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Archive for July, 2009

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Top 10 FREE Web 2.0 Sites for Educators: NECC Edition

I’ve had several requests via email for my Top 10 presentation from NECC, and realized that I should probably post it here. Of course, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing!

So here’s a link to the presentation slides, such as they are. Most of the presentation is live demonstrations, so they’re only of limited value by themselves.

Here’s a link to the ISTE broadcast of the session. Video looks and sounds great, but they didn’t record what I was doing on the screen until 20 minutes in.

Then there’s my own personal broadcast of it using Procaster and Livestream. It has what’s happening on my screen throughout the entire presentation. However, the camera angle isn’t exactly the most flattering one I could have chosen :)

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7/20/2009 162 Comments
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What to do with a dog tag

A picture I took of myself wearing dog tags I ...
Image via Wikipedia

ArtsCow.com is doing a sale right now on their custom Dog Tags. Using their designer, you can upload your own images and have them printed out on a dog tag. Normally, they cost 8.99, but through August 16th, they have a sale going on. If you use the coupon code 199DOGTAG, you can get a two sided dog tag with free shipping for $1.99. I don’t ordinarily post deals like this, but I think this could be a lot of fun for educators and it’s a pretty darn reasonable price.

So what can you do with a $1.99 dog tag?

  • Create one for each of your students that has your School, Class Name, School contact info, and then their name and/or photo on the back. Be great for field trips, and early learners can use it to help learn how to spell/write their name.
  • Random student grouping. Mix and match pictures and colors on each side, so you can use them for random grouping. For example, if you want to be able to do groups of 3, 4, 5, or 6 at different parts of the day, put 5 different animals on 3 different color backgrounds on one side, and then put 6 different shapes on 4 different colors on the other side. Then you can give each child a tag when they walk in, and call out groups as you need it. “All squares, come to the writing table.” “Yellow tags, go to music, green tags, stay with me.” You get the idea.
  • Extension activities/centers. When students finish their assignment, they can pick an extension activity out of the bucket. Only put in as many tags in there as you can have at that activity or center. They were it as they play, and then put it back and pick a new one when they’re done.
  • Job chart. List their jobs on the tags, and they can wear the tag to remind them what their job is until they do it. Then they just hang it up.
  • Create permanent versions of Kevin Honeycutt’s Web2.0 keychain. A website on one side, a tip and a mentor’s email on the other.
  • Bathroom passes, hall passes, Star of the day necklace, create yourself a cool keychain, etc. Hey, for 1.99, why not?
  • Rewards for other teachers at your school. Create your own, Technology Teacher of the Month award! Give your colleagues a pat on the back for doing innovative things with technology in their classrooms. For $24 you could create one for every month this year.
  • If you’re a geocacher, this would make a fantastic travel bug!

That’s about it off the top of my head. So let me toss the ball to you. What might you create custom dog tags for?

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7/20/2009 8 Comments
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Education will never be a trending topic

The crowds at NECCAnybody who spends any significant time on Twitter is familiar with the concept of trending topics. They’re essentially a taste of what’s on people’s minds and typically revolve around recent news, television events, buzz generating blog posts and of course, memes.

At large conferences like NECC, with hundreds of people using the #NECC09 hashtag in their tweets, some people speculated whether it would become a trending topic or not. The answer was a resounding No.

It has always been a mystery to me as to just how many posts were required to make it into the trending topics list, and recently Buzzgain published their own research of the subject. The results?

Between 12 (midnight) to 6 am PDT: approximately 1200 tweets and about 500 users to be trending

Between 6 am to 12 Noon PDT: 1700 tweets and about 733 users

Between 12 noon to 6 pm: 1500 tweets and about 812 users (this may be because there are more people during this time but they tweet a lot less)

Between 6 pm to 12 midnight: 1900 tweets and about 922 users

So at best, during the overnight hours when traffic is lowest, it would take about 1200 tweets using a given hashtag to become at trending topic. Not only that, considering that according to their research, a trending topic has an average shelf life of about 11 minutes, there would need to be more than 100 tweets per minute for it to attain the ‘weight’ needed.

While there may be 139,665 people in the education directory of Twellow, you have to go several hundred deep just to wade past all the social media junkies obsessed with gaining the most followers.

I don’t know how many ‘real’ educators there are on Twitter, but I do know that there just aren’t enough to make a dent in the Twitterverse on a mass scale. In fact, it’s futile to even put any efforts in trying to effect real change there. It’s wonderful for making connections and sharing ideas, but it’s just not the right place to effect any significant change. No matter how loud the choir sings, it’s just not going to be heard above the clamor about Harry Potter and Michael Jackson (no connection between the two implied).

As popular as Twitter is, as popular as Facebook is, they are both still used by only a fraction of educators, and within that fraction, they only reach the niche audience you have. I’m grateful to have a fairly large audience on Twitter, but even so that’s still less than 5,000 people, and of those I know a large number likely registered and never logged in again.

It isn’t that there isn’t value information being communicated via Twitter. It’s just a shame that it’s only causing small ripples and then disappearing into the ether.

The reality is, ‘old school’ communications are still the most effective for dealing with the masses. Email and newsletters still carry quite a bit of weight, and from my own experience tend to reach much farther than a tweet or blog post.

With that in mind I’m curious to hear your ideas for getting the ‘big ideas’ and key conversations out to the masses. Should we be aggregating them together and creating a “Tales from the Eduverse” mailing list? Sending out a newsletter in print or via email?

The critical question being, if the ‘right’ ideas are being shared in the blogosphere/TwitterPlurkoverse, how do we communicate them out to the rest of the education community?

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7/17/2009 29 Comments
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Destination irrelevant

Found via EDITing in the Dark

I’ve been a Mythbusters fan, long before I started working for Discovery. What blew me away when I had the opportunity to meet them, was that I discovered there was absolutely no acting on the show. They really are as passionate about learning as they seem to be. So when I found out that Adam had a TED talk, it was no surprise to me that he focused all of his energy talking about how he focuses all his energy on his own personal learning journeys.

So as you watch this video, just think about one thing… what are our students this passionate about, when do they have the opportunity to express it, and what do we do to foster it?

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7/7/2009 3 Comments