Category Archives: The Teachers

How To Learn

A while back I posted on David Warlick’s article “Of Course I Think It Matters” about teachers needing to be lifelong learners. I found this quote in a later post ” Knowing how to do it — is not literacy! Knowing how to learn to do it — is literacy!”

Then I ran across this presentation by Stephen Downes and it resonated with a discussion we had this morning. You can see the presentation here. Some quotes that seemed to get to the heart of things were:

” 3 principles of effective e-learning
interaction – in a learning community (aka a community of practice)
usability – simplicity and consistancy
relevance (aka salience, that is, learning that is relevant to you , now)”

“place yourself, not the content at the center””Elements of usability :

Consistency…I know what to expect…

Simplicity…I understand how it works…”

“Don’t worry about remembering, worry about repeated exposure to good information”

“Information is a flow, not a collection of objects”

“To gain from self-directed learning you must be self-directed“

If we can make staff-development into self-directed learning and essentially self-development we will not have won a battle, we will have created change.

We need to change the perception through exposure to new ideas, look at it through a different perspective and pass that on, if we want to create a new paradigm and I think that is essentially what we are doing. It just seems slow sometimes.

Mindboggling Photosynth!

I saw a video yesterday (thanks for the heads up, Tony) that showed a gorgeous application called Photosynth. You can check it out at Microsoft Labs and as the news spreads there will be more videos and articles about it on the internet. If I understand it correctly – image resolution will no longer be a problem.

It creates a three-D image of other images – thousands of images taken by thousands of people. You can zoom in and out without losing quality.

Think back to a time when you have found a picture on the web that you wanted to use in a document. You saved it and then inserted it into your document but it was just a little thumbnail. You stretched it out to the size you wanted and it became ugly, blurry, and pixelated (or blocky) Not so with this – if you watch the demonstration you will see an entire book and the presenter will zoom in and the fonts will stay clear and smooth no matter what size you view.

The three-D part is where is gets confusing and exciting. You have this huge collection of photos (his demonstration used photos of Notre Dame) and all of the view might be slightly different and yet you can use this to get a 3D view of the site. You can also see from different perspectives and it looks like you can see the exact spot the photo was taken from.

Another aspect of this that is very cool is metadata. Metadata is everywhere and it simply means data about data. A non-computer example would be card catalogs in libraries. The card catalog is not the book but it tells you where the book can be found, who wrote it, and other information about the book. Metadata can describe a file or a web page. If you are looking at a web page and view the source code you will see some entries near the top that begin with meta – these usually contain information like keywords that help search engines find the website. Imagine that all these photos have been tagged with keywords and also contain metadata that gives you the time and date the photo was taken, gps coordinates for the exact spot where the photo was taken and much more. Imagine that all these photos coming together as a 3D view of the groups of them and the metadata for one becomes part of all.

I’m still trying to digest it. It gives a whole new meaning to research on the web. I think this will be huge and there will be more and better information as this becomes more known. My only saving grace is that in trying to find out more about it I ran across people much more knowledgeable than I am who were also asking tons of questions.

The implications for ecology, biology, and even astronomy are interesting. Of course we will needs some travelers willing to take their digital cameras to space for that. Imagine using this with microscopic photography, pictures taken from inside hurricanes and tornadoes, legal implications if this type of software is able to create images that can be admitted as evidence in a case.

What about the cultural implications of this and all the metadata that exists out there that leaves our “footprints”. If this application can zoom in on a building detail it can pick out the details of a face or hand in a crowd. We have historically worried about protecting our “privacy” on the internet but I wonder if as we become more aware of how transparent we are and how discoverable, will it cause us to live differently? You know the old saying about people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones? They shouldn’t walk around naked with the lights on either. However – if you know the lights are going to be on – won’t you behave differently? Maybe this transparency isn’t all bad – if it means that we will strive to be perceived as better then we will act better and in the act, maybe become better. As our culture affects how we develop technology we more and more can see how technology affects culture. This is another one of those times when we can’t see ahead to what the long term repercussions will be but this is one that makes me hopeful.

