Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

I’ve been using Cocomment to track my comments since May 2006. I don’t always remember to track every comment but it’s the best way I’ve seen so far. So I went back and tallied the number of comments I wrote divided by the number of posts I’ve written.

99/140= .71

So the point is that I write more posts than I write comments. I don’t know what an optimum number would be but it seems to me that if blogging is really about reading, reflecting and writing, then I should be commenting at least as much as I post. I know some prefer simply to link to posts and comment on their own blogs but their is something generous about commenting right on the blog you’re reading. It’s not only generous but I think enables conversations to flow better. Especially for newer bloggers, it’s important to encouarge them as many may not even have trackbacks enabled or subscribe to technorati searches of themselves. Taking every conversation back to your own blog is a bit  arrogant in my opinion. Sometimes it does make sense when you are planning to take a post in a different direction or want to  expound further but  you should still leave a comment.
Here are some champion commenters:

• Ewan McIntosh 633 comments since March 20
• D’Arcy Norman 441 comments since February 7
• Vicki Davis 236 comments since June 26
• Karl Fisch 229 comments since August 10

These are some number and habits we should be considering. By the way, you can subscribe to other people’s comments as well. So if you have the means, calculate your comments to post rating or as I call it “commpost”  rating.  I’d like to get close to 1.0[tags]commpost rating comments[/tags]

Last week I got to spend 3 full days learning all about Palm(R) handhelds and the wonders of one to one computing. Very cool and the possibilities continue to mount.

I scheduled my flights to insure I was able to spend a full day in San Francisco. So Saturday was my day to enjoy the city by the bay.

Being a small town boy and never having been to San Fran, I wanted to make sure I was prepared for the day and get the most out my time. So early preparations began with many tours using Google Earth.  I created a folder of all the major sites that included, transportation, hotels, sights, geocaches and more. Next I downloaded the BART schedule to my Palm® TX so I knew exactly when and where to catch the train. I also downloaded several geocaches into my device as well as a tourism application for San Francisco.

Arriving on Saturday morning at the corner of Powell St. and Market, I hoped on a cable car and headed for the Fisherman’s Wharf. I walked around a bit and decided to go after my first geocache.  I headed away from the water and was quickly walking in a residential area. I knew the cache was supposed to be in a garden so something was wrong. Pulled out my TX and connected wirelessly to someone’s router and retrieved the information. I had entered in a wrong coordinate so I changed it and was on my way. Found the cache and explored a nearby park.

Then I walked towards Pier 41 and 39 and got a cruise of the Bay. After the cruise I looked for my second cache. Smallest cache I’ve ever found. Using my map, I got the bus up to Coit Tower and later connected to Lombard Street.

When back downtown and send a few emails from Union Square. Got my train back to the hotel and the shuttle to airport.

I’ve posted before about using technology for travel, it truly did allow me to plan and enjoy my day.  I only made one mistake. My flight left at 22:15 which for some stupid reason I told myself that was 11:15pm. They had already taken my luggage off the plane but kindly put it back as I realized my error.  Can I convert my Palm handheld to recognize the 24 hour clock or do I have to figure that out on my own?

Wasn’t really aware of this inquiry amongst bloggers but Wes tagged me so I’ll oblige.

The question of how the blogging process works for me is likely not vastly different from others but in an effort to be somewhat original, here goes:

1. Originality. It doesn’t take long for a topic to hit the blogosphere and in no time becomes old news. Unless I feel I can contribute something really unique, I’ll likely leave it alone. On the other hand, there’s a bit of a journalistic appeal to be the first to post a breaking story or least present something new.
2. Brevity. The nature of the web requires a different style of writing. Personally I almost am disappointed when one of my regulars decides to write a short dissertation. Not that there isn’t a place for that but I’ve become accustomed to very concise writing that DOESN’T fill in all the gaps. That’s what comments are for. I don’t think I’ve written many posts over 500 words.
3. Emotion. Some might call it passion but often I’m simply compelled to write out of a reaction to a post, news story, or other observation. That doesn’t mean that I write it immediately. Often I’ll start it, leave it, think some more, read some more and finish it.
4. Coolness or Humor. These are certainly less in depth but I think our blogs should reflect our personalities. Injecting the less than academic posts are important. I like bloggers who let their hair down once in a while.
5. Personal. While many of the things I write about are reflections on things I read the stuff I experience with teachers, students and administrators is the most important. As someone who is not dealing with kids everyday, the fear of being out of touch concerns me. I find most pleasure sharing what I’ve done and seen.

