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Showing posts from December, 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?