Visually speaking, some thoughts were expressed in this quote “I used to live in Arizona, several years ago, and you’ll notice that the further away you get from a mountain, the more its figure stays the same regardless how far left you go, or how far right. I wonder how the software handles perspective, and distance on this magnitude.
Buildings, which have unnatural forms will look rather different depending on where you are. But mountains tend to retain their figure when you are further away, walking left or right.” http://channel9.msdn.com

Another person on this particular forum brought up the cameras that they use for intricate surgery and how they could use this technology to build 3D surgery so they could study it further.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas is the presenter and worked on the project before Microsoft purchased the companies that developed it. I hope you will watch the video because my explanation and description do not come close to the reality of this application. It truly has to be seen to be believed.

You can see a video here

Summer Is Here

It has rained nearly every day and everything is the yard is green and thriving! I have started on the summer catch-up around the house and have a ton still to do! I made a dent in it today and I will keep at it – like everything else I am behind because last summer was all about taking care of Dale. We got the word today – he has the green light for transplant as far as his health is concerned – now we just need a donor.

My friend B.J. is on a road trip and has promised to blog it. He has already uploaded some photos to Flickr as you can see here.

CadillacRanchBumgarner.jpgHe is in Tucumcari and has already published an entry on http://homer4k.blogspot.com/ I’m looking forward to taking the trip without ever leaving home! He did say that gas ranged from 2.97 up through 3.31 a gallon. Sounds like you need a bank loan to take a vacation anymore!

I shared a link with him for Comic Life which is an application that comes on the MacBook but now is out in beta version for the PC. That means there will be some bugs but when they get them ironed out it will be great. This is a fun application that easily lets you make comic strip like documents using pictures and then adding speech bubbles. It comes with preloaded templates – you just choose one and drag the photos to where you want them. Choose the shape of speech bubble and type in your text and you’re done. Today on Bionic Teaching I read about a class that is using this application to create ads for Greek gods and goddesses selling products. There are also some great creations there on copyright licensed under creative commons.

In 2006 Jeff Han gave a demonstration at TED Talks on an interface-free touch screen -and last night Microsoft announced the Microsoft Surface Computer which you can see here. I would love to play with one of these. Instead of spending hours learning an interface just start moving things around any way you like with your fingers. They also show loading things like pictures and maps onto someones phone from the surface. It won’t be on the market til winter 2007 but it will be making it’s appearance at different conferences and events. You can check back on their site to see where it will be shown next. It will be exciting to see how this evolves and if it makes it into the mainstream market. Imagine being able to do desktop publishing by simply dragging your documents and images around on a template and seeing the text flow to fit. Don’t like it? Just drag it somewhere else. Add voice recognition and we really will be using something that like what we only used to see in science fiction movies. The uses just boggle the mind. I’m sure it won’t be making an appearance in Paris Texas anytime soon but maybe next year at TCEA! You can read more about it here.

Time To Learn

The school year is rapidly winding down and between keeping up with work and my own kids end of year activities I am missing my blog reading and writing. I have ideas and I am trying to catch moments to read everything I can. I can’t help but wonder how anyone is finding the time!

Dale had all the heart tests today and everything looks good for transplant so now we just wait to hear what the next step in the process is. We had a long day but at least it was all in one place.

I want to comment on a post by David Warlick “Of Course I Think It Matters” The part that resonated with me was this

“Sadly, we are a generation who was taught how to be taught — not how to teach ourselves. It’s one of the many reasons why the experiences that our children have in the classroom must become much more self-directed, relevant, and rich. They/we need to learn to teach ourselves. Teachers shouldn’t need professional development. They should be saying, hey, I’m going to teach myself how to do that this weekend. It’s about life long learning. Not about a life of being taught.”

Years ago I was working as a teacher’s aide in a special education 6th grade class. We were self contained for the most part and because of a grant we got a shiny new Apple 2C that sat in the box for a month before I timidly asked if anyone had a problem with me opening the box and seeing if I could do something with it. I then took a couple classes at the local vocational school in Basic and spent weekends typing rows of numbers and letters that would allow the students to answer a simple math program and if they answered correctly a little character would run across the screen holding a sing that said “great job!” The kids loved it and the teacher loved it when I wrote a little program that would let us average grades.

