Archive for August, 2006
Hostile takeover of Teach42?
I registered Teach42 for Blogshares way back in the day, but never really got into it. Every once in a rare while, I’d swing by and look at it, but I didn’t ‘get’ it.
I can’t remember whose link I followed today, but I wound up on Blogshares and looked up this blog. At first I was pleasently surprised to see that it had gone up in value, but then I was in for some shocking news!
Manatee Ventures performed a hostile takeover at a total cost of B$288,229.24 using a Dean (artefact)
I’m not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds serious! I figure that’s either really cool (whoohoo) or a catostrophe (boo). Either way, I find it kind of interesting that somebody picked it out of the crowd.
So I guess I should get in touch with the person who took over the blog. Hope he doesn’t mind me putting my feet up on the my desk as I type….
Taking the pain out of parent teacher conference scheduling
I may not be working at a school right now, but I still wake up in a cold sweat when I think about scheduling parent teacher conferences. For years, it was an absolute nightmare for everybody involved. The parents had problems getting times that worked for them, in blocks that actually made sense. Teachers either had huge chunks of free time or no breaks for hours on end. And anybody who was involved in setting it up was usually swamped for weeks leading up to conference day, as everybody kept trying to tweak their own schedule to make it a little more palatable.
Graphtech, a company I worked regularly with when I was a Director of Technology, created a program called PTConference Maker. I got involved with it pretty early on, but even with the bugs that we ran into at the time it made my life infinitely easier. It’s a web based system for conference scheduling, and takes the pain out of it. Using a series of spreadsheets, you assign students to their teachers and classes (I exported my data out of Powerschool). Then, on signup day, parents log on to the website and choose which teachres they want to meet with, whether they want breaks in between their conferences, and what times are most convenient for them. The software does the rest.
They keep improving it every year, and while I haven’t played around with this years demo, it looks like they’ve made some nice upgrades yet again. Parents can block out certain times that they’re unavailable, print out partial schedules, now teachers can get a limited login to tweak their own scheudle and breaks if they want! That would have greatly reduced the number of phone calls I fielded during those weeks leading up to conferences.
One other thing I loved about it was the support they provided. Obviously the first few days of registration are the most intense. Graphtech provides full phone support, so instead of answer hundreds of “I can’t find my password” and “Should I click ‘ok’ when it tellls me to click ‘ok’” types of questoins, Graphetch can field them all and just pass along the really tricky ones that need more personal attention.
If you haven’t moved to online conference scheduling yet, or aren’t satisifed with what you’re using, this is a solution that I’ve used and can wholly reccomend. Heh, and if you do look them up, tell them that I sent you their way. They’ll get a kick out of that!
Flickr in Education – Students’ thoughts on the subject
Plenty of people have discussed whether Flickr is appropriate for education. There’s no quesiton it’s sexy, and if you have modest needs it’s free. However, it is essentially unmoderated and it’s possible for adventurous students to find images that are clearly not ed-safe.
Instead of dictating policy for his students, he brought them into the conversation. He explored the site with them and then let them discuss the pros and cons of using it in the classroom.
Some highlights:
“This site had more relevant pictures than just a Google Image search. It was much easier to find pictures that would better suit a project. The time that it took to search through the pictures was reduced. The disadvantage of this site is that some of the pictures are Spaceballs or copyrighted making them unuseable for this project.”
“I honestly don’t think that the inappropriate images really matter that much. I mean were all practically adults, and if we can’t handle a few naughty pics, then we shouldn’t be using it. All you have to do is scroll down and you’re good. So despite the inappropriate pics, I think using flicker is still a good resource.” (note, these are high school students)
“Personally, I would rather not come across any inappropriate images if I could control the internet and all that is in it. But when I think about my search for pictures on Google while working on my last digital story this past month, I think I definitely came across a greater number of inappropriate pictures. Maybe not by a lot, but it’s all a matter of what you’re searching for and how people in the internet have stretched that word. It’s hard to avoid so we have to be responsible in dealing with the things we see.”
“The way I see it, it also has a lot to do with WHAT you search for. It’s not like you’re just going to come across an image that you don’t wanna see by searching for blue skies or turtles… So what’s my advice? Be smart with what you search for and for the most part you won;t see anything that you don’t want to.”
I have my own opinions, but I think opening up the conversatoin to the students is a fantastic idea. It helps them to think critically about something that’s going to be a commonplace experience for them on the internet. I don’t care how many filters we use, students are going to encounter material that adults deem inappropriate. It’s our job to teach them how to deal with that. And unfortunately, blocking sites doesn’t quite teach them what the need to know.
