Test Google Form

Doodle 4 Google

Just found a fun art contest sponsored by Google.

There is a video on YouTube that introduces you to the guy (Dennis Hwang) who draws the various thematic title pages for Google. It shows a time-lapsed video of him creating one with a couple of mice on it.

When he is finished, he tells you about the contest for k-12 schools. Kids can sign-up their schools to participate. The winner's doodle will be shown on Google for a whole day.

Check it out!!! The 2008 winner in at http://www.google.com/doodle4google/

Technology Does Make a Difference!

Recently I was reading our local paper, The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, when I found an article reviewing a recent lecture given by Dr. Michael Bugeja. Dr. Bugeja is the director of the School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University. He seems to be a well-published author, but he seems to be on a one-man crusade against using technology in education.

As you might guess, I didn't agree with him on most of his ideas. I had listened to him on our local Iowa Public Radio station a few months ago and didn't agree with him then either. In fact, I called into the station to talk with him. We had just gotten the discussion going when the engineer at the station disconnected me. I was later assured that it was an accident.

Anywho, I read this article about a speech that he gave at the University of Northern Iowa and decided that I needed to share my side of the argument as well. Below you will see the letter to the editor that I wrote. I found writing this letter terribly therapeutic in many ways. I got to relieve my pent-up frustration from seeing this ludite educator receive all of this press. I also had a chance to share ideas about technology's role in education.

I hope that you like my letter and will share your insights with me. Better yet, if you DON'T like it, respond with where you think that I went astray:

Dear Courier Editor;

I am writing in response to Dr. Michael Bugeja comments as he “railed against the infusion of technology in the classroom.” I didn’t attend his hour-long talk that was covered in the Courier on Saturday, April 26, but I DID hear his interview on KUNI a couple of months ago on The Exchange. At that time he said that technology in the classroom was unnecessary. It was an unneeded expense for students and schools. He said that a good lecturer could make a teacher-based lesson engaging and that we didn’t need technology for that.
Admittedly, a good lecturer can be riveting. Descriptions of events can be useful. But how can a verbal description of Tiananmen Square replace a video of a single individual confronting a cavalry of tanks, which is easily accessible on YouTube. (http://snurl.com/25wql) How can it equal using Google Earth to transport the class to an interactive birds eye (and somewhat 3-D) view of Tiananmen Square? How can it match the impact of using a video conferencing program, Skype, to actually talk with someone in China who was at that monumental confrontation in 1989?
It can’t.
Our world is permanently linked. We have the opportunity to connect our classrooms with the rest of the world in a way that has never before been available. We have the resources that can turn the traditional didactic teacher-based instructional format into an interactive student-based learning experience that will enable our students to be active participants in our global society.

Sincerely,

Leigh E. Zeitz

Graphic from www.budapestsun.com

Blogs and Wikis at IACON 2008

IACON 2008 is where it IS HAPPENING in Iowa this week.

I will be presenting a Web 2.0 Tools workshop with Will Coghill-Behrends and Rebecca Anthony from University of Iowa. They will be discussing ePortfolios and Social Networks. They will cover Classroom 2.0 (even talk with Steve Hargadon over Skype) and then introduce the group to Ning - Your Customizable Social Network.

Classroom Blogs

• Selection and Integration: Readings/Listenings/Watchings/Doings - Use a blog for listing assignments for class.
• Blog-bib - An annotated bibliography on blogging.
• Weekly Teacher Blog - 3rd grade teacher's blog. This is the electronic version of the Friday newsletter for parents. Notice that there is no commenting capacity.
  
• Mrs. Sempek's Wonderful 4th Grade Class - A look at the classroom from the students' eyes. Recent posts show sign language. Look at the Sept and Oct posts to see their writings.
• Keying In - Mrs. Olson reflects on "Practicing Keyboarding While Communicating with the World." This is for the students and their parents and the rest of the world.
  
• A Trip to Burritt on the Mountain - Takes the 4th grade students on a virtual visual and textual tour of a museum before they visit so that they will get more from the experience.
  
