Augmented reality is one of the few technologies that have come out within the last few years that really have the ability to simply drop jaws. Primarily, it’s hung out in the marketing field, and been used in car ads and recently on the cover of Esquire magazine. Home versions include a DIY lightsasber and Addidas has announced plans to include an AR code into several of their upcoming shoes, allowing people to actually use the shoe as a controller for a video game. Seriously. I really couldn’t make that one up.

The big question of course is, does Augmented Reality have a place in education, and if so… what is it? At FETC, the folks over at SMART had a small corner of their booth devoted to Augmented Reality. The person there said flat out that they have nothing in production right now, they really have no idea where it’s going to go, they just think it’s neat, has potential and wanted to hear what educators thought.

Well, I got an email about a month ago from a company with a product called Imaginality, and they’re much farther along the path of figuring this stuff out than anybody else that I’ve seen yet. They’ve taken the ordinary webcam, combined it with images that you print out and created some pretty dynamic modules. Basically you download their software, choose which modules you want to purchase, and setup your webcam. Then, when you hold the ‘paddles’ in front of the camera, it displays various 3D objects. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What’s really interesting is the way the paddles can interact with each other. For example, check out this video of the Solar Explorer module.

As you can see, each paddle representes a different planet. The planets spin at the correct proportional speed, and have some bars in the corners representing various stats about them. But what’s interesting is when you move the planets within a few inches of each other. They resize themselves proportionally. The most dramatic example of that is when you move any planet next to the sun. Pretty powerful effect, much more so than holding up the pumpkin and a marble.

A few other examples. The video below is about the human heart. One paddle shows a beating heart, and by rotating it around you can see it from any angle. But the next four paddles display each of the four chambers. By holding up the ‘info’ paddle, you can make it translucent and see how blood flows through it. But when you start moving the paddles next to each other in the right combinations, the chambers actually connect to each other to create a complete heart.

Is this all you need to teach a student about the heart? Absolutely not. But you do have to admit that it’s a pretty amazing demonstration of the direction technology is moving. I mean, this isn’t something that you find in a museum, it’s being done with ordinary webcams and bar codes you print out. Pretty amazing.

The big question is, where does this belong in education? What kinds of AR should people be building? Science seems to be the most obvious application, and everything from biology to chemistry could make use of this. Think about the building blocks of matter, and how atoms interact with each other. But Imaginality also has a math module, using blocks to demonstrate how multiplication works. It’s more of a proof of concept right now, but it really does show some great potential.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this one. Where does Augmented Reality fit in? If you could ask them to build a module, what would you want them to create? How would you use it in the classroom?

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Matt Monjan let me know that the Simpsons spoofed cell phones in the classroom this past weekend. Yes, it’s funny, but it’s also frustrating because there’s so many hints of truth in there. Give the segment a watch before continuing. For visitors outside the US, visit FOX to watch the full episode. Clip I’m referring to is from about 1 minute in until the 3:30 mark.

Yes, it’s a comedy, but comedies are only funny if there’s kernels of truth in there. The kids are distracted by the phones. When asked what they’re using them for, they know the stock answers and can rattle them off without thinking. But there’s a big difference between a student rattling off an answer that they think will satisfy an inquiry, and a teacher actually using a mobile device for educational purposes. And all too often, the solution is pretty similar to what you see in the clip… lock it away and pretend it doesn’t exist.

Fact is, they aren’t going away. If anything, they’re only becoming more and more prevalent. School budgets are tight, and here we are with millions of dollars in technology that’s being paid for by the parents VOLUNTARILY… and most schools refuse to leverage it because of outdated policies and teachers that don’t want to modify their own classroom management strategies.

I’ve heard it thousands of times it seems, “cell phones are a distraction in class.” That’s great. So is the class pet, a window, a paper clip and pencil/paper. Isn’t teaching students to overcome these distractions part of what we do in the classroom? Heck, I used to focus on that in kindergarten! “Maybe you should put that toy behind you right now because it’s circle time. You can play with it again during choice time.” Saying that cell phones should be banned in schools because they’re ‘too distracting’ is a cop out. If your current classroom management model can’t incorporate mobile devices…. well, then it’s time to do some unlearning and relearning.

