Category Archives: technology

Flickr Goodies

I’ve seen some interesting new things on Flickr this week and decided to consolidate the links in one post. I love Flickr and they just seem to get better and better.
Alan Levine has a post on a new “toy” SlideFlickr which allows you to quickly and easily create a slideshow from a flickr set. Lawrence Lessig has an interesting article on Web 2.0 Ethics and “sharing sites” comparing Flickr which makes it easy to download images and Youtube which does NOT. He discusses some other sharing sites and made me think about the subject of sharing and which sites actually embody the concept and which ones just ride along on the bandwagon. Definite food for thought.

If you haven’t visited Flickr:Creative Commons yet you are missing out. The first page defines the type of creative commons licenses you will run up against and then you can search photos and use them for non-commercial things (like your student’s project!!) without the copyright violation issues.

The last one for today is just gorgeous. I could just sit here and click and feed myself eyecandy. It’s called ColrPickr and it’s by KrazyDad. You choose a color on the beautiful color wheel and it displays a group of Flickr photos that fit the color. Now if this was just mashed up with Flickr Creative commons (hint! hint!)

colrpickrkrazydad

You can also visit BigHugeLabs and find all kinds of toys that let you create new things with Flickr photos.

Have fun – I would love to hear from you and see what you are creating with Flickr!

Blogging Basics Today

I taught a class on blogging basics this morning. We had a few technical difficulties that I had not expected. I had planned to get to the room and check it out prior to this class and paid the price for not doing so. The data projector kept giving a message to check air flow and then going off. Because it was hanging from the ceiling it was a little difficult to see where the filter was – one of the class members climbed up and tried but the “tech guys” showed up with a ladder and it turns out that the filter is actually located on the top front of the projector which makes it even more difficult to find.

That problem fixed we moved on though time and momentum were lost. I still tend to throw too much out too quickly and will have to work on that before next week when I teach it again. It will help that I’m to be back in my own room. I’ll be a little more comfortable having the home court advantage so to speak and if I’m less nervous things will go better.

The hard part for me is teaching blogs without teaching tagging and feedreaders. I am going to have to just say NO! to those voices in my head that want to teach it all and show the connections.

I need to work on timing some as well. I hope some of the class will create blogs and that some new voices will join the conversation.

There is a short article on my school blog about it with some links to resources on my wiki.  These are specifically for WordPress and Wikimedia within our system.

Education Democratically

To me the read/write web displays the best (and worst!) of the true meaning of democracy. People vote with their keyboards on what is the best/worst, hot/not, good/bad.

A couple of good things have happened recently. One, a middle school student from Falls Church entered a video contest on C-Span that not only one him a prize, but improved upon a situation that needed to recieve attention.

The 13-year old Wilson of Luther Jackson Middle School won first prize among middle school entries in “StudentCam,” C-SPAN’s National Video Documentary Contest for his documentary “When the Boys Come Home: The Controversy at Walter Reed.” Wilson took home $1,000 in prize money, and his video will be played at 6:50 a.m. on C-SPAN on June 14.

Wilson’s video, which runs just under 10 minutes long, highlights the controversy surrounding the cleanliness and medical care provided at Walter Reed Hospital, which takes care of wounded American soldiers returning from battle. Wilson relates the issue to his own family, as his brother Sgt. Gordon “Gordy” Hamm is currently serving in Iraq.

“What would happen to my brother should he be injured in Iraq?” Wilson asks during the narration of his documentary.

You can see him on Fox News and others or read the article in the Falls Church newspaper here. You don’t have to be a big Hollywood producer to get your story out there anymore!

Another great thing is a new section that has been added to the iTunes store called iTunes U. You can read more about it on the Apple website but basically what it entails is different universities have some of their classes on podcast and videocast and you can subscribe. Now you can go to M.I.T. and Berkeley and never leave your living room!

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

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!