• BG Blogging - Creative Writing blogging from Middlebury University

Overall Blogging Examples

• Keyboarding Research and Resources - Used a blog to create a database of research that is searchable by tags/labels.
• Dr. Z Reflects - Dr. Z's humble attempt at blogging.
• Edu.blogs.com - Evan McIntosh. Comments/reflects on using tech in ed.
• Captain's Blog - Journal of Captain Mark Bromwich in Afghanistan.

Blogging Utilities

• Google Reader - Google's great aggregator for blogs. You must have a Google account for this to work.
  
• Bloglines Reader - On-line RSS Feed Reader. Get an account.
• Technorati - This is the Google for Blogs.
• Google Blog Search - This is the Blog search for Google.
  

Create Your Own Blog

• Blogger - Quick and easy blogging spot.
• WordPress - Takes a little longer, but includes tagging and couple of other treats. It's worth the extra time.

Wikis

• Wikipedia - The encyclopedia created and edited by "the masses".

Wikimapia - The People's Mapping Utility

Wikimapia combines Google Maps (including satellite imaging) with a wiki system. This was created in 2006 to allow users to "Describe the whole planet Earth." This is your opportunity to identify your favorite place and then add descriptive information. It will allow you to embed the image like the one I have here on this posting or you can just have a link to it like this one.

Above, you can see an aerial view of the local Kwik Star here in Cedar Falls. For those of you who don't live in the midwest, Kwik Star is a convenience where you can purchase everything from gas (petro) to coffee to pizza to soda. It is a popular haunt of students and local residents alike.

You can add your own comments to the description of this Kwik Star (or anything else in WikiMapia) by just clicking on the box and then adding your comment. You can also add a vote as to whether or not it is an accurate description of the area.

WikiMapia is a Wonderful way for bring geography alive for students and teachers. It allows us to be part of the mapping process. You can mashup blog postings with mapping with audio commentary with ????

Give it a try.

How to Combat Griefing

This is a continuation of an earlier posting where I told you about begin griefed (also known as a strong-arm robbery.)

I don't want to sound like a whiner, because there are many things worse than having a rude Italian (see earlier posting) invade your house and demand money. But I want to share some of the things that I have found out about griefing. Many you can post some of your own ideas as comments.

Griefing is, in simple terms, harassment. It can come in all forms from "just talking badly to you" to "caging you" to "shooting you". The important thing is to know what to do when you have been bothered.

The first thing that you need to do is document the happening. I know that it's annoying to have to think about documentation when you are being bothered, but it will pay off in the end. You need to document by taking a photo of the happening. Take a snapshot so that you have proof of it happening and you have the offender's name. This can be used for later actions.

Taking a Photo: Just go up to the File menu and select "Take a Snapshot." This will complete a screen capture that will save to your desktop.

Sit Down: One of the things that griefers can do to you to harass you is to "Cage you." This means that they actually put a cage around you and then they can spin you, fly you or just detain you. Apparently, none of this works when you are sitting down. So if someone begins to harass you, you might want to just take a seat. No chairs around? Either create a box or have sit on a chair that is in your inventory.

Get Out of There: Griefers are there because they want some attention. Vacate the premises and there won't be a reason for them to be there. The easiest way is to hit the "Teleport Home" button under the World menu. But even if you don't go home - go somewhere else. Stay there 5 minutes and then return.

Report the Incident: Second Life has a system for reporting abuse. Go to the Help menu and you will find a Report Abuse selection. This will bring up a report screen that will provide you a place where you can fill out the details. I haven't reported last night's incident yet, but I can do it today if I wish. It appears that I just need to tell them the location and the approximate time and the investigating committee can open the scripts to find out what was said and to verify what happened. They will then act accordingly. You can find out what happened by checking the "police blotters" a little later.

While this is indeed Second Life in a Virtual World, no one has the right to invade your privacy or take things from you. This is true in Real and Virtual worlds. Following these steps for dealing with such actions are good practice for whatever world you inhabit.

Z

I have been Griefed!!!

It never rains in Second Life and we never have to worry about crime, right?

WRONG!!