When I saw Jeremy Davis recently, he told me of an educator who uses cell phones in the classroom. In fact, this teacher requires that the cell phone be out and ON the desk. In plain site. Not hidden in a pocket or backpack. So if the student is using it, the teacher KNOWS. And if the student is using it when they shouldn’t… Well, that’s when there are consequences. Phone is confiscated until the end of the week, or the parent can pay a $25 fine to get it back for their student. Sure, there were plenty of students who lost their phones, and plenty of fines paid. They used the money to pay for a field trip before the end of the year. But the point is, the students learned when it was ok to be using the phone as a learning device, and when it was inappropriate. Believe me, no student wants to go to his parents and let them know that they need $25 to get their phone back… and explain why.

Sure, we can keep fighting to keep cell phones hidden or banned in schools. But it’s a battle that schools can’t win. Life progresses, things change. Like it or not, these devices are here to stay, and adoption rates are racing towards 100+%. I suggest teachers be proactive. Because there’s a tidal wave coming and you can either ride with it, or have it crash into you.

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A few years ago, I had the opportunity to try out an alternative to medication in the treatment of ADD/ADHD. The idea is that ADD causes some people to generate brainwaves in an abnormal pattern.

When a normal child tries to read or concentrate, he increases the amount of beta waves in certain parts of his brain. ADHD children don’t do this. Instead of increasing beta waves, they increase theta waves, the daydreaming brain wave. That means that where other children are concentrating harder to complete a certain task, ADHD children are drifting off. (source)

The machine I was hooked up to measured my brain waves and presented me with a video screen with an airplane on it. When I was concentrating well and producing beta waves, the plane would go faster. If I lost focus, the plane would slow down. I marveled at the idea and wondered whether someone could simply exercise their brain until they were no longer prone to ADD type behaviors. Of course the equipment involved made it difficult to find a location that could provide this sort of treatment, and the costs were rather higher.

Interestingly, now it seems to be available as a home game. With a Star Wars theme.

Yes I’m serious.

ThinkGeek.com has put up for sale the Star Wars Force Trainer, for about $120. As a Star Wars fan, I felt obligated to check it out. I stopped dead in my tracks when I got midway through the description.

Using dry sensor technology, the Force Trainer can determine the differences between the alpha, beta, gamma and delta waves present in your brain. You can control these different brain ’states’ by using your ability to focus and to concentrate. A micro-chip inside the Force Trainer then uses an algorithm to figure out which brain state you are in and then decides how to raise or lower the ball based on that state.

Sound familiar? I don’t know for certain what makes the ball go up or down, but if it’s keying in on beta waves, then isn’t it doing the exact same thing that I tried out in at the SMART workshop?? And if that’s the case… could this actually be a home version that ADD students could use to help train them to focus their concentration on demand?

I know it sounds crazy, but this just might be the most valuable toy a parent could buy for their ADD inclined student.

Now… when will we see a Bluetooth version that hooks into an iPhone?

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I’m not shy about how much I love my hosting company, Bluehost. In fact, I seem to blog about it once a year, it seems as thought it’s about that time again. Reason I’m mentioning it now is because they recently upped the ante once again and I couldn’t be happier.

So a friend of mine asked me how much space you get for $6.95 a month on Bluehost, because she was always filling up her hosting account and running out of space. I knew it was alot, but I couldn’t remember the exact amount so I went and looked it up. Low and behold, they’ve changed how much space you get. To infinity. Yes, that’s right, you now get an UNLIMITED amount of space with your Bluehost account.

Of course, let’s say you create a wildly successful video podcast. Each of those videos can be upwards of 100mb. With thousands of people downloading them, you’ll probably run out of bandwidth pretty quick. That’s why hosting companies like LibSyn have made a splash, because they give you unlimited bandwidth. So I looked up how much bandwidth you get right now at Bluehost. Guess what? That’s unlimited too!

