"The Perfect Thing"

The book I'm reading (listening) to right now is, The Perfect Thing by Steven Levy. It covers the rise that handy little gadget, the iPod, and how it's transformed more than the technology culture today. How the simplicity and usefulness of this device has made it as pervasive as the car or television.

The important point of the book for me is the idea how something that didn't seem to be a big deal - a portable music player - would create such a following. It would expand well beyond the original design and has become so much more.

We received a grant in my district to improve literacy, so we purchased 500 of them. The impact for students and staff is measured by how many beg us not to take them back at the end of the year. They've become such a part of their daily routine they couldn't image life without one. I know I couldn't.

Sage Advice

Every month the educational magazine Edutopia, put out by the George Lucas Foundation, includes a section called 'Sage Advice.' There they pose a question for educators and this September it was:

"What's your resolution for the new school year?"

I was pretty excited that my answer was printed in the magazine.

"Get as many students in my district teaching technology to as many of the teachers in my district as I can. The students learn by teaching, and the teachers learn by listening."

I was feeling pretty good about it, and showed it to my wife who reminded me that,
"Your brother was in Computer Power User magazine, he made the cover." ;-)


The added smiley wink is mine, she was, of course, teasing me, (My brother designed and built the computer on the cover.) But it helped to remind my how pervasive and easy pockets of celebrity have become. Small bits of fame that add up to more than the alloted 15 minutes these days. This fame is relative to the size of the audience, but because the are so many channels for people to connect today, anyone with a computer and modem can be a celebrity. (Or at least feel like one anyway. ;)

Noob 2 Leet

For those follow the Learning 2.0 conference, a new Web 2.0 toy that's making the rounds is called Animoto. Basically it's a template driven video producer, you provide images and select music, then click finalize. It does this rest. The following video took me about 3 minutes from creating an account to completion. Here's a quick look.





When showing this to one of my Video Production students, he commented:

"It makes a Noob look like a Leet."

My Immigrant to Native language dictionary tells me this roughly translates to,

"A inexperienced user, (a Newbie) can quickly and easily

produce something that looks like a power user (an Elite) made it."

Some edu-bloggers like David Warlick and Wes Fyer are pretty excited about it, while others like Gary Stager lament on his blog: "Animoto lets you create meaningless PowerPoint-like slideshows without all of that pesky, editing, creativity or thinking. I won't even mention the discipline, knowledge and sense of history required of artistic expression. "

I have to agree with Gary's description, EXCEPT that it does have educational value. It raises the bar.

To recreate the effects that effortlessly appear in one of these productions in any flavor of video editor you'd like would take a substantial amount of time, but because they are so easy to create, it makes those production values into vanilla. It's like the first time you play with GarageBand. You create a song, that really sounded like a song you'd actually want to listen to in a few minutes - wow. There was magic there. Then you play it for others and they start nodding their heads and tapping feet. More magic. But soon, the more you listened to what other made, using the program, all those loop diven tracks start sounding the same. To the point where, it's cliche, and boring.

What this has done, for students is that they have to produce better stuff. Don't get me wrong, I think that GarageBand is a fantastic tool and fun way to create quick songs, but if everyone's sounds the same - it begs you to be different.

As students create content and productions like Animoto become the baseline. It makes the quality of work of those trying to stand out have to be that much better. Our expectations increase, and educationally that's not a bad thing.

NetFlix in School?

If you have a Netflix account, (or know someone who has.) You can watch a selection of videos right online. How might this tie in with education you ask? Well, there are hundreds of documentaries to choose from. Offerings from PBS Video, Nature, Discovery Channel, History Channel and many more.

There's a very wide range of titles, some of which I had at one time gone and signed out from the library. Viewing them online doesn't effect the number of DVD's you have from Netflix and you can watch as many as you want!

Note: The Netflix viewer wants to run on Internet Explorer. But If you'd still like to watch it through Firefox there is a cool add-on that turns a tab into IE and works fine.

