: Basic Research on Arne Duncan Here is the CPS site for Mr. Duncan where you can actually see that he does have experience running a school district, even if he isn't a teacher. He also lists his email address. So if you have a concern or a question ask him. Here is the link to the Catalyst Chicago article on Mr. Duncan. In case you are not aware, " Cata

My Bookmarks and Annotations 12/18/2008

CREATING & CONNECTING//Research and Guidelines on Online Social — and Educational — Networking Online social networking is now so deeply embedded in the lifestyles of tweens and teens that it rivals television for their attention, according to a new study from Grunwald Associates LLC conducted in cooperation with the National School Boards Association. Nine- to 17-year-olds report spending almost as much time using social networking services and Web sites as they spend watching television. Among teens, that amounts to about 9 hours a week on social networking activities, compared to about 10 hours a week watching TV. Students are hardly passive couch potatoes online. Beyond basic communications, many students engage in highly creative activities on social networking sites — and a sizeable proportion of them are adventurous nonconformists who set the pace for their peers. tags : NSBA , social_network , web2.0 New York Public Library joins Flickr Commons - Boing Boing New York Public

Post 12/17/2008

Official Google Blog: Safety, education, and empowerment on YouTube Safety, education, and empowerment on YouTube 12/11/2008 12:01:00 AM (Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog) We've always been committed to providing you the tools to have the best possible YouTube experience. Educating parents, teens, and families on how to stay safe on our site is a critical part of that commitment, so we can't think of a more appropriate place to introduce our new Abuse and Safety Center than at the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) conference in Washington, D.C., today. tags : empowerment , safety , youtube , google CATALYST CHICAGO :: News & Analysis Seven years of reform experiments—some show promise, few taken to scale, modest gains in performance by Sarah Karp and John Myers December 15, 2008 tags : catalyst , Duncan , Sec_Ed The Best Places To Get Royalty-Free Music & Sound Effects | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... I don’t really give details about the sites I’m li

Post 12/11/2008

GPS watching over Baby Jesus :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Nation When Baby Jesus disappeared last year from a Nativity scene on the lawn of the Wellington, Fla., community center, village officials didn't follow a star to locate him. A GPS device mounted inside the life-size ceramic figurine led sheriff's deputies to a nearby apartment, where it was found face down on the carpet. An 18-year-old woman was arrested in the theft. tags : GPS , Inventive_Tech Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

The Anatomy of a Mis-Sent Email

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The funniest thing that has happened to me all week (Click on the Image to Read)

Visualizing Text

I just finished up preparing for a presentation at Stevenson High School that I will be doing this coming Friday. I posted it to Google Docs and you can see it here: http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=df7x739z_122mwhrkh6t I find it really interested that I am getting a kick out of visual learning, because I have not always been the best at learning visually. I have always had a knack at pulling from text, not images. Yet I am having a blast figuring out ways to go the other way with this. I am interested in any feedback you might have on this slide deck.

Post 12/09/2008

YouTube - Networked Student The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler's high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros' Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century. Anyone is free to use this video for educational purposes. You may download, translate, or use as part of another presentation. Please share. tags : networked , students , 21st_century , learning 50+ Google Reader Extensions and Scripts For Firefox A great list of tools to enhance Google Reader. It is ALL here! tags : google , firefox , reader , extensions , scripts , tools , rss , extension Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Post 12/06/2008

HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Google Maps Jennifer Van Grove is a Social Media Strategist. She authors a blog about San Diego, technology, startups and social media at JenniferVanGrove.com. Google Maps has become the standard mapping utility for everything from getting directions and finding nearby food options to viewing the surface of the moon. Are you getting the most out of your Google Maps experience? Keep reading to get some helpful hints on how to maximize (or minimize) all your mapping desires. tags : maps , google , mashable Langwitches » What Does it Mean to be a Technology Integration Facilitator? What Does it Mean to be a Technology Integration Facilitator? What does it mean to be a Technology Integration Facilitator? Or an Integration Technology Coach… or… BTW what is your official job title? tags : education , langwitches , jobdescription , ITC Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Post 12/05/2008

taking TCO to the classroom One of the biggest challenges school districts face is determining the level of tech support they need to adequately manage their computers and networks-and how much they can afford. Of course, from a Total Cost of Ownership perspective, if a school district does not provide adequate tech support, the district will pay the price somewhere: in a reduction of teacher productivity when teacher have to solve their own computer problems, in the need for additional staff training when teachers decide they can't rely on the network to be up, in the cost of wasted time and labor when administrative functions can't be managed reliably on the district's network. From 1983-1991, IBM Corp. and Digital Equipment Corp. worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop a formula for calculating the number of staff needed to support a distributed computing environment. This effort, known as Project Athena, came up with this formula: tags : TCO , t