How many domains can you host there? Unlimited. Subdomains? Unlimited. Email forwards? Unlimited. FTP Accounts? Only 1000. But if you need more than 1000 separate FTP accounts, we gotta talk

What else do I like about Bluehost? For $6.95 a month, you get a free domain name that you can set up a blog on with a single Click. Or a Drupal. Or Moodle. Or Joomla, or just about anything else. You get FTP, Email accounts (with 3 different webmail choices), wikis, SFTP, full stats, SSH, PHP, MySql, Ruby and the complete works. I have yet to want to do something with my Bluehost account that I couldn’t find a way to make it work.

In fact, it’s so easy to set things up and take them down that I do it for friends all the time. They want to try out a blog? I install one with a single click, let them play around, and then remove it. They want to try out Moodle? Install, play, remove. Couldn’t be easier.

Customer support is phenomenal as well. I’ve had about 4 or 5 problems over the last few years so they aren’t perfect, but the good thing is that every time I’ve ever called in I’ve gotten a person on the phone within a few minutes, and that first person I’ve spoken to has been able to find a solution. The service is exemplary.

In all honesty, in hindsight, had I known about them when I was a Tech Coordinator, I would never have hosted our school site on the XServes we bought with a grant. I’d have saved a bundle of money and just put it on Bluehost. No worries about backing things up, no worries about up time, power outages, server racks, or anything. Just let them take care of all that so you can focus on doing the good stuff.

Now, for the full disclosure part. The links to Bluehost so far have all contained my affiliate link. Whenever someone registers for Bluehost, I get a small kickback. However, I’m a big enough fan for them that I’d recommend that you use them even if you don’t use my affiliate link. So if you click here you can go check out Bluehost and sign up WITHOUT giving a cent to me. Pure and simple, I use them because I love them and I think you will too.

If you have any questions about them or want to play around with any of it, just let me know!

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Got an email from a friend of mine (who’s name shall be withheld to protect the innocent). He had a conversation with his district technology director that he asked for some help with.

I had a short conversation with our district technology director yesterday and Second Life came up. I was telling him how streaming video would be projected in SL and how cool it was … He cut me off when I was trying to explain how I thought it would be interesting to some of our teachers to see what SL was like. He asked me: What is the point of using SL? Can you please provide me with some talking points to help me in the future with “what is the point of using SL”.

So I put together a few ideas of my own, regarding why I think Second Life is significant.

provides us the opportunity to experience things that we could never experience in real life. Because avatars aren’t bound by silly things like physics and laws of nature, we can experience things firsthand in an interactive way, as well as new ways that we could only imagine before.

For example, I can watch a hurricane occur from beginning to end, pausing it, rewinding it, checking out its perspective from above and below the water line, from up in the air and so on. Instead of just studying the cell, and the parts of the cell, I can step inside one and see them moving in three day. I can see the shapes and relative sizes of its parts relative to each other. I can study a painting by Van Goh, and then actually step inside it and explore it.

It can also a valuable tool for distance learning. It provides you with a flexible learning environment that also has a personal touch to it. Virtually face to face meetings.

It’s an ideal environment for breaking down our mental barriers regarding physical characteristics. Would students treat someone differently if they had a male avatar? Female avatar? What if they chose to be African or Asian, even tho in real life they’re white? Would that make a difference in how people treat you? Should it? And so on….

And obviously by its very nature, it can really help engage the video game generation. It gives them a virtual learning environment that they can mold to suit their needs.

To be honest, I’m not certain that SL is the ideal platform for education, but I do think it’s the best we have right now and well worth exploring so we’re prepared to leverage it as well as future virtual environments. It provides a platform for live social networking, which is becoming an increasingly important skill in the business world.

However, I’m just a dabbler. I haven’t gotten to spend nearly as much time in world as many other people, and I know some of you reading this have made serious investments into using Second Life in education. I’m hoping that you’ll help my friend out and share your ideas with us.

So in your expert opinion, what is the point of using Second Life in education?