Whoa - Thought Controlled Wheelchair?

This story was too cool not to mention, Here's the story from the New Scientist.

Buying Technology

Since the iPhone price drop is such big news on the tech front, and I'm so often asked,

"I'm planning to buying a [enter tech item here.] What do you recommend?"

Here is my patent response for buying almost all computers, digital cameras, media players, etc.

1) Wait as long as you can.
With the iPhone dropping 30% in price in two months as proof, there will never be the 'perfect' time to buy tech stuff, it's not an investment and will certainly reduce in price.

2) Set your price.
Because there are so many options when buying tech toys, there always seems to be more
features with just another just

3) Search for your price.
Because there are so many options when buying tech toys, there always seems to be more
features at small increments, so once you have the price you're willing to spend, stick to it. Otherwise you can keep upping the price until it's way more than you intended.

When I start searching for tech stuff, there are always the usual suspects: Amazon and EBay, but I like to start with a trip to CNET reviews to narrow it down to the exact one I want. Then a trip to www.currentcodes.com where I can see if there are any deals on the sites.

(BTW A couple of the tech sites I especially like are newegg.com and bhphotovideo.com)

So . . . what did YOU do this summer?

Cracked iPhone anyone?
For those who don't know, this summer the iPhone was cracked by a 17 year old George Hotz.

By cracking it, he made the phone able to run on different networks other that AT&T, who I'm sure was not happy about the announcement. But in the weird word of cyber -law it's ok to crack a phone, just not sell or distribute the know how.

While this is all interesting on a geeky level, the real interest for me is from the rationale of George spending 500+ hours on this 'summer project' because ultimately he was bored. And where were we, the educators, in all of this.

If George came to you with this idea, what would happen? What about all the other George's in our classes. This reminds me of another story about Ashley Qualls. A 17 year old who started a website called www.whateverlife.com that provides templates for MySpace. She's since been offered $1.5 million for the site. (Which she declined, by the way.) Again, where would be she in class and what are we offering students that want to move beyond the standard multiple choice tests.

A final note on students. We must take them seriously. Not just as another aspect of our jobs, but people to engage and learn from as much as we teach them. Recently "A 16 year-old Australian student took approximately 30 minutes to bypass a government funded content filter that took $84 million to create." [link]

Students will always find an outlet for their creativity, whether we chose to benefit from their creativity is up to us.

Tracking Comments

As fun as blogging is, in many ways it's still a one way conversation. What I mean is, unlike a forum where all participants have equal say in posting or responding, the creator of a blog really has total control over what gets shown on the site, by way of moderation.

So anyone who reads a large number of blogs, then makes comments, and then wishes to follow up on those comments - I've found an easy way to do it. www.cocomment.com The site is still in beta, so there are some quirks, but it's been the simplest way to track the conversations I have on other blogs that I follow. They all turn up in one convenient location.

My Yoda

Marco Torres often talks about finding one's Yoda. A mentor who you can look to for guidance and help from but it technology questions or educational ones.

Today I found mine - My two year old son.

Here's the story:
My wife, two year old son and I were getting ready for dinner and he told his mom, "I'm hungry." While preparing the meal she said, "It's not quite ready yet."

He looked at her, tilted his head to one side and asked,
"Is it buffering?"

As this school year begins, my son reminds me that we as educators must always be mindful of what we say and do around our kids. Anything you say or do may be an educational experience for a child.

And you never know what will stick with them!

Digital Information Literacy

A good video about digital literacy, thanks to Jim Burke for the link!

Passwords

Following up on my last post, I realized that with the use of one Google login, a really good password is more important that ever. The best kinds incorporate numbers and symbols and are at least eight characters.

One way I use to remember longer passwords with a variety of symbols is to come up with a phrase where the first letter of each word comprising the password. The phrase should have at least eight words in it.