That’s it. Brief enough?

Thanks to this tip from Jeff and my blog now looks pretty good on a handheld. An easy Wordpress plugin.

I’m in Santa Clara (the heart of Silicon Valley) at the Palm Educator’s Training Coordinator’s certification. This is largely connected to our current Palm(R) Handheld project. The training emphasizes early on that the Palm products are not PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistants) but handheld computers. The distinction is significant in that the term PDA or PalmPilot usually diminishes the power of the handheld to an organizer. Clearly there’s more to it than that. The Palm company is committed to being the word’s leader in mobile computing. Obviously after the recent unveiling of the iphone, they won’t be alone but certainly the push to mobile computing is huge.

In a school division facing many budget cuts and change, the advent of one to one computing will be a tough sell. Add to that, mobile computing now can include cellular phones. That’s going to be another challenge. Wake Forest is currently using smartphones and is discovering some great benefits. This recent posting by Leonard Low, outlines why mobile computing matters.

As I continue to manage the current Palm project and begin to launch another laptop based project, the power of mobility will be an interesting and important distinction.

One a side note, I didn’t bring my (our) cellphone with me and when I tried to find a payphone in Mountain View, I was told there were no pay phones..everyone has a cell. I’ll know for next time.

Here is the latest edition of the Edtech Posse podcast. The tone of the conversation was to focus on the positive nature of particularly higher education. The theme of the discussion was to focus on positive gains in education, particularly in higher education. Since it begins with celebrating the succsess of our alma mater’s football team, it seemed fitting I created the shownotes while watching the NFL playoffs.

Thanks Rob for editing and uploading.
Show notes:

• Vanier Cup
• University of Saskatchewan
• U of S Learning Centre
• Transforming Teaching
• Digital Internship at the University of Regina
• Kathy Cassidy Video
• The New Face of Learning
• Tools of the New Learning Environment (University of Manitoba)
• ECMP 355
• Bluedot
• Owning the Teaching and Learning
• Google buys Jotspot
• High Tech High Touch
• Rick’s Podcasts

Final Score: Laval 13 Huskies 8. Wait till next year.

Like much of the western part of North America, we got hit with a pretty nasty blizzard. For my Australian readers, a blizzard is defined as “severe winter storm condition characterized by low temperatures, strong winds, and heavy blowing snow.” But what does that really mean? Rob posts some photos from outside his school, like the one to the left.

While my part of the province didn’t get quite the same weather, I was certainly paying close attention. Daryl Pearson’s class in Meadow Lake posted some very interesting videos of what they did as a result of a depleted school population as well as some weather updates.

“We took the morning to divide our 13 student class into four groups to create a project about the effects of the blizzard. We had a podcast group, a newsletter group, a video group and a digital story group.”

This is what school should be like everyday. Kids creating and publishing content based on what’s important to them and the world. After reading Alec’s post about Lessig, it clearly demonstrates:

Anybody with a $1500 computer can take sounds and images and remix them in ways that say things differently, in ways that express ideas more powerfully than any written text could ever, given the character of the cultures we’ve become. These tools of creativity have become tools of speech. They represent a new potential to speak, a new potential to learn, they are a new literacy for the 21st century, doing for images and music and film what we took for granted growing up, were our freedoms with the pencil and the typewriter. The freedom to capture and share and remix ideas in ways that express them differently.

Too bad it sometimes takes a blizzard to get this.

Thanks to Pete Reilly for digging into the stats to confirm what most of us have been saying for quite some time in regards to online safety. We know it’s important but it’s over hyped….way over hyped.

When we slice the “less than five percent pie” into these smaller pieces, the risk gets much, much smaller. Of course, statistics aren’t going to matter much if you are the parent of a child who has had an online incident, or the leader of school that has experienced one.

The question is, “Are we going to take a “zero risk” approach to using technology and the tools of the Web?”

Read the whole article.