Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Clarence shares this article via my Shared Feed in Google Reader and it spoke to me on many levels.

Here’s a parent who, although obviously tech and internet saavy hadn’t realized the power of the internet for his own kids:

I’ve written about my kids literally hundreds of times and published dozens of photos of them. But, I’ve always drawn the line at showing their faces. Every picture I’ve posted is a shot from the back, a photo with the face turned away, a costume disguise, you name it- I’ve become a master of the private, public persona. So I have to admit, that when I saw the YouTube video and Tasha waltzing up to the camera, I was a little aghast.

But although he was “aghast” at first quickly changed his view.

But then a light bulb went off. She was excited that the video was going online and that sense of enthusiasm was evident in each of the kids as they made their presentation.

Reminds me of someone.

He goes on to write about how the author of the book connects with the student.

Where it gets more interesting, is that the author of the book discovered the YouTube video and wrote about it on his blog. In fact, he wrote: “My favorite is the girl who liked Fox because he’s part of the dog family and is cute.”

Reminds me of someone and someone else

Then he “touches ‘em all” with this quote:

Anything that gets kids excited about learning is something that I will stand behind. But it takes a teacher who gets how the technology can be leveraged to make this work.

And another home run with this one:

Seeing Tasha and her friends on the computer screen, it dawned on me that I’ve been participating in an online ecosystem, but with one foot still planted firmly in a largely imaginary safety zone. I think I’ve become the technological equivalent of the parent who won’t let their kids play unsupervised in the fenced back yard at an age when they themselves used to be allowed to wander six blocks to the park as long as they promised to be home before dark.

Not only should we be leveraging our students as evidence and support for online connection and engagement but finding more parents who will support and speak out. Whether we like it or not, we have a marketing issue on our hands and satisfied customers are valuable resources.

Image: Brilliant Minds, Brilliant Hardware: Bonding Moment
http://flickr.com/photos/courosa/413146410/in/set-723361

Technorati Tags: clarencefisher, karlfisch, davidjakes, aleccouros, internetsafety

Paul Park is a high school English teacher in our school division currently serving in Afghanistan. I’ve worked with Paul over the years with a variety of web tools. Just prior to Paul’s leaving last month, he volunteered to spend time in a number of our schools talking to students about his upcoming adventure. Paul wanted to provide an insight into the war from his perspective and set up a blog to facilitate this.

The Sandbox

He’s already posted a few times and is directed much of the content towards students. Here’s an email Paul sent out to our teachers yesterday:

It’s still in its infancy but I do have three posts up already that might be of interest to you and your students. I’ll try to post as often as I can but things are pretty busy here in KAF–I don’t get any days off so I have to squeeze my computer time into my evenings. I’m aiming for at least two posts a week. Maybe I’ll even try to set a routine so that you can build it into your own schedule. No promises, though, because the situation is always changing here so I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to post at any given time. I will try, however.

A small warning–my blog is about my experiences in Afghanistan. Make no mistake, it is a theatre of war and I will be discussing some mature subjects. This is not to say that I will be getting into gory details and I will try to be positive for the most part. However, the topics of war, religious differences, politics, fighting, injuries, and unfortunately, death, will come up. My aim is to post topics that will allow students to better understand Afghanistan in many respects: the culture, the politics, our presence here, daily life both in KAF and the country itself, and, of course, the conflict. Ultimately, I want to make connections and generate discussion. To that end, I will write about these topics in the most respectful, professional manner that I know how but unless you’re willing to discuss these topics with your students, you might want to steer clear.

This is a great opportunity for your students to connect with an educator/soldier. He’s also expressed interested in live Skype calls.

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]

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?

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.

My wife has always wanted a VW beetle. I pretty well do what she wants so we got a 2007 red Beetle. I would have been happy with a 1995 Ford Focus but we got the beetle.

Anyway, besides the fact that it was way more than I wanted to spend, I discovered one little feature that might make the whole thing worthwhile.  A tiny auxilary jack located next to the stereo allows me to plug in my mp3 player. So my drives around my school division are now the perfect opportunity to get caught up with podcasts. Yesterday the 100km trip back and forth from Assiniboia allowed me to listen to:

• David Warlick talking to teachers in Northern Ontario. I was actually amazed at the resistance and skeptism by the teachers.
• TED TALKS with Jimmy Wales
• TED TALKS with Nicholas Negroponte.  My favourite line was in regards to school districts who asked about piloting his laptops for smaller sizes, “Screw you! Get to the back of the line!”
• Wes Fryer’s free digital curriculum talk. I always get good stuff from Wes.

I guess we’ll keep the bug.

I’ve been playing around with geotagging for about a year using a firefox extension. It was always a bit wonky. Flickr has now added geotagging. There are several ways to utilize it from the geotag bookmarklet to flock’s uploader extension. I prefer the bookmarklet but whatever works. The result is a great opportunity to tag photos to locations. I’ve started tagging a few of my photos with this result:

There are even a couple of screencasts on Youtube on geotagging and flickr.

• Geotagging with Flickr
• Geotagging with Flock

Dean and his family are having a great vacation in Montana, and will be soon (if they are not already) enjoying Yellowstone National Park. He dropped me an email today with a link to his family blog, “The Shareski Blogging Experiment.” Dean’s daughter Martha is also blogging about her vacation experiences separately. Looks like an excellent adventure is being had by all so far!