For example: "I Like To Work With Students And Teachers" becomes: "iltwwsat"

Because you're using a phrase, just say it in your head as you type the (seemingly) nonsensical word. Also, you can replace words like 'To' with '2' and maybe an 'S' with a '$' so the final result would be

il2ww$at

Another thing you can do is add the first letter of whatever website you're on to the end of the password. That way, you have a different password for every site, but you still only have to remember one. So if you went to Amazon it would be:

il2ww$ata

while in Ebay it would be:

il2ww$ate

Don't forget to periodically it too because all the security and firewalls in the world can't stop someone if they have your password.

Googled

Ok, we all know Google is the uber-search engine of the net. Able to find all kinds of info in a single bound. But, many do not know about all the services Google offers and most users are not interested in having another login for each of them. One of things I love of about Google for Educators is that users can have one login to access a ton of services, Now, there may be better examples of individual services, but when users can log on to all of them from one place - it's well worth it.

Take Blogger for instance, there are arguably better blogging platforms available, (Wordpress, Typepad, etc) but with Blogger, you can post directly from Google Docs or link to images in Picassa or video in Google Video - all with one login.

I'm going to get what I see as two biggest problems out of the way, 1) Access 2) Privacy 1) If you do not have reliable internet access, then you don't have Google Apps. They are working on something called Google Gears that will allow blogs from Google Reader and Gmail to download and sync with your computer whenever you on the net. 2) Privacy concerns are always a part of being online. Having so much information about yourself in one place can be scary, depending on what they do with it. For a far more detailed discussion about online privacy than I can put here, check out http://googlonymous.com

So, here are some of things you get when you 'Go Google.' (BTW It's better to setup a GMail Account not a Google Account. You'd think there should be any difference, but a GMail Account gives you more access to services.

Some of the biggest boons of using the services is hardware doesn't matter, Mac, PC, Linux as long as you have web access. And your data follows you on what ever computer you're using.
And it's all FREE. The only costs if you want to upgrade some of the services, but I have yet to have had to do that with any of them.

GMail - a web based email service, much like Hotmail or Yahoo but with 3gigs of free space.

Google Calendar - Very useful to share, publish or just manage your calendars. Especially when those you have to coordinate with have an account too.

Google Docs - an online word processing and spreadsheet application that lets you easily collaborate with other Google users. This is a terrific service that I use daily.

Blogger - Google's blogging platform

Google Reader - An aggragator that pulls info from all those blogs into on place. Works great with an iGoogle page.

iGoogle - Set up a personalize homepage that follows you with every computer you log in to.

Page Creator - Create a template driven webpage in seconds. Literally. The hardest part is selecting a color scheme. Here are a couple examples: nokomishistory.com and thetechclub.org

Google Browser Sync - If you use multiple computers, this will sync all your preferences bringing passwords and bookmarks with you.

Google Anayltics - Anyone that has a blog or web page can use this to get incredibly detailed information about their site.

Google Groups - Create, manage and work with forums. A easy way to store and encourage discussion.

Google Talk - Much like Skype, but without the ability to call a landline number. This may change, however, because Google bought Grand Central. A service that coordinates ones phone numbers.

Google Blog Search - Even though Technorati is more well known, I've found this search to actually be more thorough when looking for something.

Picassa - Google's image editor and thumbnail viewer. There are better lightweight free image editors out there (Irfanview I'm looking at you.) But, with the ability to make a Web Album with the click of a button, it can't be beat.

Google Video - This is one of those services that you can find better quality out there, but If you only need to quickly load something (and larger that 100mb YouTube) than this works fine.

Google Earth - Not a web based app, but too cool not to mention.

Spreading F.U.D.

What is F.U.D. you ask?
F.U.D. stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
Something that usually Freezes, Upsets and Discourages progress.

Jeff Utecht from the Thinking Stick blog commented on this recently stating we're "Putting them in a Bubble" and I couldn't agree more.