Post 12/04/2008

All about Google - SlideShare Excellent overview of what makes Google work tags : google Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Post 12/02/2008

Stu co going green, dberendt Ustream.TV: recycling kick off. Education An example of how one of our schools is leveraging Ustream.tv for morning announcements. tags : ustream , ustream.tv , 2.0 Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Better Google Searches

Thanks to Scott Weidig for getting me looking into this more! Happy Cyber Monday! I recently ran across a couple of resources to help your searching power when using Google. These tips will help you find better information faster! I also found a handout to keep handy or to share with colleagues or students. The best tip I have learned recently is to type in the answer instead of the question . Example: You want to know how tall Mt. Everest is. Don't type in "How tall is Mt. Everest?" Do Type "Mt. Everest is * tall" The " * " acts as a wildcard and Google looks for the missing information. There are a lot of other great ways to search better and the resources below will help you out. Here is how to use Google to find information you never knew you could: http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html These two videos are helpful as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxfYd15ALsw http://www.youtube.com/watch?

Post 11/25/2008

Convert Text to Speech Free. Listen to any document, website or blog iSpeech Text to Speech Blog- Read with your Ears iSpeech blog covers text to speeech topics relating to iSpeech.org. iSpeech converts websites, RSS feeds, blogs documents (Microsoft Office, Adobe PDF and text to speech from any PC or mobile device. Download your favorite blogs and news feeds as mp3 or podcast your favorite websites onto your iPod with iSpeech TTS. tags : audio , text2speech , convert , mp3 , podcast , speech , blog , ispeech Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Post 11/22/2008

Ditch the Backpack: 100 Essential Web Tools for Virtual Students | eLearning Gurus Excellent list of resources tags : tools Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Post 11/21/2008

bookr Free resource for making and embedding photo books online tags : flickr , photos Building Better Backchannels Allowing people to interact with each other and the information in a focused way affords participants the opportunity to learn more and focus more on the content. Instead of sitting passively, succumbing to the temptation to take mental meanders, participating in a backchannel brings a collaborative element that actually increases mental attentiveness. tags : backchannels , education LIFE photo archive hosted by Google Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google. tags : photos , google , Images , history , archive , resources , search , hosted Mathematical Quilts - Elaine Krajenke Ellison Elaine Krajenke Ellison B.A. Mathematics Michigan State University 1967 M.A. Mathematics Education University of Colorado 19

IETC

Here are some links for the IETC conference Conference Website Thursday Handouts Friday Handouts Backchannel

Post 11/14/2008

Charter For Compassion :: home By recognizing that the Golden Rule is fundamental to all world religions, the Charter for Compassion can inspire people to think differently about religion. This Charter is being created in a collaborative project by people from all over the world. It will be completed in 2009. Use this site to offer language you'd like to see included. Or inspire others by sharing your own story of compassion. tags : TED , compassion , charter Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Embedding Flickr Photos using Pictobrowser

Want a photo gallery almost anywhere on your site? Like this There has been some questions lately about photo galleries on our teacher's website pages. We are going to be adding some more internal gallery abilities on our website this year. However, when the site was designed we had planned on leveraging the free tools out there through sites like flickr and youtube to distribute photos and video. Pictures and video are both resource hogs that we would prefer not to pay to host if someone out there is giving us the space and tools for free. Here is the first installment in getting this done. Here is a document (pdf - let me know if you want the original word document to modify) that explains how to create a flickr account and use a free service from pictobrowser to create an embed code to place a photo gallery from flickr on your site. The best part of this type of tool is that you can put it anywhere you can use html code! In other words you can use it in blogs, email, wiki&#

Post 11/13/2008

Typealyzer How does it work? For a long period of time, we have been training our system to recognize texts that characterize the different types. The system, typealyzer, can now by itself find features that distinguishes one type from another. When all features, words and sentences, are combined typealyzer is able to guess which type its is most likely to be written by using statistical analysis. How can a computer know who I am? It doesn´t. But with a good amount of text it can make a pretty good guess. In addition, we all have different roles in different situations. By studying how people write, we can get an glimpse of what is on the mind of the person and what is characteristic of the person - or, as in the case of a blog - what is typical of the role/persona used when writing that blog. A person can have several blogs - and often have different roles for the various blogs - perhaps as a way to live out more sides of themselves. What’s the technology you use? Probability theory,

So What Happened Last Week?

