Tuesday, July 31, 2007

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



Monday, July 30, 2007

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



Sunday, July 29, 2007

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.)

Saturday, July 28, 2007

BLC07 - Dean Shareski Interview

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

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

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.

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Tuesday, July 24, 2007

BLC07 - Darren Kuropatwa Session

Kayla with Darren
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

Monday, July 23, 2007

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.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

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.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

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!

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

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.

Monday, July 16, 2007

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!

Sunday, July 15, 2007

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.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

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