I was in our Ed Central Center in Second Life the other night when an individual came into our house and said "Give me something to do. I need some money." Taken aback, I talked with him. He claimed that he needed money to get a motorcycle like I had. (I don't have an SL motorcycle but found one parked outside our house a little later.) He said that he needed this motorcycle to get a job.

I don't remember his name but I did find out that he was Italian. I asked "Why are you being so aggressive about getting this money?"
"Because I am Italian," he replied.
"Does that give you an excuse for being so rude?" I queried.
After that, he was still insistent but prefaced each of his demands with "Please".

I just wanted this guy out of my life so I gave him a 4-wheeler car that I got for free at a freebee SL site. He left with this, only to return a couple of minutes later asking how to get it to work.

After he left, I realized that I felt violated. This guy had come to my house demanding money and I paid him off to get out of my life. Do I feel unsafe in SL? Not really. My SL account could disappear and my Real Life wouldn't be any the worse for it. But I AM somewhat concerned about the safety of the stuff that I have been working on in SL. It isn't the value of the stuff in the sense of money, but the time that I have spent developing the environment in which we live.

What should you do when you are being griefed? I will discuss this in my next posting.

Yugma - a FREE solution for Webinars and Courses

Looking for a free way to broadcast those webinars or provide course connections where you can share your computer screen while you discuss ideas with your students? Then Yugma might be your answer.

This online solution will provides an interface that is relatively easy to sign onto and very easy to use.

In all fairness, only the introductory package of Yugma is free. It is limited to 10 attendees, desktop sharing, free teleconferencing, whiteboard, public/private chat, and MS Outlook/Skype compatibility. THAT'S ALL. But that's ALOT!

My colleague, Robin Galloway, did a great review of Yugma after we played around with it last week. You should check it out.

I searched YouTube for some video support and found 3 videos about Yugma (also found a cute young boy named Yugma whose parents like video record and post them on YouTube as well.) This video shows how Yugma can be integrated with Skype.




If you want to enjoy other YouTube videos about Yugma you can go here.

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Google Sites ROCKS!!!

Just found out about Google Sites. It appears to be the next step in the Google Tools quest to create a world of online application tools.

"Google Sites, a new offering from Google Apps, makes creating a team site as easy as editing a document. Use Google Sites to centralize all types of information -- from videos to presentations -- and share your site with just a few people, your entire organization, or the world." sites.google.com

I must admit that I haven't been able to do much more than create an account but it is an interesting process:

Google asked for my email address. Since it was Google, I thought that I would insert my gmail account (leigh.zeitz@gmail.com). Interestingly enough, when I hit the Return key, Google responsed with "Sorry, we are not servicing this domain yet." 0-;

So I entered my regular email account at the University of Northern Iowa and it took it. Google Sites told me that it would send me an email to validate the email account.

WOULD YOU BELIEVE that the email the sent me said that they had validated the domain, uni.edu, and it had the UNI Panther connected to it? How connected it that? Actually, I looked at the list of the 20 UNI folks who had discovered this before me and it was good to see that some of them were students in our Educational Technology minor.

This looks like a wonderful addition to the Google tools and it will revolutionize the meaning of collaborative writing/invention/innovation.

First thing I did to keep from having to read anything was to jump to YouTube.com and here is a video that was create by the Google folks. It is narrated by Scott Johnston who was the VP of Product Development at JotSpot.com As you may know, JotSpot was purchased by Google a while ago and this is the first JotSpot product released under Google's name.

Great Resource for Techies

Just found a great resource for videos on how to use technology. It is called Ask the Techies. I was amazed by depth and breadth of the videos that are there. It's over 60 videos.

Quick Online Video Captures R FREE!!!

Ever want to make a quick tutorial or make quickly share some ideas or problems that involve showing what is on your computer screen? Sure, you can do this with Camtasia or SnapzPro, but I am talking about Free and Online!!! I recently found a few free online programs that will allow you to do this:

Jing is a system that will allow you to take a screen capture or create a screen video with narration and instantly upload it to share with others. This involves a small program that will download onto your Mac or Windows computer. It is quite easy to do and you can watch a Jing video about this at Jing Video.