Question - Ok Hank - You had these grand plans about posting during sessions at T+L - What happened? Answer - No reliable WiFi access! Question - What about at night at the hotel? Answer - I actually work while at these things! Between meeting with staff (we had 19 people out there in Seattle), taking care of work related issues back home, and trying to let my wife and kids know that I was still alive I chose not to make time for blogging. Here is the deal... The T+L conference organizers asked in advance if people would blog for them. I volunteered. Problem is, there was no WiFi in any of the presentation rooms and it was really weak in the large meeting rooms. If you want me to blog I need my tools. When I blog I cross reference what presenters are saying, link to interesting outside sources, and write directly online. None of this is possible without the Internet. I plead to you technology conference organizers everywhere - please prepare for and offer adequate WiFi so the world

At the NSBA T+L Conference in Seattle

We arrived in Seattle yesterday and got a chance to walk around the city. It was a beautiful day and we really enjoyed the views. I like the venue for the conference this year - the layout seems compact in comparison to the sprawling layout of Nashville last year. I have my day planned and will be live blogging from the sessions I attend. Here is today's schedule (all times are PST): 7:30am Breakfast Speaker on 1-1 Computing Room 4C2 9:15am Keynote Room 6ABC 11:15 Vendor Floor 12:30 Showcase Luncheon Room 4C3-4 2:15 CTO Forum Room 4C2 4:15 Vendor Floor 5:00 Meet up with Group 5:30 Dinner @ the Space Needle 7:30 Meet up with others

Post 10/24/2008

0125NL_ChangingSchools_58_4.pdf (application/pdf Object) New findings on the social nature of the brain reveal the need for principals to fashion a school culture of warmth and trust. tags : DLC ASCD New findings on the social nature of the brain reveal the need for principals to fashion a school culture of warmth and trust. tags : DLC Psychologists have known for a century that people do their best when they experience both high motivation and manageable stress; when people are undermotivated or overstressed, their performance suffers. during inspired moments of learning, students experience a potent mix of attention, interest, and good feelings Teachers did their best job and felt most satisfied when they perceived that the school head Led flexibly rather than sticking to needless rules. Let them teach in their own way, holding them accountable for the results. Set challenging but realistic goals for excellence. Valued their efforts, recognizing a job well done. headteachers, data an

Post 10/23/2008

U.S. Copyright Office - Information Circular Works Made for Hire under the 1976 Copyright Act Under the 1976 Copyright Act as amended (title 17 of the United States Code), a work is protected by copyright from the time it is created in a fixed form. In other words, when a work is written down or otherwise set into tangible form, the copyright immediately becomes the property of the author who created it. Only the author or those deriving their rights from the author can rightfully claim copyright. Although the general rule is that the person who creates a work is the author of that work, there is an exception to that principle: the copyright law defines a category of works called “works made for hire.” If a work is “made for hire,” the employer, and not the employee, is considered the author. The employer may be a firm, an organization, or an individual. To understand the complex concept of a work made for hire, it is necessary to refer not only to the statutory definition but also to

Blog Action Day: Poverty

How appropriate that today would be Blog Action Day and Focus on Poverty. Based on a recommendation by Dennis Richards I just finished reading Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder . The book itself is a biography of Dr. Paul Farmer and his lifelong crusade to cure the world of illness by setting the example in the world's most diseased locales in the wost conditions (Haiti, Peru, Russia) but it is really a cry out against those that are blessed that are turning their eyes away from the poor. After reading it I believe that what Dr. Farmer is trying to point out is that poverty is the root of the cause of what ills the world - not just sickness. So what is the connection here to my edtech blog? Simply this - our world is now open to the eyes of our students. Technology makes it possible to with a couple of clicks able to read about poverty , TB , or AIDS which is faster access to print resources than we have ever had. It also allows us to make it more powerful throu

Post 10/09/2008

720 ILCS 5/ Criminal Code of 1961. http://tinyurl.com/53fsvj Illinois Computer Criminal Laws tags: policy , law , computers , AUP