Drag and Drop Geotagging with Flickr
Thanks for the tip from Jim Wenzloff
Flickr has added a great new feature recently, drag and drop geotagging. The only way it could be easier is if camera had a GPS chip in it. Just click on Organizr and then click on Map. From there, you can drag your photos onto a map where they belong. Got a photo of a local museum? Look up its address and drag the photo there. Once you do so, anytime somebody pulls up the map of that area, they’ll see your photo in the proper place.
This is perfect for virtual field trips, and great for building initial knowledge of an area with a little perspective. Pull up the satellite view of a specific area so you can see the overhead view, and then click on photos that have been tagged in that area to see things from a human view.
Tons of potential there. If you use Flickr, give it a try. If you don’t, this is a good excuse to jump in.
If you want to read more about it, check out the review from TechCrunch
Crazy about commenting
This one is good enough that I had to cross post it with the DEN blog.
CoolCatTeacher has got a fantastic post about how valuable commenting is as part of the blogging process. She also shares her tips for being a comment king or queen.
Commenting has truly been the fuel that has fired readership for my blog and opportunity for me. It is also part of being a responsible blogger in general.
If one is an expert, I guess they may just want to keep their “wisdom” on their own blog, but the true conversation participants are those who contribute to the discussion wherever the blog posting is.
She’s got some great ideas in there, several of which I’m going to act upon myself. I’m going to give CoComment another try (had some issues with earlier incarnations), and add a “Recent Comments” block to the sidebar of this blog.
Whether you’re an experienced blogger, a newbie, or just a reader for right now, she’s got some great suggestions.
Animator vs. Animation
Take a break today and enjoy a little Flash animation. If you’ve ever used Flash, you can truly appreciate the creative use of the various tools in the software.
Back to Boston: Building Learning Communities podcasts released
Podcasts of many of the sessions at the Building Learning Communities conference have been released! If you couldn’t attend, you should definitely check them out. Heck, even if you did attend, this is your chance to get a second helping.
My personal favorites are Marco Torres’ opening keynote, Andy Hargreaves’ day 2 keynote, but every one of them is worth the download.
Mmm… Learning is tasty.
Be good at everything.
Around January 1st, my son will be born. He will be my first child. Let’s be honest, life is pretty uncertain. It’s possible he’ll be my only child. It’s my responsibility to raise him, to educate him, to instill morals and ethics into him. To prepare him for life in the 21st century. What will his life look like? Who knows. If you’ve watched Karl’s PowerPoint, you’re aware of how little we know about what life will be like 10 years from now, much less 20 or 30 years from now. Here’s one thing that is certain.
I want him to be good at everything.
I know that sounds like a simple statement that I’m sure every parent must think at one time or another, but I truly mean it. I know that some people will argue with me to the contrary, but I’ve found that it’s better to be good at everything, than great at just one thing. What do I mean by that exactly?
Examples from my own life: I am not an athlete, but I have completed a marathon, a triathalon and a 6 hour adventure race. I’m not a programmer, but I’ve customized and tweaked HTML and scripts that I couldn’t even begin to understand. I’m not a contracter, but I’ve installed ceiling fans, fixed my furnace, and repaired a sink last week.
I’m not an expert in just about anything, but for some reason people always seem to come to me when they’re stumped. And usually I can find a solution for them.
That’s why I want him to be good at everything. Does that put a lot of pressure on him? I sure hope not. It’s more of an attitude than an aptitude. It’s the difference between saying, “I don’t know” and “I don’t know… yet.” It’s about embracing failure as a precursor to success. In the words of Thomas Edison, “I have not failed seven hundred times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those seven hundred ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
In my opinion, that is going to be the key to success in the 21st century. It’s more important to be able to be diverse and inventive, than to be efficient and specialized. Being great at one thing may get you recognition. It might even get you financial security. But there’s only room for one up there, and most people don’t have much of a chance to get there. Better to give him the hills, the plains, the rivers and the oceans to explore, than restrict him to just one mountaintop.
How can he be expected to be proficient in technologies that won’t have been invented until after he leaves school? How can he thrive in a society with needs we can’t begin to comprehend yet?
By being good at everything.
Elgg: Wait till next release
I’m probably gonna get blasted for this one. I’ve been looking for some sort of software to create a custom, ed-safe MySpace. I posted about it and quite a few people suggested that I take a look at Elgg. Based on their advice, I decided to give it a shot.