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Well, remember when I ‘reviewed’ the Teachermate PC a few posts ago? Basically I slammed it for three reasons: 1) It’s not a PC if it can only run proprietary software 2) It doesn’t cost $50 if you HAVE to buy their software to make it even worthwhile to own and 3) Their website is wonky, and that’s putting it kindly.

After writing that post, I was contact via email by Seth Weinberger, the Executive Director of Innovations for Learning. He thought that if we had a chance to talk and see it firsthand, I might revise my opinion of the Teachermate.

I gotta admit, he was right about two of those three items.

The one thing he was wrong about is the website. It’s slow and clunky, but even worse, it’s incredibly misleading. Part of the reason I blasted the device is because they’re calling it a Handheld Computer. It is NOT a handheld computer. At least, not by the colloquial definition. Rather, it’s a custom built platform designed to run their reading and math software.

What’s the difference there? Quite a bit. As Seth shared with me, they’ve spent 15 years developing reading and math software for students grades K-3. A serious amount of time and research has been put in to make it integrate tightly into the core curriculum (textbook), and really target students at their exact ability level. The software is the breakthrough. The hardware is a means for putting that software in students hands.

You’re probably thinking, why not just box it up and sell it? Seems as though they’ve been doing that. Trouble is, most classrooms don’t have a 1:1 environment. In a typical early elementary classroom, there are 1-5 computers, and 3-4 of them are sometimes working, sometimes not. T he one computer that DOES work… is on the teachers desk, not to be touched by student hands. Yes, they do visit the computer lab, but not to learn reading skills, rather to learn computer skills.

So what they did was they built a custom hardware platform SPECIFICALLY to run their software. That puts an entirely different spin on things. So perhaps the issue isn’t so much a matter of deceptive practice (billing it as a $50 PC), rather misguided marketing combined with sensationalized reporting.

Gotta share a few other tidbits that I learned while talking to Seth. I loved the idea of the Sync and Store case for its simplicity, but I didn’t realize how critical it was to use these devices effectively. The idea is, once per week the teacher goes into the classroom management software and marks off where each student is for reading and math, at a class, group, or individual level. Then, the device will load up lessons that are specific to that students’ level! The device won’t have the entire year stored on it. Heck, it won’t even have the entire unit. It will have just the lessons that the individual student would need for that week. VERY targeted. Of course, the flip side is that students’ answers/responses are recorded and uploaded to the teachers’ computer at next sync so they have a solid idea how the student is doing.

Another tidbit that almost blew me off my chair was how they’re using the microphone. The example he showed me was the Teachermate displaying an image along with a sentence below it. Then, using the built in speaker, you would hear a person read the phrase aloud. After hearing it read aloud (highlighting the words along the way), the student would repeat it back. The microphone would record the student reading it. Then, it would play the original voice reading it, the student reading it and the original once again. So the student had the ability to compare their own reading and inflection to the original! Not only that, but those recordings? They also get transfered over to the teachers computer so he or she can HEAR how the student is doing. Just think how powerful that would be to be able to break out during conferences and share with parents.

But wait, that’s not all! After reading a story (or watching an animated story), students can even choose characters from the story, stamp them on the screen, type out their own story via the onscreen keyboard (yucky, but kids are doing it anyway on their video game systems all the time), and then NARRATE IT using the microphone. The whole thing is saved and can be transfered over to the teachers computer. I know what you’re going to ask next, and no, there is no way to publish those just yet, but it’s on the list for 2.0.

Starting to get the idea why I’ve changed my opinion of the device on the whole? This is not a PC. Calling it one just confuses things. Rather it’s an incredibly powerful 1:1 deployment of the Innovations for Learning Reading and Math programs.

Of course, the big giant unanswered question is whether it’s worth the roughly $100 per student it will cost to deploy throughout your K-3 classrooms. To be honest, I don’t know. We’ll have to see what the research says once it comes in. My gut feeling says students will wind up with positive results. Could those results have come about another way without spending the money? Probably. But at the same time, this is such a no-brainer to deploy that substitutes could use it easily with little to no training. In an era where teaching quality has really come into question, this would certainly be a pretty powerful asset to any reading or math program.