Post 10/08/2008

Tweet 3D: View hot Twitter topics in 3D "3D" Twitter Cloud. Not sure how much it could be used educationally - but looks cool. tags: tweet , twitter , tagging , 3d

Post 10/04/2008

celtx - #1 choice for media pre-production. Celtx is the world's first all-in-one media pre-production software. It has everything you need to take your story from concept to production. Celtx replaces 'paper, pen & binder' pre-production with a digital approach that's more complete, simpler to work with, and easier to share. tags: writing , software , screenwriting , filmmaking , media , opensource , scripts

Ebb and Flow

This is now my 4th year out of the classroom. This is significant to me because I remember thinking back in my 4th year of teaching that I was finally catching on. I was able to focus more on my students than my teaching. I automatically was able to do menial tasks and certain challenges from when I first started teaching became second nature. I am not there yet in this role. This transition has been harder for me. Some of it comes from changing districts in the middle of it. I am sure that if I had remained as a Tech Coordinator at Conant I would have it down by now. However, there is one thing that I am beginning to keenly understand. The ebb and flow of Instructional Technology training and support. July through September is nuts. There is so much happening that every misstep or problem seems disastrous - that you won't recover or get on track. School starts and teachers and students settle in and you are able to get back into a flow. The tech team begins to get over th

Post 10/02/2008

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PBS Teachers | learning.now . Tag - You're Delicious! | PBS - Annotated del.icio.us overview tags: blog , web2.0 , bookmarking , socialbookmarking , tagging , del.icio.us Good introduction to del.icio.us - post by hthiele Tagging is perhaps the greatest strength of del.icio.us. When you tag a website, you identify it with certain words of your choosing. Applying Collaborative Tagging to E-Learning This paper outlines our experiences with applying collaborative tagging in e-learning systems to supplement more traditional metadata gathering approaches. Over the last 10 years, the learning object paradigm has emerged in e-learning and has caused standards bodies to focus on creating metadata repositories based upon strict domain-free taxonomies. tags: tagging , metadata , collaboration

Post 09/30/2008

Some schools are uncompromising when it comes to cell phones :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State Some schools are uncompromising when it comes to cell phones - gives little description as to why schools have these rules. Just because I guess.. tags: cellphone

Post 09/26/2008

Martha Beck: How to Be Wildly Successful tags: no_tag Quick Start. When you want to learn, you just jump in and start messing around. Fact Finder. Before she starts a task, she needs to know all about it. Implementors—like Thomas Edison, for example—need physical objects to work with ollow Thrus. They set up orderly systems Martha Beck: How to Be Wildly Successful tags: no_tag self-efficacy—her belief that she could succeed at specific tasks and life in general.

One Week Later - A Question of Reliability

We are a week after the flood and everything is back to normal at our schools. The same can't be said for all of our families, some of which are still homeless or have been greatly impacted by the local flooding. Last week was an interesting test for us. Over the past year we had fiber optics installed for our data network and we have been transitioning off of our T1 lines. Currently some of our systems are on fiber, some are on T1, and some ride between them. Last week's flood put an important box of equipment (somewhere between us and AT&T) underwater and behind police barricades. We lost part of our network for 48 hours. Here is what I learned. 1. The more dependable your network becomes the more people rely on it. 2 years ago network outages were common here. People counted on the network going down at times. Over the past year we have been down for no more than 10 minutes at a time and but one instance was a planned occurrence (that one was AT&T's fault

Post 09/16/2008

Projection Calculator - Throw Distance and Screen Size Calculates the throw distance for projectors tags: no_tag

AUP's, Unions, and Stuff that has to do with them...

Interesting afternoon... This was sent out by the Teacher's Union today and was routed to me by several teachers and was titled “MTA Warning” “Don’t put too much faith in this technological terror that has been created. . .” (accompanied by a picture of Darth Vader) A reminder. . . The use of computers that are associated with the District 207 server/laptops does not guarantee personal security in regards to your computer activity and emails. Avoid the use of the school PC’s to convey personal or highly sensitive information to other people. Your emails can be monitored and read, if the need presents itself. Also, the use of a “Blind Copy” does not guarantee any camouflage either. If you have to convey personal information in regards to MTA or personal business, it is best to keep it out of the District’s system. Either, contact your building reps personally or use the district email to set up a meeting/conversation, but do not divulge anything of a