I took a few years off to raise kids but when I went back to work in a school (again as a teacher’s aide) I was the weird one who got excited about staff development. Someone was going to take time to teach me something for free! Yea! I was also excited because it was a time that I had no obligation to do anything but learn – yea again! For those of you who know me you know I have no degree. I’ve had a couple of college classes and some vocational school classes but other than that I am self-taught.

I know that a little part of what motivates me is the constant newness – there is always more to learn and even once you learn something it changes and I like the constant change. I know I can never catch up but that isn’t a bad thing for me. I like the constant surprise and discovery. I like being able to help a student figure out how to accomplish something with technology. I like to help teachers solve problems with technology. The only way I know how to teach is to learn first.
My question is – how can anyone teach and not love to learn?

Is Everything Miscellaneous Or A Soap Opera?

A couple of random things rolling around in my brain this morning. I have been trying to nail down the meaning of Web 2.0 to give a definition to others and it is like nailing jello to the wall. As I research I keep in mind other related pieces and I read an article on tagging and folksonomy on David Weinberger’s site Joho.

I should have known that tagging things would appeal to me. I have always liked playing with and arranging things. When I was little I had one of those metal doll houses with the little furniture and plastic people. This was of course back when we could have swallowed the furniture and died or cut ourselves on the metal corners of the dollhouse. I liked taking furniture and putting it in the “wrong” room. Before people were putting making media rooms complete with little refrigerators and microwaves I knew it would be conventient to have the ability to drink and eat in the same room in which you watch tv.

The first time I saw a chessboard I of course had to spend hours arranging the pretty pieces in what I thought were interesting patterns that had nothing to do with the actual game.

Tagging appeals to me because I can “arrange” information, websites, pictures, media – anything you can save; into patterns that mean something to me. Some of my tags may be at least similar to how you would categorize something and some would have absolutely no meaning to you because they reflect a reference that is personal.

You would not understand why I might scan a photo and upload it to flickr and have it tagged pipeline unless you know that I took that picture when we were traveling along with a pipeline crew. At the same time I would probably add tags that would tell you it was a related to Arizona, 1980, and Grand Canyon. With tagging I have a dollhouse with unlimited furniture so I can have my refrigerator in the kitchen, living room and bedroom if I wish and all at the same time!

Now if I could just tag that pair of sunglasses I lost….

I’d like to hear some opinions about Twitter. I have read come comments about it and even though I have a tendency to sign up for every new thing that appears on the internet I have resisted Twitter so far. I used to watch soap operas (yes I know – confession time) but I don’t anymore.

I do however, get attached to characters in tv shows and like to read books by authors who create multiple novels using the same main characters. I get upset when a favorite character gets killed off a show or has a catastrophe befall them in a book. Is Twitter the new version of the soap opera? I don’t think my life in interesting enough that anyone would care what “I’m doing right now” but I can see how I would get the nosy curious side of me fed by peeking in at what others are doing. If you use Twitter and see some use for it for collaboration or education I would like to hear about it. Have I been missing out?

Great Graphing And Blogging Lesson

Dan Meyer has a great post with downloads for teaching x-y graphs. He went out and videoed ten ten second events – running up two flights of stairs, driving his car, etc. He gave his students graph handouts and then played the videos asking questions like where was I at this point on the graph. As he asked the questions he had added chapter markers to the video so he could play sections in slow motion. He went around the room stamping the graphs he liked. After they had completed their graph and they had talked about it he would finish playing the video and the event would be graphed out on the screen.

A quote from Mr. Meyer’s article:

The total effect only intensified and grew more exciting with each new event. With scaffolding that precise and a visual connection that strong, even my weakest students were drawing eerily accurate graphs.They grew fanatical about accuracy, asking me to replay the footage five times for one particular event. Some became ornery when I couldn’t come and check out their productions.

Mr. Meyer is not only a talented teacher but a talented video and graphics creator and he shares! All the materials including the videos are available for download on his site at the end of the blog. You gotta love this guy! Not just for his hard work and willingness to share, but for the enthusiasm he brings to the profession and is able to sustain even at this time of year when many of us are feeling well, less than enthusiastic?

