Teach42

The Discovery Educator Network partnered up with Habitat for Humanity when they launched a program called Making Change for Katrina.  Here’s the quick explanation of what it is:

We focused on spare change because Coinstar estimates there is $10.5 billion in uncirculated spare change sitting in U.S. homes. We thought if we could collect even just 1% of that 10.5 billion we could help Habitat rebuild a thousands of lives! We’ve partnered up Coinstar (those green coin collection machines in supermarkets that turn your spare change into paper bills) with Habitat for Humanity. It’s so easy– go to any Coinstar pour spare change in, choose donate to MCK and within 2 days your money will be buying lumber, nails, and bricks to help Habitat voluneers and homeowners rebuild in the Gulf.

Before I moved, I grabbed my change jar and took it over to the local grocery store to do my part.  Since we’re heading into the holiday season soon and we’re also approaching the end of the tax year, I thought I’d repost the trip that I originally put up on the DEN blog.  This is how easy it can be to do a small part to make a big difference.

My wife and I moved on Friday. We weren’t quite sure what to do with our change jug because it was far too heavy to just throw into a box. So instead, we decided to take it over to our local grocery store and put our change to good use.

I’m not exactly a master at estimating things, but I figured there was probably bout $40 worth of change there. That’s the great thing about Coinstar though. There are over 12,000 of these machines located around the country in local grocery stores and convenience stores. While I can get my change counted from my bank for free, I made the decision to cash it in at 10:00pm at night. Banks were closed, Coinstar was open.

Since the DEN has been working with Making Change for Katrina, I decided to turn my change into a donation for Katrina victims. I figured that every little bit helps and there are people who could use the change a whole lot more than I can right now.

A couple more clicks and I started to pour in my change. What is it about change counters that are so much fun?

It didn’t take me long to realize that I had way more than $40 there. There’s a little ticker that counts it up as you’re pouring it in. Counts up how many of each coin there has been as well as a running total.

Next thing I knew I was passing up $50, $75 and $100. Honestly, I had no idea there was so much change in there! It took about 10 minutes for the entire jar to get counted and when all was said and done, I wound up with a whopping $120.25.

A couple of seconds later it spit out a reciept for me that I could use as a record of my tax deductible donation. Looks like I had

• 203 Quarters
• 368 Dimes
• 220 Nickels
• 2170 Pennies

Oh yeah, I also found a plastic nickel, a nut, a peg from Mastermind and some foregn coin (can anybody identify it)? Didn’t seem to want to let me donate any of those to Katrina vicitms!

The entire process took no more than 10-15 minutes and at the end of the day, it felt pretty darn good to use the loose change we had around the house to make a $120.25 donation to Habitat for Humanity by way of Making Change for Katrina. I may not buy a house by itself, but every little bit helps. Got a change jar at home? Use it to make some change of your own!

While following the trail of conversations that have erupted in the wake of Stephen Downes comments about the K12 Online Conference, I encountered this post on the Dangerously Irrelevant blog. 

Scott shows how his blog ranks among some of the well known blogs in the EdTech world.  Can I just say that I’m glad I’m not the only one egotistical enough to want to look up that sort of thing from time to time?  Heh.  Here’s the list as Scott put it together:

•     1,804 – Weblogg-ed (4,761 links from 849 blogs)
•     4,745 – 2 Cents Worth (1,793 links from 436 blogs)
•     7,734 – Cool Cat Teacher Blog (743 links from 298 blogs)
•     7,899 – Moving at the Speed of Creativity (1,287 links from 293 blogs)
•   10,372 – Learning Now (520 links from 234 blogs)
•   17,459 – EduBlog Insights (393 links from 145 blogs)
•   19,355 – Education/Technology (314 links from 132 blogs)
•   20,965 – The Savvy Technologist (398 links from 123 blogs)
•   26,142 – The Thinking Stick (367 links from 101 blogs)
•   27,930 – Ed-Tech Insider (263 links from 95 blogs)
•   28,288 – Blue Skunk Blog (296 links from 94 blogs)
•   33,355 – TechLearning Blog (205 links from 80 blogs)
•   36,732 – Around the Corner (138 links from 73 blogs)
•   44,201 – The Learning Circuits Blog (90 links from 61 blogs)
•   59,698 – The Strength of Weak Ties (86 links from 46 blogs)
•   64,353 – Tuttle SVC (125 links from 43 blogs)
• 116,125 – Dangerously Irrelevant (76 links from 25 blogs)

So of course, I had to look up Teach42.  Rank: 16,160 (324 links from 149 blogs It’s interesting, while I don’t post on here nearly as much as I used to, because of my work with Discovery Education I get to spend more time face to face with people.  Since I usually send people to the blog for resources, I’m guessing that must be helping my numbers in some way. 