Personally, I think they’re on to something here, and I’ll be watching them careful for future releases.

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A few years ago I was at the CUE conference with Discovery, and was part of a little scavenger hunt we had at the booth. People had to come up to me and tell me one innovative way they were using technology in order to earn my stamp. By far, the most innovative story I heard just happened to be someone about as far away from the cutting edge as possible.

Essentially, his district was clearing out the old technology. No, we’re not talking about eMacs, or Beige G3’s, or Purple iMacs, or even 5400’s. We’re talking about Apple IIe’s. Not just a few, 20 of them. This teacher (boy do I wish I had his name still) said, “Pass them over to me. I’ll take them.” SO they set up the computers around the edge of his classroom. While they couldn’t access the internet, they had basic wordprocessing programs available and some fun reading and math games. Yes, he could stand up proudly and say that he had launched a 1:1 initiative in his classroom!

Which leads me to an email conversation I had with Brian Mull yesterday. He pointed out that regardless of the age of the equipment, if you have an internet connection you have access to a wealth of web2.0 applications that require very low overhead. So we were wondering from a very practical standpoint whether there were any teachers out there who are using new online applications on ‘older’ computers, and how well they ran.

SO, if the computers in your classroom are 3 or more years old, leave a comment sharing:
1) How old your computers are and what type they are (PC, Mac, etc)
2) What online applications you use (Google Apps, Picnik, Slideshare, Zoho, etc..)
3) How the experience has been. Just some anecdotal notes about successes and failures.

I think there are quite a few schools on the far side of the digital divide that would be interested in hearing your experiences!

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UPDATE: After discussing the Teachermate with its creator and doing a hands on demonstration, I have posted a follow up to this post. Please be sure to read that as well.

I’ve often been told that if it sounds too good to be true… it is. A classic example is the new Teachermate PC that has recently been posted about on the Crave blog and Engadget.

I know in the blogging world, it often seems like a race to get information out first, but how about just a LITTLE bit of research beyond the press release? The more I looked into this Teachermate, the more irritated I got.

So what is it?

It’s obviously not the most powerful handheld, but it should be plenty for the kids in kindergarten through second grade for whom it is intended, with a 2.5-inch color LCD, built-in microphone and speaker, 200MHz ARM processor, 512MB of memory, and a 4-hour battery. “Software for the handhelds includes a complete K-2 reading and math program that aligns with the Chicago Public Schools’ reading and math initiatives,” according to its press release.

Sounds all well and good. Until you learn that the only software it comes with is a classroom management program. That’s it. You can organize your students into classes and keep track of how long they spend reading and doing math practice. Based on the information that I can find on their website, that’s about it. I’m not even certain what students themselves would do with a basic, out of the box Teachermate.

Want more software? There’s a Reading program and a Math program. They cost $20. Apiece. WHAM, your Teachermate just about doubled in cost right there. Don’t like those programs? Well, that’s too bad. Because those are the only programs that will run on it. So you’re pretty much locked in.

There IS a very nifty carrying case for them. They call it the Sync and Store case, and it will hold 30 Teachermates at one time. Yes, it will also charge them, and it will even sync all thirty at once which is VERY slick. Of course, it isn’t free. In fact, it costs $300 (plus shipping and handling).

So if you’ve been doing the math, you have the $50 Teachermate PC, $40 for the Reading and Math software and $10 for a 1/30th share of the Sync and Store case. Grand total for your $50 PC? More like $100. And that does NOT include a browser. Or even WiFi for that matter. Heck, you can’t even install your own software on to it!

To be honest, calling this a PC is really pushing it. It’s more like an advanced LeapFrog system or a colorful generic Nintendo DS (minus the touch screen, WiFi, and choice of software). I don’t care how good the Reading and Math programs are, charing $100 per student for such a limited application is ridiculous.

Oh, and for the record, their website has got to be one of the worst I have ever seen. Click on a link and then wait, wait, wait for it to show up. And once it does, you have to keep right clicking to zoom in in order to just read what’s there! Why use Flash to build a website that has nothing but static pages? Yeesh. Common sense here people.

