Teach42

Got an email forwarded to me from my wife yesterday. She knows how much I loath email forwards, particularly alarmist ones that are nothing more than urban legends and chain letters. So she checks them out and doesn’t send them on unless there’s something I really need to see. Very glad she did…

Google has implemented a new feature which enables you to type a telephone number into the search bar and hit enter and you will be given the person’s name and address. If you then hit MapQuest, you will get a map to the person’s house. Everyone should be aware of this! It’s a nationwide reverse telephone book.

First of all, the link isn’t to Mapquest, it’s to Google Maps. But I’ll forgive the author for that one. The fact, is they’re 100% right. It really does work. Punch in a phone number, and it does a quick reverse lookup. And provides a link to a map of the address.

Now to be honest, I’m not horrified. Reverse lookups are nothing new. And there are plenty of free ones available on the internet already. I’ve looked for them, found them and used them. However, Google certainly does make it a whole lot easier to do.

I don’t see Google providing this service as a problem. It does serve as a great reminder though. Students should never be giving out their phone number on the internet. Schools should never have names and phone numbers available together on their website. And parents that are truly concerned about security, should always consider making their phone numbers unlisted. Something to keep in mind.

Try it yourself and see if your phone number brings up your name. If you want to opt out, you can request to have your name removed and from what I understand, it happens within a couple of days.

However, there doesn’t seem to be any link to editing it if they screw up your name!

BTW, I’m blacking out my phone number and address here. Not sure exactly why, but I feel like I should. Just out of curiosity, feel free to try to find out my home phone number and address. If you find it, leave a comment with the path you took to get there!

Via John Evans:

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar.

If you’re listening to podcasts, you really don’t need to read this post. If you’re on Twitter, you definitely don’t need to bother reading this. If you have an aggregator or know what RSS is, you can probably skip over this one as well.

Hello?? Anyone left?

Oh yeah, I just remembered that the only people who are going to see this are the people who have already joined the choir. When I preach about the values of blogging, I often do so….. on a blog. This was never so clear to me as during the Fireside Chat with David Warlick last week. I looked down the list of attendees and recognized most of them. While it was pretty cool seeing everyone congregated together, it really hit me that those people weren’t the ones that needed to be listen to David talk!

It’s what worried me after the love-fest at NECC in the Bloggers Cafe. We saw the light, we shouted “Hallelujah”, but at the end of the day, we’re still a tiny little minority. I dare say the majority of schools still have web pages that are updated 3 times a year and are saving up to buy a class pack of Math Blaster 2005.

So what can we do about it? How can we bring more sheep into the flock? There’s a few ways. The most obvious is conferences. And to be honest, I think we have that covered pretty well. In fact, maybe even too well. Is someone who’s never heard the terms ‘voip’ or ‘microblogging’ ready to participate in a backchannel during a Web 2.0 presentation? Throw too much at a newbie and I guarantee they’ll turn tail and won’t look back. People forget how complicated this stuff really is when it doesn’t look familiar to you. Embed’ing a YouTube video is easy. Unless you’ve never seen HTML before…

Twitter is a great way to introduce people to the idea of a community, except anytime a ‘clique’ is already in place, it feels a little intimidating trying to join in. If you were new to Web 2.0 and also new to Twitter, more than likely you’d follow a few people and then ask a few questions. Then you’d wait. No answers within a few hours, and most people are probably ready to walk away. They wouldn’t realize that other people won’t see their comments until they see the follow notification and decide to follow them as well. Until then, they’re just talking into the air. Frustrating, I’m sure.

So I say, the best way to build out the choir is to be successful and build on it. And the best way to be successful is to recruit individuals, or very small groups. And in my opinion, don’t show them the tools they can use, show them how they can learn. Show them the K12Online Conference. Heck, KJ and Sylvia’s Voicethread on how to learn Second Life is also the best example for how to create a Voicethread that I’ve seen yet. Show them the Classroom 2.0 Ning, with it’s massive community of people who would be thrilled to help them, and all the resources available at their fingertips. Show them EdTechTalk, and all the live and archived shows that can be listened to while they’re cleaning up their classroom.