Finally Quieting Down and Gearing up

Well I have been away from blogging for a while. We had a crazy summer around here and everyone is back in place. I am setting a goal to offer more to the professional community this year (more details on how later - still piecing this together). I have been in a reflective mood over the last few days. It has been 14 months since I moved into this new role and I am trying to assess my impact on 207. I came here to work with a large organization to impact change. I'm not quite sure yet if it is all coming together perfectly or if it is tenuously held together with paperclips and bubblegum. I guess only time will answer that one. There have been a lot of people involved in moving this mountain and we are much further ahead in infrastructure, hardware, software, staffing, and planning. I feel like we are ready for the hardest part - using all of that to impact how learning occurs in the classroom. We will be working as a technology staff along with teachers over the next few we

Post 08/05/2008

Question-Answering Service, Yahoo BOSS allows developers to create their own customized search apps based on Yahoo’s search engine, and the Google App Engine is a platform for hosting apps. Vik Singh, the engineer who leads the Yahoo Boss project (and a former Google engineer) created a simple Question-Answering Service, where you put in a question, and it tries to come up with the answer based on the top 50 results from Yahoo. (So, if you ask, “Who invented the light bulb?,” it looks for the most popular dates in the top 50 results and returns: “Thomas Edison”). tags: search , google , Yahoo! , q&a

Hall Davidson - Cellphones in Schools

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Kinda live blogging Hall's presentation - trying to "catch the gist" "High School Girls Can do More with a Phone in a Bag than you can Ever Imagine" Parents are going to start requiring that their kids carry cellphones in schools because parents want to track monitor stalk tether etc... their kids Schools are losing the debate about whether or not a kid can carry a cellphone Cellphones are turning over quickly and they are changing. Nokia is largest manufacturer of digital cameras and media players US is 3-4 years behind the tech world in cellphone use Third world countries use cellphones - even Cuba The Taliban forbids cellphones and so does a High School near you. Hall demonstrates a live video feed from Qik with the help of Steve Dembo Ideas Send in lesson plans via video Announcements - video messages that anyone can see Pre and post assignments with your kids Cellphones will all have video soon. We should start thinking about how we will use this in educat

New Website Changes - By Request at NECC

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Several of my colleagues at NECC have been asking how the website is coming. I thought I would just blog an update... The tools are coming together better than we ever imagined. Teachers will have 8 tools to add information to their website. Each of these buttons opens a form based interface that allows teachers to input specific information very quickly. This is a sample of the teacher's page where their information is populated. Here is the cool part: We are also building a personalized page where information from all of a student's classrooms and activities is collated in one place. 1 stop shopping for students and parents. You can see the student page graphical design here .

New Digital Story

Should I Know Web 2.0 Presentation Results

After a lot of planning yesterday's presentation went real well. I got some great feedback from the participant's evaluations, and have several things to adapt, but it went well. I still want to add podcasting resources, more on google groups, make mention to second live and VLE's, and some other things I left out. It is amazing how fast 8 hours can go. It was great to be in front of a class again. I really miss that everyday.

Digital Storytelling Resources as a Zoho Notebook

Following up on my Web 2.0 presentation using Zoho Notebook I have collated together a collection of my favorite Digital Storytelling resources in a new notebook for a presentation later this week. The challenge of this presentation is that I am running it in 2 labs at the same time. So here is the plan: Intro about the power of storytelling and follow it up with the added advantages that telling it digitally does. Demo the basics of how photostory works Individuals work on their own story for about an hour. Quick Q&A - share successes. More playtime Close by letting people circulate and show off their work in progress. What do you think? Is there anything I am missing?

Should I Know Web 2.0? Presentation using Zoho Notebook

I am working on a presentation on Web 2.0 Tools and how to use them in education. I am trying something new and using Zoho notebook as the presentation tool. I have really liked how easy it is to insert video and webpages directly into the pages. Once I got more comfortable with the UI and where to click I was able to put stuff together quite quickly. Of course I am borrowing and stealing from across the web. You can see the presentation here I am open for suggestions or stuff I missed. I am going to start one on digital storytelling next.