Other than all that, I love the device and can’t wait to buy one.

UPDATE: After discussing the Teachermate with its creator and doing a hands on demonstration, I have posted a follow up to this post. Please be sure to read that as well.

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I’ve used TinyURL off and on over the years, but my usage of it really started skyrocketing when Twitter came on to the scene. When you’re limited to 140 characters, every single character is incredibly valuable! Shortening a URL down by even just a couple characters can really give you some breathing room.

For those of you that don’t know, TinyURL let’s you plugin in a really long URL and it’ll give you a teeny tiny shortcut to it. For example, if I wanted to tell my parents where to find photos of Aiden, I could tell him to go to http://flickr.com/photos/teach42/tags/aiden/ That’s a pretty long URL though. By using TinyURL, I can shorten that to http://tinyurl.com/2pbnyn It may not be pretty, but it’s MUCH easier to share with someone. And this can be particularly valuable when you’re trying to share a link to something like a Google Map of Wrigley Field:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q
=wrigley+field,+chicago,+il&ie=UTF8&ll=41.94812,-87.65532&spn=0.002055,0
.005879&t=h&z=18&om=1

Trouble is, many schools block TinyURL. Some are worried about people not being able to see what’s behind that URL until they click on it. Others consider it a method to get around filters (although that one has always boggled me a bit). And let’s face it, TinyURL is just so bland… Wouldn’t it be nice of there was a sleeker, shinier, more Edu-friendly way to shorten your URLs?

Well, just in time for the holidays I’ve got a little present for you! The Teach42 Magic URL Shrinker! Wouldn’t you rather have Teach42.com/go as a shortened URL than TinyURL? I know I would!

Some of you may be thinking… “But Steve, isn’t Teach42.com/go a few characters more than TinyURL.com? Well yes, but TinyURL adds 6 more characters to give you a unique URL. Mine will only add on 1 or 2 characters. So for the first 3800 URLs people shrink, it will be as small or smaller than TinyURL. So I think we’re in good shape for a while!

Oh yeah, and the Teach42 Magic URL Shrinker comes in two different flavors. The first flavor is the traditional, quick method. Plug in a URL, it gives you the Teach42 shrunken version of it. The other version has a few safety features for people who are concerned about security. When someone clicks on the URL, it doesn’t take them directly to the destination. Instead, it takes to an intermediary page that gives people a warning and let’s them see what the destination URL is before they decide whether or not to click on it. Same short URL, but a little more edu-friendly for the security conscious among us. Both flavors are full of Teach42 karma though.

I didn’t write the code for this. Full credit for that goes to TopHat Stuff Go! It was very easy to install and not too difficult to tweak to my needs. If you’d prefer to have your own URL shortener, feel free to download the code and install it yourself! Otherwise, go ahead and take advantage of the Teach42 Magic URL Shrinker. It’s there at your disposal. Oh, and for those of you worried about how long it’s going to be available, I’ll make sure that it’s up and active as long as Teach42 is around. And trust me when I say i’m not going anywhere

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Simulblogged at TechLearning
I don’t really consider myself cheap, rather I’m just very very choosy. I don’t spend much money on software or subscriptions or gadgets unless I truly feel it’s worth it. When I have a chunk of money to spend, I really take my time, do my research and try to make the most informed decision that I can.

So, with the holiday’s quickly approaching (especially Black Friday), I thought I’d share some of the gizmos, gadgets and things that are giving me geekbumps this holiday season.

For my money, the eStarling Digital Picture Frame is the top of the digital frame mountain. There are cheaper digital picture frames. There are larger digital picture frames. But I have yet to find any other digital picture frame that has built in WiFi, supports pulling in photos via RSS feeds, can have photos emailed to it, and will display text messages. Yes, this is the picture frame that geeks dream of. You upload your photos to Flickr, they magically appear in the frame. Take a photo with your digital camera and via email you can make sure that the photo is in the frame by the time you get home. Once you set it up, no computer connection or SD cards or cables are ever necessary again. Oh yeah, and no subscription fees either. Available in black or white, 7″ or 8″ screens for $199 or $249 respectively. When it comes to features, there quite simply is no better digital picture frame on the market.