Head on over and grab some goodies and while you’re there you might want to check out some of his other posts. In the top right corner of the page you will see a group of links. One is just for the lessons he has published on his blog. I have referred a few teachers to this site before but I just can’t say enough about this blog! It’s such a great example of what we can do and share. I will be sharing this site next fall when teachers are learning about blogging.

You get a big thumbs up from me Dan – hear the applause? Wow!

Video on Rss In Plain English and News Reading Feast Link

I’ve been busy with real life this week and trying to catch up on some rest at the same time. I am working on some things I plan to post on in the future but I had to share this great video with you.

Once again I can’t embed the video without the whole page going wonky so I will give you the link. If you have had any desire to gain a general knowledge of how RSS works take a look!

Rss in Plain English

I also wanted to share a link a friend showed me – PopUrls. If you like to read the news and find yourself wandering through several sites to do so check this site out. DIGG, Reddit, Flickr, del.icio.us, flickr, Wired, and so much more all on one shiny page!

Web 2.0 In Nine Weeks

The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County has set up a blog called Learning 2.0. This blog contains a list of links containing 23 learning 2.0 things. The list is spread over a nine week period and contains links and tutorials to help you learn about blogging, Flickr, rss feeds and feedreaders, online image generators, library blogs, tagging and del.icio.us, technorati, wikis, online productivity sites, YouTube, and some sites for finding podcasts. The blog targets librarians but anyone who would like to get a “big picture” kind of tour, would find this a great starting place. If you follow the list of 23 things the way it is presented you will start your own blog and as you go through the rest of the list you will post on what you are learning.

If you go to their site make sure you check out the 7 and 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners presentation – it’s a wonderful presentation and the mission statement of the website is “Expanding Minds, Empowering Individuals, and Enriching the Community. You don’t have to take nine weeks to go through the list, but it is a great way to break down the pieces and give yourself a little time to reflect and play with what you learn. I love the way it is broken down and plan to learn from their example when I take some of these tools to my own campus. Thanks to them for doing such a great job! Thanks to Off The Shelf blog for point me to this great resource.
If you are confused about all this talk about web 2.0 or just want to let out your “inner geek” click over to this website and join in the fun.

Second Life Discussion and Resources

I have tried to like Second Life and it is interesting in that a lot of time and money goes into the different creations. The complexity of the design is fascinating to me but to be honest I get bored very quickly. I would rather chat or visit a forum if talking to people is the goal and it seems to use a lot of resources on my MacBook. That said I can see how students might enjoy it as a learning interface just because they are the avatar, chat, video gaming generation. I’m afraid that students would get caught up more in creating and dressing their avatars more than they would spend the time learning.

I keep coming back to technology should make things easier and it seems to me like this is more an example of making things more time consuming. I also have some reservations about the amount of money that changes hands. I will continue to check it out from time to time just in case I am absolutely wrong.

In the meantime there are some resources if you want to try things out yourself. The first is a forum for educators. You can sign up and receive emails about educational activities and places to go in Second Life.

There is a video tutorial on how to build things in Second Life that can be found here. Second Life educators have created a wiki.

There is an area strictly for teens on Second Life – the only adults that are allowed on there must be able to prove they are teachers. When a youth turns 18 they leave the teen area forever and are moved to the main “grid” There is a blog article and video here about a popular youth and her last day in teen life. The participants were on actually crying on skype and at the end the sunsets and the girl just disappears. Very dramatic video and shows how involved the kids are in this virtual world. The video actually ends like a funeral and the last frame has the girls name and dates like a memorial.

There is a video overview by the New media Consortium here and a blog (SecondLifeInsider) with article about the financial aspect as well as everything Second Life.
I found a comment response on a blog asking about Teen Second Life responses to the Virginia Tech shooting and felt that this was a positive way to utilize Second Life – as an outlet and empowering experience for the participants. The suggestions ranged from a workshop on teen violence to an area set aside for kids to place their creations like pictures, letters, and cards and even a suggestion of a t-shirt creation contest where they could purchase the t-shirts for their avatars and the money would go to a Virginia Tech charity. This was on the blog for the Global Kids Media Initiative.

I ran across a new word machinima which is actually a blend of machine and cinema and pertains to machine animation or productions created from using computer generated imagery usually on PCs. The video of the youth leaving teen life for the main grid is an example of machinima.