I used to think that if you were going to teach educators just one thing about the world of Web2.0, it was how to blog. The reason I thought that was because it gave them a voice, a way to share. But really, the deeper reason was that it gave teachers an opportunity to connect with each other. Frankly, there’s better ways to do that now than just blogging. I’ve refined that thought slightly, and now believe that the most important thing you could teach a newbie would be how to build out their network. How to connect with other teachers and resources that will push their boundaries. And most importantly, how to support themselves when they stumble.

Mark Wagner pitched a variation on this theme to NECC, and I hope they take him up on it. Regardless, I love the title he used. “Learning to network, networking to learn”. Catchy, eh?

Falls right in line with that old phrase… Give a man to fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime. Connect him to networks of hunters, and AllRecipes.com and he’ll be able to eat a tasty fillet of tilapia with mushroom risotto and spring vegetables with lemongrass today. And tomorrow, maybe he’ll start off with some smoked salmon and capers before moving on to….

Via the DEN Forums

Linda Bilak, STAR Discovery Educator, is in the running to carry the Olympic Torch for the 2008 Olympics! Here’s the details:

I entered an essay in the Lenovo “New Thinkers” for the New World competition. My essay explained how I am teaching students Spanish by bringing the world to them on my laptop. They are selecting 3 people to carry the Olympic Torch in the relay in Beijing prior to the 2008 Olympic games … The top three videos win this amazing opportunity … I have been a Star Discovery Educator since 2005. I would be PROUD to represent all new thinking innovative teachers like the DEN!

Right now, she is currently in third place, so if the contest ended today, she would be one of the three winners! However, there’s still quite a bit of time left in the contest, so she needs your help. Click here to watch Linda’s video and vote for her.

Let’s do everything we can do make sure she makes it to Beijing. Ask your colleagues, family and friends to vote for her the Chicago way: early and often! Voting will continue through October 24th, so keep coming back and keep voting.

FYI: Picnik, my favorite online photo editing site, has gone premium! For at least this week, all the premium features are free, so swing by over there and check them out. As you can see, I’m digging the ability to add text to photos!

Fantastic opportunity for both teachers and students…

On Wednesday, October 3rd at 11am EST, the DEN is going to be hosting an incredibly special webinar. Mick Kaczorowski, Senior Executive Producer for Animal Planet, will be sharing his experiences working on Meerkat Manor, both the hit TV series and the upcoming movie!

This webinar, the latest in the Discovery Connect series is for teachers to share with their students. Mick will provide you with an exclusive behind the scenes glimpse of how Meerkat Manor is filmed, documented and edited into a television show. Students will also have the opportunity to ask Mick questions live during the webinar.

Click here to register. Space is limited, so be sure to register soon!

Meerkat Manor, now in its third season, is the most unusual reality show on TV. It follows the exploits of a family of meerkats. Standing tall at only one foot high, the meerkat is a small member of the mongoose family that thrives in one of the driest places on Earth – the Kalahari Desert. On the surface, the meerkats seem like adorable creatures, but do their cute façades mask their true colors? These highly social creatures are precocious and tough enough to send a cape cobra slinking into a hole.

View an episode of Meerkat Manor with your students prior to the webinar at the official website on AnimalPlanet.com!

We have webinars occurring every week. To see what other webinars Discovery Education is offering, click here to view the entire schedule.

About Mick Kaczorowki: Mick Kaczorowski was named Senior Executive Producer for Animal Planet in July 2005. In this role he is responsible for the editorial content for hundreds of hours of programming, with a special focus on natural history documentaries. Meerkat Manor: Queen of the Kalahari, the movie is based on the critically-acclaimed series which he oversaw for Animal Planet US. Previously, Kaczorowski was named executive producer and managing editor for the Discovery Channel in 2001. In 2002, he began overseeing production in the areas of daytime and fringe programming, serving as executive producer of It’s Christopher Lowell and helped create the 2003 daytime series Rally Round the House and Double Agents. Over the past few years, Kaczorowski has supervised Land of the Mammoth, and the Emmy award winning shows Allosaurus: A Walking with Dinosaurs Special and Walking with Prehistoric Beasts, the sequels to Discovery’s acclaimed, highest-rated programs. He provides editorial guidance to 30 hours of additional programming including Body Detective, Planet Storm, Terror on the Tracks, Beyond Human Limits and the series Storm Warning and Into the Death Zone.