So there’s my ego boost for the morning.  Number 6 on a totally inaccurate list of completely irrelevant numbers   According to the Business Opportunities weblog, Teach42 is worth about $57,000.  Of course, that assumes that I even own it anymore since it was snatched up in a corporate takeover.  But I gotta tell you, if i could sell Teach42 for that much money, I’d do it in a heartbeat.  Heck, I can always start another blog and Baby is gonna need a college education some day!

One more from the Google category.  And while this contest is for university students, in my mind this is exactly the sort of thing our secondary students (possibly even more advanced middle school students) should be doing in the computer lab as it is.  

Google is hosting a contest for students who create Gadgets for Google (gadgets = widgets).  They can be designed for Google Desktop, or to be ‘universal’ which means they can be embedded in any web page.  They don’t need to be fancy, so long as they serve a purpose. 

1. Create a Google Gadget: Think about what you’d like to see on Google that isn’t already there. Maybe it’s an event tracker for your school, a new game, or a little techno art – use your imagination! Then, get started.
2. Submit your Gadget by November 1, 2006
3. Check out the competition – and the winning gadgets.

Here’s what I like about hte contest.  Students are creating something that people can actually use on their web pages.  The sample idea of creating an event tracker for your school is something that could be put onto your school website whether it wins or not.  It’s real.  It’s not just an excercise that will disappear into the ether when the assignment is over.  It’s an authentic project with an authentic audience.

Will every student be a programmer?  Of course not! Just like not every student will play in an orchestra or become a professional writer or become a chemist.  But it’s darn good knowledge to have and much more relevant than many other programming projects.  XML and API’s are the heart and soul of a huge number of growing web technologies, so this opens up the door to that world.

Don’t know much about XML and API’s?  Don’t worry, you don’t need to.  Point your students in the right direction and if they have questions, help them figure out where to find the right answers.  Remember, you don’t need to master something in order to guide students students along the path to learning.

Oh yeah, if you need somebody to help beta test your students gadgets, drop me a line

I’m frantically finishing up a new presentation and keep coming across things that are potentially distracting that I want to share!

Check Blogapalooza from  "Writing Blog Central", Yukon Collage in Canada.  Don’t you want to attend the workshop?

There’s been some great comments on my last post about blogging success, but a snippet from a comment from Artichoke has got me thinking. 

Relationships are what new learning is founded on, and comments are the online drivers for relationships. So perhaps comments are an indicator of blog success, not the number of comments but how much powerful new thinking is engendered by a comment.

While I do still think that comments are not a solid indicator of blogging success (a point Raj makes rather well), Artichokes point about comments driving relationships is a powerful one.  This blog, more than any other thing I have ever done personally or professionally, has opened up relationships with people around the world.  It has provided me an avenue to meet, converse with, argue with and learn with people I would probably never have had the opportunity to meet with face to face.

Would I have made those relationships if the comments had been off?  Maybe.  It’s possible that people would have emailed in.  I only know of a few people that have the comments turned off entirely on their blog.  And I have to admit, I don’t take the time to email them when I have something to say  unless it’s pretty significant. 

Do you visit any blogs that have the comments turned off?  If so, how often (if ever) have you taken the time to email them?

I guess yesterday’s post has got me turning the thinking cap inward.  I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what makes a blog ‘successful’ and what that reallly means.

The most obvious answer is audience size.  More subscribers means more success.  But that doesn’t feel right.  For example, there are many blogs that have far fewer subscribers than this one that I would consider to be more influential, more information and more valuable.  I think that all adds up to more successful in my book.  On the flip side, I know of blogs that have thousands of subscribers that are garbage.  I don’t really want to call anybody out, but I think most people know of at least one or two blogs that got cut from the blogroll even though thousands of people subscribe to them. 