Some educational applications include:

“The ability to build 3-D objects collaboratively and in real time with others in the same world has enormous potential for teaching building, design, and art principles. Because Second Life is a rough simulation of the natural world, with meteorological and gravitational systems, the possibilities of experimenting with natural and physical sciences are endless. Meanwhile, the ability to interact with people from all over the globe enables political and cultural exchange and research in a safe and controlled environment.”

(from the School of Second Life Blog)Moodle and Second Life have mashed together an online learning system that incorporates both of them called sloodle which allows students to post to a blog directly from within Second Life. There seem to be courses you can enroll in but you have to sign in to see them.

I have rambled in this post and tried to give a balanced list of places you can go to learn about Second Life and education for yourself. It will be interesting to see what happens with Second Life in the future but for the time being I say it’s a nice place for a short visit but I don’t think I’d want to live there. I have enough trouble trying to balance everything in RL which is real life in SL speak.

Wikimapia – Let’s Describe The Whole World!

Wikimapia is a fun site that lets you easily annotate google maps by marking off a specific site, adding a title, some facts, and even a picture. According to their FAQ:

“WikiMapia is a Web 2.0 project to describe the whole planet Earth. It was created by Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev, inspired by Google maps and Wikipedia.”

The actual process is pretty straightforward.

  • click view and choose maps, satellite, or hybrid
  • Click in the search box on the right side of the page and type the name of the place
  • You will see a list of possible matching sites – click the one that best fits your search
  • When you find a place that you want to add a description to click “add place”
  • You will see a transparent resizeable, box with squares at the corners – move it and resize it to cover your site then click save
  • This brings up a box that allows you to type in a title, a short description, choose tags, and add a Wikipedia link if one exists.
  • When you are finished click save
  • You can now click menu and if you have a photograph of the site that you would like to share click edit and choose add/manage photos
  • You can click browse and navigate to the location of your photo and click upload. You will get a message telling you if you were successful. Click on the X to exit from this menu.

Now if you hover your cursor over the site a small box appears with the title you added. If you click that box it will show your description and the photo you added!

Our tech director told us about a class project where the students were formed into groups. They had iPods with clues to lead them to geographic places, GPS to help them get there, and digital cameras to take pictures at the destination. They also had the Tunetalk piece that would allow the students to record voice as they searched for their site. I think that you could take this a step farther and have them go online and put their information on the map using Wikimapia. You might want to add a collaboration piece by working with a class in another part of the world and letting the students exchange data on their respective sites.
If you have Google Earth installed you can click on the link in the FAQ for the Wikimapia data layer and you will be able to download the file to allow you to see the Wikimapia data in Google Earth.

Pageflakes for Reading Online

I am reading about web 2.0 in education and want to thank the comment contributors that gave me suggestions for places to look. As usual, when I start searching I end up going down rabbit trails and this one led me to check out page flakes. I have tried several feed readers and ended up using my Google personalized home page as a place to read my favorites. After I discovered that you could add tagged pages I was hooked. I like the visual layout of having the feeds I read all the time showing all over the page so I can just quickly skim down through the headlines and read the ones that catch my attention. Last night I may have found a new way to get all my reading goodness,

I checked out Pageflakes and after playing with it for a few minutes, signed up for an account and started creating pages and adding feeds. The layout looks very similar to the way the feeds display on my Google page but right away I found I could create more pages to help me organize my feeds by category. I was able to find feeds through their website and also copy and paste the urls for the sites I wanted and have it discover the feed and add it to my page. I was able drag and drop feeds into different tags and arrange them on the page.

Another reason to love Pageflakes is that once you have the feed on your page you can click on edit and choose export and Pageflakes creates the html file that will allow you to insert the “flake” onto another webpage. There is an example of my work blog on my footer. I tried to embed it in this post but it made the page go all wonky so I will need to work on that.

Web 2.0 Staff Development

I have some questions. If you were going to learn about three web 2.0 tools to use in education, what would your top three choices be? My choices were blogging, wikis, and podcasting.
What staff development or technology class or presentation have you attended that stuck in your mind the most and what made it special? I am especially looking for ways it was FUN!
What motivates you to attend this type of class? Does your district require so many hours? What is the payoff if any?