When I discuss the use of disruptive technologies in the classroom with some teachers, their first response is, "Yeah, but how can I control it."

I am, of course, not in favor of a classroom free-for-all, but if we can't beyond the possibility that one student might type a naughty word (just like they could do now) and weigh that against all the positive discussions and collaboration that can happen, then we are truly stuck.

Yes, it's easier to ignore what the students are doing on their own at home, but what a disservice to our students. For me, it would be the equivalent of not teaching drivers education because one of the students might do something dangerous. As a system we've weighed the pros and cons and recognize value is worth more than the possible pitfalls. I hope this will carry over to the use of communication tech tools in the classroom, and we can help our students see outside the bubble.

Old Dog - New Tricks

As the new school year rapidly approaches, I want to ask something I usually begin my workshops with. Do you know where the layout of your QWERTY keyboard came from?

No? Well, the placement of letters comes from a time when people could type faster than their typewriters could keep up. Keys would get jammed in a terrific mess of metal and ink. By placing frequently used keys, like vowels, in harder to reach places, users were slowed down.

Now, examine keyboard in front of you.

The placement of the keys has been the same since 1873. There are newer, redesigned keyboards that allow faster typing such as the Dvorak keyboard. Introduced in 1936 it arranges the keys for the greatest efficiency. But, overwhelmingly we use what is given to us.
What we have always known and are comfortable with.

Sound familiar?

Many teach how they were taught, and I won't belabor the point, but the world is different. It's flat right?

If I handed you a new keyboard, it would undoubtedly take time to unlearn how you type and relearn the new positions. During that time, productivity would down and frustration would ensue. Yet, with the understanding that ultimately, speed and accuracy will improve with time and practice until you have surpassed what you were capable of before.

Such is all new learning.
Don't let only what you're comfortable with limit where you can go!

iPod Manual

For anyone looking for a easy to read manual for their iPod Nano, I had students last year take the 60 page manual from Apple and reduce it to a 8 page graphic FAQ that covers the typical questions new users ask. Enjoy!

http://www.techclub.info/docs/MSAD48_iPodNano_Manual.pdf

OLPC Machine

Matthew Hockenberry of creativesynthesis.net demonstrates the one laptop per child's fourth production prototype of the 'hundred-dollar laptop' at siggraph 2007 - video by Leonardo Bonanni of hyperexperience.com

Firefox Addons

Some time ago on Twitter John Pederson asked what other blogger's desktops looked like. It got me thinking about my own desktop and I realized, my Firefox web browser has become my desktop. It's so customizable and with the use of so many web 2.0 web applications I have my desktop where ever I go.

I know there are virtual desktops available, but I've found I can tweak the browser to my own specs. So, I decided to put together some of the add-ons that I've found most useful.

8 Random Facts

First, the Rules:

1. Post these rules before you give your facts
2. List 8 random facts about yourself
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) other people and list their names, linking to them
4. Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

So here are the 8 facts:

1. I do not like chocolate.

2. I can balance with one foot on a basketball and juggle.

3. I taught in New Zealand.

4. I'm something of a Simpsons-aholic.

5. I took an astronomy course at Colby College in 6th Grade.

6. I'm teaching my two year old to recognize Star Wars characters on sight.

7. I usually have three books going at the same time.

8. I love my job!

Tag - you're it.

Sharon P.

Keith K.

Ben W.

Jayson C.

Dan V.

Photosynth

For those of you who haven't tried Microsoft's Photosynth - now is the time. They have 1000's of images of the Endeavour Space Shuttle on the launch pad. You can fly around and zoom in. A cool way to see the shuttle.

Kid Logic

I know the NPR radio show This American Life covers a lot of ground, not all of it appropriate for kids, but one of the best episodes they've done was called Kid Logic. "Stories of kids using perfectly logical arguments, and arriving at perfectly wrong conclusions."

Very cute and worth a listen.