Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Every high school English teacher should show this to their class and they’ll never have to justify why students need to learn to write, read and give speeches. Yikes!

[tags]missusa,speech[/tags]

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Wes tagged me so here goes.

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) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
4. Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

1. I’ve never broken a bone in my body.
2. I wrote a university final exam 6 hours after my oldest daughter was born.
3. I can use Seinfeld or King of Queens quotes for almost any situation.
4. I love banana flavoured popsicles.
5. I would nap everyday….if my wife would let me.
6. I play the trombone.
7. I’ve been playing golf since I was 10…I’ve never bought a golf ball in my life.
8. One of favourite movies is My Life with Michael Keaton.

I’ll now tag the following:

• Alec C.
• Christian L.
• Chris L.
• Ewan M.
• Clarence F.
• Joyce V.
• Graham W.
• Robert Scoble…why not give it shot?

*I actually won’t leave a comment as the 4th rule states. I know some consider memes as a waste of time and not appropriate for their blog. I’m okay with that view. So I’ll let them decide if they choose to play. Also I love to see how many use Technorati or others to see what others are saying about them.

To illustrate the past 2 hours of my day have a look:

• 10:00 Began an Elluminate session with Jeff Utecht, his Plymouth State students, mine and Alec Couros
• 11:00 Clarence Fisher starts a chat session with me using Google Chat about his current visit to Moose Jaw. I invite him to talk to my students in a couple of weeks.
• 11:15 Session comes to a close as Jeff tells me his Skyping with Chris Lehmann…I send a chat message to Chris just to say hi
• 11:20 Tom Turner responds to an earlier “twit“  I posted about my golf swing…requesting the raw footage
• 11:25 edit and upload a 2 second clip to archive.org
• 11:25-11:45 Commenting on my students’ blogs
• 11:45 Comment on Christian Long’s image from today’s ball game
• 11:45 Preparing for an upcoming workshop on Digital Storytelling I check my del.icio.us feed to see a great digital storytelling resource by Alan found by Will

Connected and learning all the time. I’ve got a great crew working for me.

Google is putting together an interesting, fun project demonstrating the power of connection.

A few of us on the Gmail team came up with an idea to stitch together a bunch of video clips that all share one element: someone hands the Gmail M-velope in from the left of the screen, and hands it off to the right. Put them all together, and they form one long chain of hand-offs. We thought it would be fun to let everyone in on the action. Just go to http://mail.google.com/mvideo, where you’ll find directions on how to submit your clip (including a PDF of the Gmail M-velope you can use in your video). We’ll be accepting clips until August 13th. We’ll then take a selection of the submitted clips and edit them together into one final video, which we’ll release to the world on August 20th.

Wouldn’t this be a great idea to piggy back on in the classroom? We could get very creative here. Simple and yet creative.
[tags]gmail, video, connection[/tags]

Thanks Wes for guest blogging. As usual, your prolific blogging is something I can match but nice to have you showcase your talents.

I’ve been traveling for the past week and am now in Boston at the BLC conference. (I”m actually in Will Richardson’s session as I type). I’ve got some things I should write about and don’t want to lose them. Here’s a few:

1. Why the Amish are an example of a great community
2. The tools in action….mixing and matching a million tools
3. Fenway rocks
4. Meeting Seeing old friends for the first time (Darren, Will, David, Barbara, Joyce, Ewan…still having seen him yet, Bob and more)
5. Elluminating learning with David Jakes and Wes Fryer

My head is full but that’s a good thing.

When Dean guest blogged for me awhile back, he introduced a “humor” category and shared a few movies, so I figured I would do the same!

Remember the sound of a modem connecting over a phone line? Remember when the existence of “emoticons” was actually worthy of a news headline? Check out this blast from the past, I suspect from the early 1990s, from a television station in Toronto, Canada!

Wow have we ever seen a lot of changes on the Internet in a short amount of time! Via Linda Uhrenholt.

Other than the few that I mentioned in my original post, no one else bit. I was going to try a little matching game but it would likely be too easy. So here are the results and my analysis as to why they are indeed their wallpaper.

	Tim Lauer …leaves twitter to play catch with Nando.
	Steve Dembo….corporate…claims he was doing a presentation at the time. I hope there’s a baby or Cub image now
	Alan Levine (uses a rotating image script of which this is one) seeking relief from the Phoenix heat.
	Stephen Downes…a true east coaster
	D’Arcy Norman …Mr. Maui…seeking warmth from the Calgary cold.

All have some other great images on flickr. As a subscriber to their photos, these come as no surprise. If you think you know who someone is by their reading their blog, try looking at their photos. What is that saying about a picture being worth…?

[tags]flickr,wallpaper,desktop,alanlevine,stephendownes,timlauer,stevedembo,darcynorman[/tags]

My wife snapped this photo at her elementary school’s water day. Care to add a caption?