Today's TED Talk

I took a moment this morning to start my day off with a TED talk ( Based on Ewan McIntosh's recommendation ). I watched this presentation by Seyi Oyesola that talks about solving problems with high level healthcare and surgery in Africa. He is using inovative technologies to create solutions to impact change in a difficult setting. This isn't so different from what is going on in education right now. The quote the Ewan focused on in his blog was: We the willing have been doing so much with so little for so long that we are now qualified to do anything with nothing This may have been the case (and still is - in some places) when it comes to educational technology. It has been for many years in the district I am in now. My question is - if you could do anything with nothing, what are your responsibilities to your students once you have everything you need? I believe that your responsibilities change. That my responsibilities change. My favorite quote by Dr. Oyesola was thi

Post 05/10/2008

doccamsined » home This wiki was originally created to support a workshop at the Laguna Beach Unified School district using an AVerMedia AVerVision300AF+ document camera. tags: documentcamera , wiki , camera , document , doccamsined

Live Blog AZTEA keynote Tim Tyson

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Live Blogged-please forgive mistakes or typos Making our way through dignitaries. Arizona Superintendent of Schools sees laptops in the hands of every kid in the coming years. However, he says that he never sees paper books going away. Tim Tyson - former principal of Mabry Middle School He is using Screenflow for Mac to record the presentation (Camtasia for Macs) Discussing his new presentation style based on web 2.0 tools. Starting with a demo of Poll Everywhere which allows you poll the audience via text. It gives real time reporting of answers. Audience pretty impressed by the technology. Reviewing history of changing education printing press, telegraph, audio recording, video recording, broadcasting. we are now going through a new shift thanks to the internet. we have instant global engagement. Media used to be controlled. Controlled for content, quality, and financial gain. Down smart mobs benefit from the knowledge of the whole. mentions this post The internet is lik

Post 05/01/2008

Podcasting Guide | PoducateMe So, how can you bring the benefits of podcasting to your students? PoducateMe features a comprehensive podcasting guide that reveals exactly how it’s done. The entire PoducateMe Podcasting Guide can be read online and free of charge. tags: podcasting , podcast , education , howto , podcasts Free online media file conversion (Document, Images, Audio, Video & Archives) Free! Convert any media file format (Documents, Images, Audio, Video & Archives) without buying or installing anything on your PC tags: converter , tools , convert , utilities , file , conversion

Post 04/29/2008

Feed Your Twitter Curiosity - 25 Unmissable Posts On Twitter There are hundreds of articles on Twitter all over the web, so I am not going to waste your time or mine on how to use twitter or the importance of it. All I can say is Twitter is the best thing that has been around in terms of marketing and networking. At the end of this post, I have compiled some of the best guides and posts for you on Twitter. tags: twitter , unmissable Games in Education Games in Education video created by Mark Wagner and Michael Guerena of the Orange County (CA) Department of Education's Educational Technology group. Nice overview of the issues and has the proper experts involved in the discussion. tags: games , videogames , education , learning

David Thornburg 4/25 Presentation Follow-up

Some Technologies Referenced by David Thornburg Cisco’s Telepresence http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQnffi6tN0g Jeff Han’s Multi Touch Display www. ted .com/index.php/speakers/view/id/65 Johnny Lee – Wii Hack http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/ http://www.ted.com/speakers/view/id/204 http://www.makezine.com/01/stabilizer/ Some others that he didn’t show that are way cool: Photosynth: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129 Robots that are self aware: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/165 If you want to go back in the time machine – here is a similar presentation to David’s by Nicholas Negroponte done in 1984 about what technologies would be coming. Some people thought he was off base then – and a lot of this came true. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/230 With a lot of technology – it isn’t if – it is when… As Dr. Thornburg said – “It is creativity that is holding us back, not technology”

Roundtable Discussion with David Thornburg and Chris Dede

Last Friday, after the district institute, we had a round table discussion with Chris Dede and David Thornburg. Here are the highlights: Topics Discussed in the Roundtable Discussion: Games and Education: There can be real power in the engagement level of kids playing games. However, the transition from using them as a form of entertainment to that of an instructional tool has not been successful. Referenced several projects: River City: http://muve.gse.harvard.edu/rivercityproject/ NASA’s MMO Proposal: http://ipp.gsfc.nasa.gov/mmo/ Lucas Learning: http://www.lucaslearning.com/ Additional Resources: Gaming helps students hone 21st-century skills: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?print&i=53586 Video – Video Games in Education http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6117726917684965691 Marc Prensky Videogame & Education References: http://www.marcprensky.com/dgbl/Prensky%20-%20Selected%20URLs(web).htm Cell