Follow You Follow Me July 15, 2009
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Tools.add a comment
Maybe I missed this, but it looks like something new just showed up in Google Reader. When I last checked, I now have a tool that lets me search for people who are publicly sharing their feeds. Probably an idea worth exploring. I haven’t done much public sharing or following in Google Reader. Seems like sort of a Twitter twist on RSS feeds. Are you sharing or following others who share feeds in Google Reader?
TIE 2009 – Create, Communicate, Collaborate – Howie DiBlasi June 25, 2009
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Conference Sessions, Link Collections, Safety, Tools.2 comments
Started with Green Eggs and Ham. More statistics about jobs moving from the US to overseas, from Friedman’s “The World is Flat”. Also mentioned Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” and Jim Collins “Good to Great” – get the right people on the bus, get them in the right seats, get the wrong people off the bus. Howie says we also need to get a driver. Short video about people who failed before achieving greatness (lincoln, etc). Can we still reward kids for doing anything rather than allowing them to fail? If you want change, be the change.
Will change happen if we don’t change our classrooms? Short video “Is this what the future in the US looks like” from ScreamingFrog. Skills for success:
- creative problem solving
- critical and analytical thinking
- information gathering
- team work and collaboration
- Everyone is not the same
- Conflict isn’t always negative
- Learning is individual to each person
- Naps are important
- We all deserve the opportunity to share our stories
- Failure is a powerful teacher
TIE 2009 – Technical, Wikis, Blogs, and Podcasts – Mike Scott and Frank Vretos June 24, 2009
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Started with introductions. Podcast Capture is the client utility (included with all 10.5 Macs) to create or upload media to the Podcast Producer on the Leopard OS X Server. Podcast Capture uses 6 built-in scripts or workflows. You can make your own workflows. Web interface for the client is also available. Podcast Producer is highly scalable. Probably a good idea to start with a small group of dedicated content producers before it is more widely distributed.
From the server side, starting with Wiki server. Wiki services enabled on the OS X server. Create a couple of users to see how they can work differently. Group is created and the wiki and blog option is selected. From the client side, open a browser and view the wiki server.
TIE 2009 – iPodTouch – Dan McCormack June 24, 2009
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Conference Sessions, Tools.add a comment
Most of this session is done on touches. Positioning the touches as a device that improves the ability to collaborate, create, distribute, and access. It is not a ‘netbook’ or laptop lite. Starts with a review of touch basics. Turn it on, home button, bring up controls, swipe to navigate.
Watched a 7 minute video on the touch which outlined challenges in education, and how the touch addresses those challenges. Talked about the student as the CEO of their own digital brand. Karl Fisch cals this their ‘digital footprint’. Looked at audio books in ‘music’ as a podcast, and videos like the physics of baseball. Research from Escondido Union School District on the iRead project where fluency was improved. Apple’s solution is the Bretford PowerSync Cart ($2300 without the iPods). Charges and synchs up to 40 dock connector iPods. Other solutions are on the way.
The App Store. We are exploring apps that were synched on the touches. There are a lot of options.
iTunes and the App Store. Think of iTunes as an architecture. iTunes U is free, hosted by Apple.
Reflection: I’d like to see this used in a school. I also think the price for the devices and carts has to come down a bit. The free offerings from the App Store are very nice.
TIE 2009 – Design with Forever in Mind – Ben Wilkoff June 23, 2009
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Authenticity done for a real purpose and a real audience. How do we capture learning?
Backchannel is set up using a hash tag in twitter. #forevertie09, viewable as an RSS feed from http://tieconference.wikispaces.com/1117
How do you created learning that lasts forever? Based in experience, grows with the learner, has an impact that is external, creates more questions.
Forever does not mean storage, nor password protecting the information, nor the work remains unchanged, nor that everything is preserved.
Forever does mean that done does not exist (foreverism), that everyone should teach (mathcasts), and exit strategies are not optional (jot and the web 2.0 graveyard). So how do you do this?
Capture student voices:
- vocaroo – http://www.vocaroo.com voice recording
- drop.io – http://drop.io/ file sharing, drop box, and also voice mail
- screencastle – http://screencastle.com screencasting
Aggregation:
- educhat – open discussion using twitter tags http://twitterforteachers.wetpaint.com/
- Google Docs collaborative documents, presentations
Reflection:
What learning will I capture? Aggregating hash tags in twitter – great way to collect discussions from people both present and virtual. How does this captured learning let everyone teach? Every participant in the back channel can be the teacher, can participate, can ask the important question. How will someone build on this learning? If the backchannel is posted as part of the learning, it can serve as a reminder of jumping off points for the next discussion, the next learning or presentation. What is my exit strategy? I’m blogging my notes about this session.
Linked here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rm5-Ie8Hss7MgxElepGuAyw
Distractions:
- The conference network is not behaving. It’s down, it’s up!
- Ben’s battery, is it charging or not? Will his laptop turn itself off in the middle of his presentation?
Other tools discussed:
- Tweetgrid.com – set up searching for hash tags in Twitter, near real-time RSS feed.
- Bubbl.us – mind-mapping or brainstorming
Word Web June 8, 2009
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Tools.add a comment
Seems to be a trend today. Lexipedia connects a word to a web of related words. Search results also include color-coded parts of speech. This one is fun to watch. This one is from Free Technology For Teachers which also links to Visuwords, a site which graphically depicts relationships between words. I can’t get it to load from home, maybe it is getting too much press.
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/06/lexipedia-webbed-word-connections.html
What’s in a Word? June 8, 2009
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Tools.add a comment
Wordnik is an interesting tool that aggregates information about words, definitions, pronunciation, etymology, etc. It also connects to flickr and most interesting to me, shows frequency of use through time. For example, education was ‘big’ around the year 1900. What is your favorite word? Interested in looking for some new ones? From a CNET article:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10258929-36.html
Ninging May 19, 2009
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Tools.2 comments
I had the opportunity to work with Ning today. There is a curricular group that wants a way to facilitate conversations around social studies units. We looked at Ning, partly to take advantage of the threaded discussions, and partly because there are ways to sort members into different kinds of groups. I found the experience to be more ‘face-book’ social than I expected. That isn’t a good or bad thing, just an observation. For people who are ‘face-book’ familiar, the experience should be pretty easy. For others, the experience might be a little difficult from a concept perspective. I think the project is workable, at least I’ll do what I can to help make it successful.
What are your experiences with Ning? Are there other, better tools to use for organizing groups of people, converse in threaded discussions, share documents, etc.?