First I registered at their site and started to explore it. Gotta admit, I’ve seldom experienced more frustration in checking out a new site. The bulk of my frustration comes from one little problem: there’s no way to find communities to join. You can search for people, but you can’t see what communities they’re in, unless you happen to stumble upon somebody that custom coded their own profile page and listed it. There’s no way to search for communities, nor is there any way to list them. Basically, you’re stuck fumbling around looking for content and not being able to find it. Unbelievably annoying.
I decided to contact the Elgg team to let them know how difficult it was to get started there. I’d love to say that they were helpful. Unfortunately they weren’t. I asked how I was supposed to find communities to join and they responded with, “We’ll be making that easier in the next version.” When I asked them again to explain to me step by step how a new user can join their first community, they responded, “We’ll be making that easier in the next version.” I’m not sure if the person was just blowing me off, or whether there truly is NO way to find your first community to join in Elgg. It’s a Catch 22. In order to join a community, you have to be a member of a community. Unfortunately emailing the developers left me even more frustrated than I had been prior to that.
So then I decided to try to host my own and see if I liked that better. While it wasn’t overly difficult to install, it is a little funky on the backend. I had some php issues to figure out, but eventually I got it up and running. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I was hoping that I’d be able to do simple things like customize the profile categories and such. For example, I’d like to remove the box that says “I would like to….” and add in one that says, “My first computer was…” However, if there’s a way to do that in the admin module, I certianly couldn’t find it. In fact, as an admin, I was astonished by how little control over the site I had. As I understand it, you can make a ton of changes in the code if you want, but unfortunately I’m just not a programer, so that doesn’t do me any good. It very much felt like one size fits all, and unfortunately the default site just didn’t fit my needs.
Here’s the one positive that I have to say about Elgg. The folks at Worldbridges have created an Elgg community called EducatorBridges. It’s a dedicated Elgg community just for teachers. Sort of an EduMySpace. It’s pretty cool, and there are some people that seem to love it. I played around there and gave it the ol’ college try. While it definitely did work and I could see some applications that it might fit for, it just didn’t do it for me. I wasn’t a fan of the navigation of the site and the way that people networked together. Hard to pin it down, but I felt like it was a struggle to make any sense of things. They do have over 150 registered users though, and several people seem to be very active, so it must be meeting their needs.
So for now, I just can’t give Elgg my seal of approval. Even combining Elgg with Moodle wouldn’t do it for me. I just don’t see Elgg adding enough to Moodle to make it worthwhile to me. I’ll give it another shot when version 7 hits the net. Until then, I’d look into alternatives.
You say you want a revolution?
After reading Guhlin’s post about his fears that Discovery Education is taking over the digital media world, I had a very interesting IM conversation with Hall. To be honest, at first I wasn’t going to touch the conversation. I think Hall is going to respond on our own blog. But the conversation we were having generated a few ideas that seem to be sticking.
MIguel is calling for a rebellion. And I can dig that, I’m always up for a good rebellion! The goals of the rebellion? To bring low cost digital video distribution systems (DVDS) to school. Makes perfect sense. Distribution systems are cheap, storage space is cheap, and bandwidth is cheap.
The million dollar quesiton is: Where is the content coming from?
My first reaction is to say that ‘the people’ would generate the content. Yes, ‘the people’. Heck, ‘the people’ have created an entire encyclopedia. ‘The people’ have created incredible amounts of digital media on community sites like YouTube.
However, I’d hardly consider most of the content in YouTube to be worth showing in your classroom. The potential is there, but it’s raw potential.
So the next question is, could somebody create an open community for user generated educationally rich digital media? Yes they could, but would it be something that could replace the likes of unitedstreaming? Right now, I’d have to say no.
This is the age of digital empowerment. Most computers have the hardware and software to create digital stories right out of the box. Digital camcorder prices continue to drop. Every step in the process continues to become easier and easier.
And yet there’s still a significant amount of time that needs to be spent in order to create a quality educational video clip to be shown in a classroom. It ain’t easy to script it, shoot it and edit it down to a point that other teachers will be able to use it in their lessons.
I certainly don’t see it happening on a large scale in 2006.
That’s not to say I don’t see it happening soon. Maybe in about 5 years, I can see classes teaming up to create media to accompany lessons (think WikiBooks but for educational video). While students can do it now to demonstrate their learning about a topic, I’m not sure if they can do it professionally enough that other teachers would use it for their own learning just yet.
While the revolution may be coming, it’s coming in stages. I think we’re in for a few more years of Diet Coke and Mentos before we get to people posting high quality videos about Atomic Structure on YouTube.
Please note: These are my own personal thoughts and in no way represent the thoughts or opinions of Discovery Education or Discovery Communications Inc.
technorati tags:digital, storytelling, media, education, streaming, video
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