This is a short post but I know there are some incredible teachers and learners out there and I hope to pick your brains!

I’m Watching TV….

On my laptop! I have visited several sites where you can watch videos on the web but tonight I am watching a video on “Beginning Excel in the Classroom” on Pyro TV You don’t have to sign up for an account, but if you do you can save your favorite channels. The channels can be searched by Featured, Popular, Genre, and People. The one I am watching is by TILT (Teachers Improving Learning with Technology). The link will take you to the blog but you can also view the video by going to Pyro.TV and searching by genre, education and clicking on TILT. You will see a list of all their videocasts including Episode 2 – Digital Pictures in the Classroom and TILT Episode 7 – Multimedia Animation Using PowerPoint and more! I also like GeekBrief and Photoshop Tips. There is also a channel for comedy, Kids and Family (Digikid has movies that have moved over into the public domain category like The Three Stooges in Order in the Court) , Arts, News and Politics and more.
Since we are rapidly approaching the season of summer reruns this might be a great time to turn to the internet and be entertained and maybe feed your brain too! Be aware that not everything is kid-rated and when I signed up for an account there was no question about age.

If you prefer all educational videos produced by students and educators check out the channels on TeacherTube. The site is growing everyday with more to choose from. The videos are groups by subject (with a brand new category for Student Products) and there is a contest going on right now – sign up for an account for a chance to win a laptop and get another entry for each friend you invite that signs up! Maybe they will throw in a chance for me since I’m blogging about them. You can also join groups that focus on specific interests. You can embed their videos and link to them. You could save the link in your lesson plan and have access to the video without your district having to host it on the server. When you sign up for an account you are asked to certify that you are over 18 and you must agree to their terms of use and privacy policy. I’m in awe of the talent out there!

You may already be watching TV on your computer and if you have a link to a great resource I’d love to hear about it!

I am working on a tutorial for setting up blogs on our district server and I started it in PowerPoint but was recently told by a friend that you can open a PowerPoint in KeyNote on the Mac, export it as a Quicktime Video and even add audio using GarageBand. I am going to give it a whirl and I will blog about the outcome later.

Friday is Stop Cyberbullying Day

“Let me propose a radical notion: The weblog’s greatest strength — its uncensored, unmediated, uncontrolled voice — is also its greatest weakness” Rebecca Blood

For resources and activities join StopCyberBullying.

I did some searching on ethics and blogging and found some things I really liked. At Rebecca’s Pocket I found a post that expounds on a list of blogging “dos” and the above quote. Worth a read. Rebecca Blood is the author of The Weblog Handbook.

1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.

2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.

3. Publicly correct any misinformation.

4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.

5. Disclose any conflict of interest.

6. Note questionable and biased sources.

The LibraryJournal has an article by Karen Schneider called The Ethical blogger. The article advises us to be transparent about the things we feel strongly about that might bias our posts, to cite our sources, and to admit our mistakes.

The next site I looked at was the CyberJournalist which had a detailed Blogger’s Code of Ethics. The main section headings begin with “Be honest and fair”. My favorite under this heading and one I think would be a great to build a lesson for our students around is to “distinguish between advocacy, commentary, and factual information”. The next section header is “Minimize Harm”. My favorite entry in this section was “Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by Weblog content”. The last section deals with “Be accountable”. My best choice here is “Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others”.

I hope you will go read the original articles and use this material to start discussions with your students. Your students could use this as a starting point to creating their own code of blogging ethics.

As Sarge on Hill Street Blues used to say “Let’s be careful out there.”

disagree

Follow-up On Kathy Sierra

In response to what happened to Kathy Sierra, a social networking site has been started by Andy Carvin at CyberbullyingHurtsLearning Now for discussion and resources to help educate everyone on Cyber-bullying. If you would like to add your voice or find out more you can go to Stop Cyberbullying and join in. Friday March 30 has been designated as Stop Cyber-bullying Day. This is a good time to talk with your children or students about the subject and maybe incorporate some ideas into your lesson plan. Bullying only works if the victim is alone –
Stephanie Sandifer has a great post on giving each other grace at Change Agency that I think is timely, well…anytime.