Can information Be Owned? (or DIGG part II)

I grew up amid protests against the Viet Nam war in a part of the country where labor unions were strong. I have always believed that the heart of democracy is personal responsibility and personal sacrifice when it benefits society as a whole.
It may be the perspective of age but it seems that for the most part we gather up like a bunch of guinea hens running from one cause to the next with no thought of the long term consequences or who will pay the price.
While the guinea hens are running on to that next cause, who gets stuck footing the bill?

I say some old sayings still hold true – if you are going to talk the talk you better be willing to walk the walk.

It will be interesting to see how the landscape of the entertainment industry changes when the business end of it stops flailing it’s hands and stomping it’s feet and finds a way to change to adapt to the openness that is our new reality. The entertainment business and everything else!

I read a news article yesterday about someone in a lab “accidently” discovering that she had killed some cancer cells because she had done something wrong in an experiment. I immediately thought about how not too long ago this information would not have been made public – and we may not hear anymore about it. In the past, pharmaceutical companies would have held that information very close to the vest hoping to be the first to discover and patent(and profit from) the miracle medicine.

The article was pretty open about what she did and what she used. The competition for funding and grants is fierce so if this information starts a race in multiple labs for the same medicine will patients get it sooner? Will the effect of that information becoming public result in another company getting the prize and maybe knocking some promising researcher out of a position that might have resulted in a future discovery even more important to society?

I remember reading the book “And The Band Played On” which was about the progression of AIDS from the parts played by the CDC, the Red Cross and others. The Red Cross after being told about the risk to the blood supply at first ignored the information and because of that, people were transfused with infected blood and the disease spread especially to hemopheliacs. I was outraged in my naivete` that people could be harmed by the very system they looked to for survival. Could that have happened today? I think it would have spread through every blog, forum, and news site like wildfire. I hope it would have saved countless lives.

Another possible scenario is that it would have been brushed off because there is a perception out there that blogs and forums are mostly gossip and personal agenda and the information that might have saved lives would have been ignored all the same.

If there is no thought or integrity in what we say whether it be on DIGG, in forums, or on our own personal blogs then we do ourselves and the media a disservice. What difference will it make what we say if we are dismissed as being irresponsible? Will some changes that should happen NOT happen because the source is us? We all complain about the media putting it’s slant on the news depending on their agenda. Guess what folks – we ARE the media. What is our agenda?
Just my rambling for what it’s worth.

DIGG this

A site that I read fairly regularly has had an interesting thing happen. There were multiple posts on DIGG of an HD-DVD decryption number, There were multiple attempts to remove those posts after the movie industry threatened legal action. According to Forbes magazine:

The Web 2.0 movement is based, in theory, on the idea that everyone on the Internet gets to have his or her say. But what happens when visitors to Web 2.0 sites start pushing the legal limits of free speech?In the case of the social news portal Digg.com, a meltdown.

DIGG is a news site that allows users to post news items and then other users vote and the votes move the stories either to the front page or towards the back. It’s content is constantly changing and users can comment. The commenting allows personal discussion about the news items and while I don’t share a lot of the views it can make for some interesting reading.

What is unusual about today, is that the users basically revolted against the articles about the decryption number being taken off and flooded the site with articles faster than the site administrators could remove them. The site administrators finally just gave in and said that if DIGG went down at least it would go down fighting.

Will this set a precident for web 2.0 sites that host user generated content? And does a community have the right to determine policy for a website? Should DIGG have banned users who refused to comply? I won’t get into a debate about right or wrong as far as the encryption, but I do wonder how removing the posts will accomplish anything. It’s like locking the asylum after the inmates have escaped. The damage is done and what was on DIGG is already on email and other newsites.

I also feel that having the freedom to voice your opinions on the internet carries with it some responsibility at the very least to whomever is hosting the website. If you want to say something that puts that person or persons in a position of legal liability then my feeling is you should host your own website and take responsibility yourself.

I do think the entertainment industry is going to have to rethink how it does business. The playing field has changed and maybe in some ways that is good. I believe that an artist has the right to make a living from their creation whatever the medium. I hope that the changes to come will see more of the actual artists reaping the benefits instead of huge corporations making the money and having the power.

I’m just not sure that this is the way to do it.

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.

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.