Freescreencast is another online video capture program that makes creating and sharing short screen videos easy for you to do. Like Jing, it allows you to upload your files to the freescreencast.com website or save the file for your own personal use. It even gives you the option of embedding the video into your blog.

I am told that there are other online programs like this out there like this. Please leave a comment if you know of any of them.

Keeping Score on Who's Using Your Blog

Ever wonder who is actually looking at your blog? Does it seem like you are writing a lot but no one is responding? There ARE services that you can use to track your blog activity. Many of them are free. They are making their money with Google ads and the like or, as with ClustrMaps, when your site becomes so popular that you are willing to spend some money to get a more sophisiticated reading on your visitors.


is a service that you can use for tracking Blogger. You just need to add it as one of the services for your Google/gmail Account or go to http://www.google.com/analytics/ to sign up. Google Analytics will ask you to identify the blog you want to follow. It will also provide you with some specific code that you need to add to your blog or web page that you want to track. This is so that it can ensure that you are someone who is authorized to enable such a tracking and so that it knows where to store the information in its own database when it reviews your website.

is a visual world map that keeps track of "Where in the World" are your viewers. Look in the upper right corner of this blog and you will see such a map. It's kind of neat when you consider that I have viewers on five continents (need a new friend from Africa.) You can add this to your blog or website by just going to http://clustrmaps.com. They will also provide you with a handful of code that you need to add to your site, but it's worth it. It will also tell you how any hits they have recorded since you began using clustrmaps.

There are a bunch of other trackers that you probably use. Leave some suggestions as comments for this posting.

Image: www.crann.tcd

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Who is the MySpace Generation? Why Do We Care?

Who is the MySpace Generation? What is different about them? Why should we care?

ISTE will be holding a Webinar on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2008 at 3:00 CST entitled Learner 2.0: The MySpace Generation by Chris O'Neal. These are some resources that might be useful for you to review before (or after) webinar.

BusinessWeek headed an issue with their article by Jessie Hempel entitled The MySpace Generation: How Companies are Reaching Them. This article investigates the Social Networking phenomenon. It talks about how youth are using MySpace, Facebook, and a variety of social networking systems to make contact with others. Their group is not geographically limited. It is primarily defined by like interests. BusinessWeek provides a podcast about its cover stories (CoverCast). This is an interview with the author about the content included in the cover story. Jessie Hempel provides an insightful perspective on this topic in the podcast. This podcast does an effective job of describing what is happening and how it displays youth's priorities.

Dinah Boyd has spent a great deal of time investigating the social networking world and I found an informative 71 minute lecture by her on YouTube Dinah Boyd: A Discussion with Danah Boyd.(2005) She is talking with a group of university students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Boy does she know what she is talking about. She cuts through the baloney and "tells it like it is."

A more recent lecture by Dinah Boyd (2007) is her presentation at the Australian Library and Information Association - Generation MySpace - Social networking and Its Impact on Students and Education.

PODCAST: A Discussion of the Issues Surrounding Social Networking Between Faculty and Students This is an interesting 25-minute discussion between a couple of K-12 teachers. They discuss how Facebook fits into their interactions with students and what new challenges it provides. Quite informative.

How Would YOU Create Your Future?

The best way to predict the future ...
is to create it. - Alan Kay

Yes, it is exciting, bewildering and even scary to try to decide you would like to be able to do if you could do ANYTHING in the future.

I recently asked the students in one of my undergraduate classes, "What would you want to be able to do if you could do ANYTHING? Imagine that it's possible. Think about what you would like to be able to do personally, professionally, and educationally." This yielded a number of interesting responses. Here is what they replied:

"I want a computer that will read my mind. I can think of thinks and it will write documents, answer questions and take pictures of my memories.,"
"Technology shoujld be more accessible - cost wise."
"I want to see the next generation of electronic portfolios where we can actually see students teaching."
"We need a better way to show our skills in portfolios. Not just paper and text."
" I would like to see a computer/webpage that changes automatically based upon the grade level of the user. Modifies the audio, text, and even the vocabulary."
"I would like to see how webcams can help sick students attend school."

There are more to come . . .