A great resource is the Center for safe and Responsible Internet Use.

If you blog with students there are some great discussion starters found on Andrew Pass’s blog and one in particular called Death threats is about the situation that prompted Stop Cyber-bullying. The discussion starters are linked to current events with thoughtful questions.

If you wish to place a picture on your blog like the one I have on this post there are some at Dangerously Irrelevant.

Weekend Tips and Links

Vicki Davis has a new look to her blog and a new video site – Teachertube! There isn’t a lot there yet but a few good things can be found so I will keep checking. Here is a video tutorial for creating a poster using Excel.

Excel Poster Video
I tried to embed it even though WordPress was not on the list of sites it stated it works on but no luck. Hopefully they will get it working soon.

Google has a new option out for Picasa for Mac users – Picasa Web Albums. You can upload from your computer or export directly from iPhoto. You get 1GB storage and you can designate whether the albums are public or private.

I learned another tip for Macs tonight. Veteran Mac users may already know this but I’m still relatively new to macs and still find some great surprises! I do a lot of cutting and pasting, sending or saving bits and pieces of web stuff and now I can highlight some text and drag it to Mail App and it will open with the text already in the body of the message ready for me to add an address and click send.

This also works for TextEdit, Stickies, and you can even drag the text onto the Safari icon in the dock and Safari will open with the google search results.

Reflecting on Web 2.0 and where We Are going

I read blogs. I read constantly. I read while I am watching TV at night and before I go to sleep. I read in the morning while I am drinking that first cup of coffee and getting ready to start the day. There is so much to read and every day it seems like I find a new resource on the internet. I search, I check out other blogger’s blogrolls, I create google alerts to help keep up.
It seems to me that while the points of view are varied, the themes are similar and so much work is being duplicated. It takes passion and reflection for the amount of writing that gets done and while I love blogging, I can’t help but wonder if this is just a step in a process that will at some point make all these little sparks of light come together in a more cohesive manner.

The majority of blogs that I read are written by educators but when I step back, the picture looks more like a great, spread out class of students, all trying to move ahead but because of the size and distance and time – the direction is unclear and the pieces are hard to put together.

It’s wonderful that we have so many choices for web 2.0 tools but paradoxically those same choices seem to slow the journey. As soon as I think I’m getting the feel for a new tool there is another one to learn. I’m grateful that there are voices out there willing to share what they are learning but I can’t help but think it is all part of a transition and that we aren’t quite “there” yet. I’m not even sure what “there” is.

The collaboration that goes into wikis is a step and the blogs that have guest bloggers or are written by several people is a step. The conversations that grow with the comments and links back to other posts on other blogs are a step. Online conferences are another piece. It just seems like we should be moving towards something that gathers these pieces into a less unwieldy unit.

RSS has taken us to a new level where we can pick and choose what information comes to us and because of it, the information gets there so much faster and easily than it used to. Tags are also a part of the process. I can’t help but think that at some point we will have a more efficient system of grouping the information as it comes to us in a way that allows us to see where work has already been done or is being done simultaneously so that we can quickly see what needs to be built on or tweaked to fit our particular school or situation.

How many of the new web 2.0 tools will be around in a year? Five years? Ten? Look back five years and try to remember where your school was on the technology adoption timeline. We’ve come a long way kids and we are moving forward faster all the time. How can we share more efficiently? If we are heading somewhere – where will that be? What will information literacy look like in the near future? What will happen to primary sources if the writing that takes place is mainly on the internet? Do you as a blogger keep hard copies of posts?

Help Site Done Right!

I spend a lot of time looking for answers to computer questions on the internet and I usually find what I’m looking for but help websites are not usually fun. Technology Ninja is a great resource with a definite coolness factor. It is only for Macs and I will be spending some time looking around there. I wish there were similar sites for Windows and Linux.

The site has a very dramatic color scheme and a very cute Ninja character that oversees the question and answer format. You can access the archives through the category list on the sidebar or use the searchbox to search by keyword.

It looks like students ask most of the questions and I can see how this would be valuable in a one-to-one computer situation.

The site is actually a blog so you can subscribe and read the latest questions and answers in your feed reader but it is worth it just to go look around on the website.