Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

CNN.com - A lesson in finance: Teachers sell their original work online - Jun 28, 2006

Is this a slap in the face to Open Source and Creative Commons or is there something good here?

Realisitically how many teachers are paying for online resources now? Is this the notion of “if it’s free it can’t be good”?

technorati tags:opensource, creativecommons

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CNN.com - MySpace generation going online for yearbooks - Jun 26, 2006

Your yearbook committee may be obsolete. Well there are many good arguments why this won’t work, there are some compelling reasons why this is a valuable idea. A group of teenagers have created a site called MyYearbook.com to create student designed yearbooks.

…during Spring Break 2005, just 2 high school students flipping through a yearbook, realizing it sucked. Imagine if these were online,and if everyone in them were too, everyday

“We just think yearbooks are obsolete,” said Catherine Cook, 16. “If you think about it, all you’re going to do with it is put it on theshelf and never really look at it.”

Josten’s of course argues this point.

“…will anyone want to haul a laptop to the 25th class reunion? And whathappens if the technology changes, or something happens to the dot-com?”

I’ll bet in 25 years, we’ll have many options for carrying around our digital content. (we already do). Besides, why only look at a few photos when you can access a full range of multimedia memories.
Like it or not, kids are making it very clear what’s important and the Read/Write web enables them to pursue these ideas.

How many off shoots of Myspace need to be created before more people begin to realize there is something important and valueable happening?

technorati tags:myspace, students, yearbooks, remix

Blogged with Flock

I think I’ll go with this from now on…I like it.

I always like the little comic avatars some people use in their profiles. (see Rob) Never sure how to create one, I did a bit of searching yesterday to see if there was either some free software or some tutorials using existing software. My photo and image editor of choice has always been Fireworks. I do have Photoshop installed but quite frankly have never had a deep love affair with Adobe because I felt there was way more there than I or certainly most students needed.

Unfortunately I had no luck finding software or tutorials for fireworks. I did find a tutorial for Photoshop. So this morning I spent about 15 minutes walking through it step by step and came up with this creation.

Having walked through the tutorial, I had no real idea what I was doing and if it would turn out. This is fairly similar to many students experience with school. Just follow along and don’t ask questions. You’ll see it’s right in the end.
In this case, it was fine. The key here is I had a goal and was willing to walk through the steps blindly to reach it. Is this just in time learning? Not really. I didn’t really learn anything. I couldn’t reuse any of the tools and step in the tutorial for anything else. There is no transfer of learning. For some things, that’s okay. I’m happy with the outcome but don’t have anything reusable. Students need to experience more transferable learning and yet understand the value of this type of “throw away learning”.

technorati tags:photos, tutorials, comic

Blogged with Flock

This NY Time article explains why wikipedia has chosen to protect some 82 articles and semi-protect another 179. Essentially in response to constant vandalism and disputes. I like they way they handle things and have stated these articles will not always stay protected.

Seems a bit like taking the ball away from kids at recess when they’re not playing nice. Sometimes you have to do it.

List of protected pages.

Picking up from the challenge from Brian, here are a few thoughts on my child’s dream day at school:

• Project based learning would comprise at least half of their day. There would be at least 5 choices of projects that include:
• working with local business or community groups
• cross grade groupings
• off site work
• a final product or presentation
• Physical activity and health related study would be a requirement every day
• Daily reflective journals/blogs publicly accessible
• If there was critical content or process not included in the project, these would be taught as traditional classes
• In addition if there are skills needed in projects these skills can be taught in traditional settings as well
• Everyone has a laptop

This obviously is not complete but as Brian requested, it’s a rough outline. I encourage others to develop a similar post.

I’m going to offering a 2 day workshop this summer on digital storytelling. I’ve done similar sessions before but focused more on specific applications. This time the focus will be on the process. Piggy backing on the fine work that’s out there,(Joe Lambert, Bernajean Porter, and others) I’ll be trying to help teachers understand the power of digital storytelling across the curriculum.

In addition to discussing the various tools, I want to show them the process that in some ways is very simple and yet when done well can be challenging. I wanted to once again walk through the experience of storytelling and so I created this story as a tribute to my Dad.

• It begins with an idea….looking at tangible evidence of how my father has influenced me.
• This translates to a written script.
• I collect assets….photos, music, video
• I record my script
• Insert the assets in the appropriate spots in the timeline
• Add motion to images to create a more compelling message

For my project I used Pinnacle Studio 10 but the tool isn’t as important as the message. Hopefully I’ll have as positive an experience as Miguel has had.

This one’s for you Dad.
2:30 (3.5MB)

 

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