Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

From the “sharing continues” files, this just in,

Google now shows my friends shared items, my “friends” are my Google Talk friends. I just want more friends is all.

Also , I discovered that I can export my Jing captures to flickr. Sort of the Skitch for Windows alternative.  Unless there’s something else?

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I irritated when my own kids use the all too common inflection at the end of sentences that turn statements into questions? As we work to help our students write and even use videos to express themselves, kids generally have limited practice in speaking in public situations.

I like this talk. Clear, concise and demonstrates an important quality all too often missing in our kids today. I remember a chat with Christian Long in Boston where he expressed the desire for kids to have the wherewithal to express themselves clearly and confidently. Christian, if you’re still out there, I’d love to hear you chime in on this one.

In case you hadn’t realized,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you’re talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you’re saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)’s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don’t think I’m uncool just because I’ve noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It’s like what I’ve heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I’m just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we’ve just gotten to the point where it’s just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we’ve become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

Technorati Tags: speech, speaking, taylormali, christianlong

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Cathy Nelson alerted me to this site via twitter and being that I’ve been immersed in my K12 presentation on design, I  began to consider why this works.

As Cathy alludes to, it’s very familiar format. Reminds me of a combination of the Apple ads and Lee LeFever’s plain English explanation videos of web 2.0 tools and concepts. There are certainly many similarities and I’m not sure which came first but there are some important design elements that make these effective communication. The common elements include:

• Whitespace…both literally in the use of a plain white background but also negative space which focuses the ideas.No distractions, just you and the ideas.
• Personal touch…with all the ability we have in technology to automate and create very slick interfaces and interactions, we are still drawn to people just talking; talking like they’re your friend, not a sales person. He’s not wearing a suit and tie, just a regular guy talking to regular people.
• Simple messages….using familiar tools and approaches to convey ideas.  Pen and a white board.

I think this is a trend we’ll be seeing more and more. Simple is good. But the use of complex tools such as flash (as used in the UPS ads) enables slick interactivity. The average user still struggles with creating visually interactive work of this nature but as with most things, these tools will become more prevalent.  The key is for us to examine the simple, clean nature of these experiences and never lose sight of the importance of clear, concise communication.  Show kids these sites as examples of effective communication techniques.

Technorati Tags: ups, communication, k12online, cathynelson

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As usually happens when I’m teaching others about a topic, this evening when I was sharing some tips about using the Macintosh operating system and Mac programs I learned a valuable tip: How to record audio and simultaneously take notes using Microsoft Word. I’d heard of this capability but never seen it demoed, and it wasn’t hard to do. We had to change the “view” in Word to “Notebook” to enable the functionality, and then select audio recording from the “tools” menu.

Interestingly, in doing some Google and del.icio.us searches for a screencast or tutorial about how to use this functionality of Word 2004, I couldn’t find any! I did find some references to this functionality in an old review of the program, but no tutorials. There are quite a few articles about using Microsoft OneNote on the Windows-side to record audio. I haven’t tried that either.

Has anyone had success recording teacher/instructor/professor lectures using either Word 2004 on a Mac or OneNote on a Windows PC? I’d be interested to hear what people think of the functional usability of these features. They sound great, but I’ve never talked with someone (in person or online) who has used them repeatedly in actual classes.

I’ve been using tripadvisor quite a bit lately and believe more and more in its model. Customer reviews are the only ranking system they use and customer use whatever criteria they like. Look up any hotel or attraction and you’ll find ratings and most important, reviews. These reviews are usually more important than the rating since they reveal bias and often details that validate the rating. Reading the through the various reviews and you’ll be pretty certain what you’re getting into.

The social networking is evident in the contributions users make and the benefit of learning from each other. Users can opt to leave the email address linked to their name if you have further questions. There likely no reason for anyone to give a good or bad review (unless they are working for or are competitor’s of the facility). Reading the reviews after the fact, usually verifies your research in some form and by adding to the comments, you richen the data.

Critical thinking is essential in that ratings alone can be misleading. For example, one hotel reviewer might give a bad rating because they discovered they don’t allow pets. This may not be an issue to you so the poor rating may be dismissed.  You tend to read several reviews in order to form an educated opinion. Checking a user’s other reviews to see if they are particularly negative or positive also provides insight.

Unlike wikipedia where it is an attempt to provide truth,  tripadvisor allows users to express their opinions and experiences and in turn allow readers to make educated decisions.

[tags]socialnetworking,tripadvisor,wikipedia[/tags]

Photo editing, airbrushing are all wonderful tools. But they do raise questions of self-image.

“Somewhere between “can we eliminate the red-eye effect?” and “let’s reshape the way your face looks,” we’ve crossed the line into creepy territory.”

After living with 4 females who watch their share of “What not to Wear”, “Beauty and the Geek”, I don’t know what to think.

 Portrait Professional
 

I spent much of the first day of the year trying to recover data.

I logged onto my laptop this morning and was trying to edit a few photos when I got my first bluescreen with the new laptop. I restarted only to discover that my profile was corrupt. Okay, not to panic, I had this happen with another machine a year or two ago so I calmly tried to login again. This time it created a TEMP profile. I saw my files stored in my old profile and copied them over. Not sure if this was a mistake or not but after restarting, files were gone. Crap!

Okay let’s try System Restore. No good. Couldn’t restore to any previous dates. Next I’d search for a data recovery tool. A couple of tries and I found PC Recovery Tool. Somewhat awkward but it did manage to find most of my files, i.e. photos, videos, music and a few presentations. This process took the better part of 3 hours.

Now most if not all of these files were stored somewhere else but I wanted to see what was necessary to recover. Backing up more often is one lesson learned and yet I wonder if I’ll really do this. I certainly am grateful much of my work resides online as well. (Flickr, archive.org, google docs, del.icio.us to name a few) The most frustrating part was trying to restore my FireFox profile. I couldn’t recover it and trying to recreate all my extensions, bookmarks and settings is a bit of a pain.

Happy New Year.

David Warlick makes this claim:

Is a teacher who is not using technology doing their job? An emphatic “NO!”

As I think about the upcoming school year, I’m hoping to be more emphatic about my beliefs about teaching and learning. This quote inspires me.

So given this I’m going to try to committ to a few things this year.

1. Challenge everyone who uses the phrase “technology integration” As it’s been said, let’s just use it and stop forcing square pegs in round holes.
2. Rather than help 100 teachers sprinkle technology into their teaching, help 10 teachers use the tools of technology to create new, engaging learning environments.
3. Help more administrators, and leaders blog. I’ve talked enough and now I need to gently guide them into experiencing the Read/Write Web.
4. Promote and explore ideas about messy assessment.

I hope to share about a number of initiatives I’ll be involved with this year but these few things will be underlying much of my work.

And if I say to someone, “you’re not doing your job”, I’ll just blame David Warlick.