Interviewing David Warlick

I'm having some students interview David Warlick tomorrow at the MLTI Summer Teacher Leader Institute. I had students record his keynote last fall at the ACTEM conference and include it below. I'm very excited about it, what should be a great interview.

David's blog and other online resources. can be found at http://landmark-project.com

Bob Sprankle Strikes Back!

Follow the interview my students did with Bob, he interviewed them right back! It's a great way to get them involved and feel more like participants in the conference rather than observers. Here's Bob's blog post as well. Bit by Bit

BLC07 - David Jakes Interview

David' Jakes interview can be found here. His blog and Skypechats of the sessions can be found here jakespeak.blogspot.com. (and yes, that is Darren Kuropawta and Ewan McIntosh are sitting beside him.)

BLC07 - Dean Shareski Interview

Kayla interviews Dean Shareski who's blog is here: http://ideasandthoughts.org

Backing Up

I covered this earlier this year, but after reading Chris Lehman's post about losing data, I thought it would be good to mention it again.

You will lose everything from your computer at some point.
Back up now.

Three ways to recover quickly from a computer crash,

1) Use www.mozy.com which is an online backup service. Once it's setup, you don't have to worry about it again. Free for 2 gigs. A low tech curve, high result.

2) Back up to some drive, usb or otherwise. The easiest way to do this is use www.goodsync.com
which syncs two drives or folders as you specify. Again, once setup very very easy to use.

3) Use Google Docs. Doesn't matter what computer you're on.

The iMatrix

This was too cool and geeky to not show, one of our students has been coming in over the summer to help us and showed us how to re-image 30 iBooks at a time using his server.

BLC07 - Maro Torres Students

Again from the BLC conference here is podcast of the students of Marco Torres (The Yoda of educational technology) He had four students there who recorded many of the presentations and presented themselves when one of the presenters had to leave.




This hearkens back to comments made by Karl Fish and others about "Where were the students at NECC." The podcast is here and the audio from the video is not that good, but here it is.

.

BLC07 - Darren Kuropatwa Session

Uploaded the podcast of Darren Kuropatwa's session and interview at BLC07. You can find the Skypecast as well at Darren's blog A Difference. Darren's interview with one of my students soon to follow!

A laptop by any other name . . .

Here in Maine, we've been fortunate enough to receive Mac Books for the all the High School teachers. Of course, as with anything new there's a Tech Curve ;) (a time of learning as we change platforms.)

Some helpful sites are
Switching To The Mac: A Guide For Windows Users.
Free Atomic Learning Orientation to Mac OS 10.4 Tutorials
Mac 101: Getting Started with a Mac: http://www.apple.com/support/mac101
Thank you Mike Muir

For more information, check out MLTI High School Teacher FAQ Do

BLC07 - Ewan McIntosh

Here's one of the students we brought to BLC who had the opportunity to interview Ewan McIntosh. What an honor, Will Richardson mentioned on his blog that "Ewan McIntosh is a rock star. Plain and simple." and I couldn't agree more. He brings some amazing ideas to the table.

Here is the podcast link.

BLC07 - Overview

Coming down now from an amazing Building Learning Communities conference of thoughts, ideas, the works. I was privileged to meet many of the educational technology Communities 'royalty' (though none would enjoy being called that) and have two of my students interview many of them.
I will be posting photos and audio of the conference here. You can also find some of the Skype chat sessions at David Jakes blog. Some great back channel conversations.

I'd like to add one of the comments from my 9th grade student there:
"its hard beign the only kid in the chat with tonz of adults"

Hopefully we can change that feeling for all our students.

Bob Sprankle

Here's a cross link to Bob Sprankle interviewing the kids I've brought to BLC07

www.bobsprankle.com podcast

Ewan McIntosh - BLC07

A terrific blog here www.edu.blogs.com

This session: “We’re Adopting: An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in Education"

Discussion of how to get this model of the 'go getters ' in educators and make that far more pervasive throughout education.

Strategy for getting this to happen:
Identify key user groups
Understand key users
Let them evangelise
Turn these key users into trainers
Support bottom-up and emergent behaviours

Ewan discusses fear as a motivator in teaching and education. The fear is inherent in new technologies and how important it is for those 'go getters' teachers to show that they too get nervous about the new tech, but the mistakes they make is ok. It's what I've been calling the Tech Curve :)




The podcast of the session will be here: techclub.mypodcast.com

Dr. Mitchel Resnick Keynote

Live blogging here:
Just watched the keynote by Dr. Mitchel Resnick. He covered the PicoCrickets and Scratch. A free graphic based programming language. I really like his ideas of the Lifelong Kindergarten. How we know the play that students do in Kindergarten is a valuable time for learning.

So, how do we extend this idea that we know is right to those that just look at is and ask, "Yeah, but how do we assess it?" My answer? Project Based Learning where the students are focusing on their projects and the teachers are showcasing the where and how the educational value comes from them.