So if it isn’t the audience size, then what else can be used to determine the success of a blog? 

How about frequency?  If there aren’t posts getting put up there, it can’t be too successful, can it?  Well, actually it can.  That’s one of the great things about blogs.  Once you subscribe, you can just sit back, do your thing, and when new content comes around, you just get it.  For example, Kathy Schrock hasn’t done much posting lately.   Regardless, when she does post something, I know it’s almost certainly going to be worth reading.  So is she a successful blogger?  Certainly.  On the other end of the spectrum, you have people like Wes Fryer and Miguel Guhlin.  If I there isn’t something in the aggregator from them everytime I open it, I start to worry!  So frequency of posting isn’t quite enough to make a blog a success or failure.

Of course, Google measures success by the number of incoming and outgoing links to a blog.  I have to admit, that’s one area that I know I’m pretty weak.  I need to get better about linking in the posts that sparked ideas that I’m blogging about, as well as hyperlinking the various sites and services I refer to.  But does that really determine whether a blog is successful or not?  I’d say not.  Online journals don’t often have many outgoing links, but they can still have incredible audiences.  Even more importantly, the thoughts written down are often valuable to readers that can relate to them. 

Oy, so we aren’t making much progress yet, are we?  Or perhaps we are. If it ain’t subscribers, ain’t incoming or outgoing links and ain’t frequency, then what’s left besides the intrinsic reward that one gets from self-publishing?   If you have a blog, answer these questions:

1. Do you get a good feeling after publishing a new post?
2. Did you enjoy blogging even before anybody knew your blog existed?
3. Would you keep blogging if the comment system didn’t exist?

I know that I can answer a resounding Yes to all three of them.  So I guess the answer to my question is really, my blog is a success if I determine it is.  Which I guess makes sense.  It’s your own blog, be your own judge.  And if it feels right, roll with it regardless of the reaction of the masses.  Success is in the eye of the beholder.

While reading a post from Anne Davis, I got turned on to the blog from the authors of Freakonomics.  If you haven’t read the book, I highly reccomend it.  Fascinating peek at today’s world in ways you would never ordinarily consider.  It’s a quick read too, like reading a magazine.

Appearantly, quite a few colleges are using it as part of their curriculum now.  What’s interesting though is that Harper Collins commissioned somebody to create a study guide to go along with the book, both teacher’s and student’s editions.  The cost?  Free.  Obviously they’re hoping that if you use the study guide, you’ll buy a bunch of copies of the book, but ulterior motives aside, it’s still pretty darn cool.  Both are downloadable, but you do need to register at the site to get the teachers edition. 

Heh, looks like the Bionic Teachers has found a way to get technology tips out that has really struck a chord with his students and faculty. 

Meet the Technology Ninja.

The Early Years
The Technology Ninja’s mother was a volcano and his father was an accountant from Belarus. His parents always had an explosive relationship and that drove him to leave home at the age of 1. He has wandered the world for centuries doing battle with all kinds of evil.

The Technology Ninja has no friends, no family and no college loans. He lives in a shadowy world full of danger, suspense, dramatic music, excessive sound effects and, of course, many, many, many differently colored ninjas.

How Technology became his Name-O (as opposed to Bingo)
Having defeated all his enemies, the ninja was growing bored. All ninjas need enemies after all. Finding no worthy foe he decided to conquer cyberspace and all the computers of the world.

He is winning, of course, but his quest continues to this day.  Although many suspect he is simply taking his time so that he doesn’t have to retire and start playing bingo and shuffleboard.

Heh, does your school have a full time ninja providing technical support?  Mounting a server has never been so much fun before!

While this sure as heck ain’t a reason to unblock them in your school, both MySpace and Facebook are trying to convert users to the light side of the Force.  The two largest social networking sites have created links that allow people to register to vote through their websites.  Facebook has over 9 million users, most of which are  college aged.  MySpace has over 54 million unique monthly visitors.

In the last election, around 22% of the 18-24 year olds that registered to vote actually showed up to do so.  While this doesn’t guarantee that people will vote, the more people who are registered, the more people that possibly could. 

So once you’re done creating your accounts on MySpace and Facebook, add your students to your friends list and if they’re of voting age, leave them a comment reminding them to register!