What exactly is a Chumby? Wonderful question. It’s sorta like a beanbag, but you wouldn’t want to toss it around. It has a touch screen, speakers, built in Wifi, two USB ports, a squeeze sensor and an accelerometer. It can pull in widgets via Wifi that will do all sorts of things, like show you eBay auctions you may be interested in, display your Flickr photos, tell you what time it is, show you ads off of Craigslist, display the latest blog posts from TechLearning, and all sorts of other things. Plug in your iPod and it’ll play your music for you too. Oh yeah, and it’s completely hackable. Open source software, open source firmware, open source hardware. You want to tweak it, they encourage you to. One person already figured out how to get CoverFlow on it! So what exactly is a Chumby…. Well, to be honest I dunno, but it’s pretty cool. $179 in your choice of colors.

Don’t ya hate breaking out your laptop, firing it up, waiting for it to boot… and then discovering that there’s no wifi in range? Well, that will be a thing of the past with this Wifi detecting T-Shirt! Yes, you heard me right, this T-Shirt will display how strong a Wifi signal is in your vicinity. No signal? No bars! The electronics and battery pack are easily removable for washing (you do NOT want to forget to remove those). Trust me, everybody at the conference will know you’re hardcore when you show up wearing this. And let’s be honest, this could be really useful for tech directors! Great way to see where your wireless network has weak spots. A stocking stuffer at $30.

I just discovered this one recently, and it certainly deserves another mention. The EyeFi Wireless 2GB SD Card is an SD card with built in Wifi. Let me say that again. It’s an SD card with built in Wifi. Just take pictures with the camera, and whenever it’s within range of Wifi (you can check with the T-Shirt above) it’ll send the photos to your location of choice, most likely a folder on your computer or to a photo sharing site like Flickr. No more messy card readers, no more filling up the card before you finally break down and transfer your photos. You just worry about taking pictures, the EyeFi card will get them where you want. Comes in orange and orange, for $99.

Want something for yourself but also want to do something charitable? You can’t go wrong with the OLPC XO Give One Get One program. For $399, you get one of the first OLPC XO’s, but you also donate one to a child in a developing nation. Need something to sweeten the deal? Everyone who participates will get one year of free T-Mobile HotSpot access. That means free Wifi at any Starbucks across the country (hear that Warlick?). It’s one of the more interesting machines of our time, and an incredibly worthy cause. Doesn’t get much better than that.

One of the most interesting gaming phenomenons of the last few years is the tossing away of the joystick in favor of getting your entire body into the game. Between Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero and the Nintendo Wii, gaming no longer needs to be a sedentary activity. However, the one that’s get me out of my seat is the upcoming release of Rock Band. In the box you get a guitar/bass, a microphone and a drum kit. Add on another guitar and you’ve got yourself a full Rock Band, ready to kick it! Everyone plays together and you get points based on your accuracy. Don’t have three friends to play with? That’s ok, you can play online as well and hook up with people that way. The set list is incredible, and while you may not actually be playing those instruments, it certainly makes you feel like you are. Oh yeah, and during those long instrumentals during Don’t Fear the Reaper, your microphone can be used as a cowbell! $169 for the game, microphone, guitar and drum kit.

And what do you get for the person who has everything? How about a Flickr Pro account! Or a year’s subscription to Animoto! Or Premium access to Picnik! Or a few thousand Lindens for Second Life! There are so many great sites out there that may be free to try out, but have extra features or functionality available for a few bucks. Most of them are fairly reasonable, and you’re geeky friend/family member will really enjoy having that extra access. Additionally, those subscriptions are what keeps those sorts of sites going. So if you like it, it’s a great way to support it.

So there you go, my top 7 geek toys for the 2007 shopping season. Am I missing something? Another gadget out there giving you geekbumps? Share it with us!

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