BLC07 - Weblogg-ed

Hey, we were mentioned in Will Richardson's blog here

http://weblogg-ed.com/2007/blc-day-1-brain-dump

Thanks Will!

BLC07 - Day One

So our first day is over from the BLC07 and already it's an amazing experience for my students and myself. We heard presentations from Ewan McIntosh and Alan November and had the opportunity to interview a number of people.

The link here goes to the podcast of Jayson's interview of Bob Sprankle.

Building Learning Communities 07

I'm very excited, we're heading to Alan November's conference Building Learning Communities 07. There should be many interesting sessions and hopefully a ton of posts to follow!!

Don't Click Here!

Click here for a great page from the Nokomis History Department showcasing some of the netiquette on the internet. Nicely done!

Intel to get on board with OLPC

The One Laptop Per Child program has been somewhat at odds with the Intel Corp. since it's inception. Watch the CBS story here to see why. Now it looks like they're going to join the OLPC board and (hopeful) push the technology forward. More info here.

Visual Dictionaries

This posted by Vicki Davis: Here are some interesting visual dictionaries. Very graphical in the way they navigate to similar words or phrases

More link based: http://www.quintura.com

Great for kids: http://kids.quintura.com

Very cool visuals: http://www.visuwords.com

"How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet"

A hilarious essay by Douglas Adams. Click here to read the entire essay. Here is an excerpt from it to give you an idea about the content.

This piece first appeared in the News Review section of The Sunday Times on August 29th 1999.

I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.

This subjective view plays odd tricks on us, of course. For instance, ‘interactivity’ is one of those neologisms that Mr Humphrys likes to dangle between a pair of verbal tweezers, but the reason we suddenly need such a word is that during this century we have for the first time been dominated by non-interactive forms of entertainment: cinema, radio, recorded music and television. Before they came along all entertainment was interactive: theatre, music, sport – the performers and audience were there together, and even a respectfully silent audience exerted a powerful shaping presence on the unfolding of whatever drama they were there for. We didn’t need a special word for interactivity in the same way that we don’t (yet) need a special word for people with only one head.

Teacher in Space

Barbara Morgan was slated as Christa McAuliffe's backup for the ill fated 1986 flight of the Challenger. She is now scheduled to go up as an educator astronaut August 7th.
Godspeed Barbara Morgan and good luck!

For more info:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/space/4961220.html

Cool Firefox Addon

If you're into tabbed browsing as much as I am, check out this Firefox addon.

Tab Mix Plus

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1122

Constantly Connected

I was chatting with a friend of mine and we were discussing how connected most people are today. Between the cell phone, email or some web version of chat, most people are reachable virtually 24/7. For so long, people have strove for exactly that. The desire to be more connected at all times, so if you wanted to reach someone, you could. (The first cell phone call from the peak of Mt. Everest occurred earlier this year. I read that the reception was terrific because of clear views of towers in China. And I drop calls downtown!)
Anyway, the question asks itself, when does it become ok, to opt out or purposely make yourself unconnected. If someone knows you screen your calls, they always assume it's not for them, but when is it still polite to say, Yes I'm connected, but I'd rather be 'unavailable' right now. How will this question be answered for teachers? I know as a teacher, if a student sees that I'm online, and asks for help, I don't want to not help them, but is there an etiquette developing for this level of connectivity?
I always marvel how, if I'm standing at a counter at a store and the phone rings, the clerk will stop helping me, and work with the person on the phone. I feel a little like, "Hey, I came into the store, when did the phone trump actual human interaction?" I'm not really upset by it, I just question how far can it go. If I'm constantly connected and get emails or Instant Messages, does politeness require I answer those before having the face to face conversation?
Just some summer time thoughts . . .

What If....

Another terrific video by Karl Fisch from his Fischbowl Blog.

RSS in Plain English

A great video on what RSS means and how you can use it. And like it says, in plain English!

http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

Cross Post

I was reading Wes Fryer's Blog Speed of creativity and made a comment that to find a song he was looking for to try www.midomi.com. A website where you can "Search with your Voice: Search for music by singing or humming part of a song. All you need is a microphone."
Check it out here:

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2007/07/02/i-can-hum-so-i-can-find-a-mystery-song

Did You Know? Video

I showed an earlier version of this video in the Summer Tech Institute. It has been updated and improved, so even if you saw it the first time, check it out again!

Too Many Passwords!

Having multiple passwords has become part of our online existence. The problem is remembering all of them. One technology that is coming down the pike to help with this is OpenID. OpenID is "an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity." What that means is one place to store your info that other sites can reference, only if you tell them to. It's still new enough that all sites don't recognize OpenID, but it should be such a useful way to manage logins that more are sure to follow. For more info, watch the slideshow below.

Video Presentations

Here's a link to a number of video cast presentations from the NECC conference, there are some really nice presentations here.

http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2007/program/video_on_demand.php