There is a certain charm and challenge in finding complex solutions. I remember building Revell plastic models of some of these solutions when I was 10 years old. Here's one for giving a baby a bottle.
Rube Goldberg has even made it big with the rock group OK Go. This video, This Too Shall Pass, is ingenious and more fun!!!
I just found a video about Gerberich's Gadgetry that isn't completely Rube Goldbergish but close enough to share here. Stephen Gerberich (originally from Iowa) posts his stuff on this Gerb - o - Matic website. He has displays in museums all over the country. A good introduction to his work is his motionclip. Here is a link to his video archives. Below is a 3-minute interview with the vodcast, Rocketboom.
Are you using Rube Goldberg-like projects with your students? What have they created? How are you integrating this with your curriculum?
6-word stories could be considered eXtreme short stories. It is said that Ernest Hemmingway once proclaimed his 6-word story, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn.", as his best work.
Pete Berg launched a Six Word Stories blog in Dec, 2008. This is where he stores thousands of 6-word stories. He has these catagorized by subject and author. It is possible to submit your own and receive comments from the readers.
Writing 6-word stories is not easy. You must first envision an event or tale that you want to tell. Then you whittle away the words it would take to convey your ideas about this story. Finally, you have the true essence of your dissertation.
Here is my first feeble attempt:
Blog posting today: six-word stories. - Dr. Z
What have you, can you, will you write in 6 words?
Have you used this in your classes? I met a teacher at my Google Teacher Certification class, but don't remember his name. He was doing some wonderous things with his students.
Today, from approximately 9:20 - 10:45 CDT, Dr. Z will be giving a keynote presentation, Dr. Z's Creative Cookbook for Collaborative Communication, at the Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association conference in Baraboo, WI.
We will experimenting with some audience involvement tools during this presentation:
Chat: We will also use CoverItLive (an open chat system) to allow those watching the presentation to participate in a backchannel discussion about what they are seeing. These participants will be both at the conference and at distant locations.
Twitter: Comments about the presentation can also be made using Twitter. Include the hashtag, #wemta , in your message and it will be automatically added to the CoverItLive conversation.
Video: We plan to broadcast the presentation through the internet using Ustream. This will allow viewers from around the world to enjoy the presentation. Below are links to the CoverItLive and Ustream and connections. Just click on them and you should be able to get started in the experience. Share the word with your friends and let's see if we can get people from all over the world involved.
Here is a link to the CoverItLive online conversation that we will have during our presentation Using Web 2.0 Tools to Create Your PLN.
Below is the session window for the discussion that will be held during Dr. Z's presentation. You just need to click on the circle in the center of the window and it should open a window where you can enter your name and then enter your comments.
Begin by saying "Hello" to everyone and your city of origin. Good luck. If you have any problems, turn to your neighbor. Together you can figure it out.
Z
P.S. The presentation will begin at 10:15 but the discussion will officially begin at 10:00 AM
TWITTER FEEDS: We have enabled this discussion to capture Twitter feeds with the HashTags: #wemta #wemtapln
As you may know, wemta are the initials for this conference "Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association". Include either of these in your twitter postings and they should appear here.
I just learned about an incredibly useful tool that is hidden in MS Word 2008 for the Mac. This is the Notebook Layout view. Looking at the image to the left, it doesn't look too special, but looks can be deceiving.
A friend of mine was looking for a way to create an audio recorded spelling list that students could use to test themselves on their spelling words. I thought that Word had this capability but I couldn't find it. Found my answer when I asked my technology guru, Rob Galloway. He suggested that I try the Notebook Layout view.
The Notebook Layout view for Mac Office is designed to work something like OneNote in the Windows world. It's greatest asset is that it includes a recording capability. This means that when you open a page to take notes, you can also turn on an audio recorder. The audio recorder records the speaker and then aligns it with your notes. That means that when you return to your notes, you can click anywhere on the page and it will playback the audio track of what the speaker was saying when you took those notes.
Pretty cool, eh? But that isn't why I am writing this posting.
I did a little experimenting and I realized that I could use this audio tool to create an auditory spelling list. The students would open the page that was designed for this week's spelling list. They would click on the Play button and then the voice would begin saying the spelling words for the student. The student could then type the words on the page and finally check them to see if they are correct. The student has complete control to pause in between words or go back to the beginning.
Another idea: It would be an interesting idea to use this tool to create one of these pages for each of the spelling lists in a spelling book. You could then distribute these 30-page documents (one for each week's spelling list) to your students at the beginning of the school year and they could use this each week to test themselves. (I know that this is a low-end application for technology but fits into some curricula.)
I used this video by Steve Vai as an example video from YouTube when I was teaching my students how to embed a video into their blog. I fully intended to remove this video at a later time because it didn't really have much to do with educational technology.
After watching the video I realized what an awesome guitarist Vai is and how well he has orchestrated his group to support him. I decided that it has everything to do with educational technology so decided to leave it in.
Besides, this is MY blog and I, Dr. Z, am Reflecting!!!!!
This 20-minute video is the ultimate instructional Skype video. It begins with introducing Skype and telling you how to get online. She then provides a format for connecting with other classrooms, authors, and experts from around the world. This was enlightening. She wasn't just providing rules, sharing her proven methods along with examples of connections that she and her students had made around the world. AND she has created it in both English and Spanish.
Silvia Tolisano has an international project, Around the World with 80 Schools. I must admit that I don't know much about this yet because I just signed up to join the wiki and learn more about the project. I will definitely blog about this later.
I was most impressed by the quality of the informative and instructional video. Ms. Tolisano appears to have used the digital storytelling process where she recorded the narrative first and then found visuals to accompany them. I especially liked what appeared to be original photos where she posed a wooden doll to illustrate a number of ideas that she was discussing.
I am quite pleased to have found Silvia Tolisano and look forward to following her projects.
What have you found to support using Skype in your classroom?
I am embarrassed to admit but I was just Phished through Twitter. I must admit that I don't understand how a Twitter Phishing excursion works, but it is a problem.
About 2:00 this afternoon, I was having problems sending tweets. It suggested that I wait 60 minutes and try again. I waited, tried and failed. Then I waited another 60 minutes, tried and failed. I just couldn't tweet or Direct Message.
I began receiving Direct Messages from followers suggesting that I change my password because I had been phished. I changed my password immediately. Reviewing my sent DMs, I found a stream of DMs that my account had sent to my followers.
Mashable reported that the Twitter Phishing attack began on Feb 20. It begins when you receive a tweet that says "lol, is this you?" and it links to a site called "Bzpharma". DON'T GO THERE!!! If you go there and enter your information, you will be the brunt of a huge spam assault. The virus will also go through your followers list and attack them with Direct Messages that will include a link to that phishing website.
I don't remember clicking on a Direct Message like this. I have seen this virus come through email so I am careful about this.
However it happened, to all of you who received this virus DM,
I AM SORRY!
I still don't have access to Twitter. I see why they have shut down any of the infected accounts. I have contacted the Twitter Support people about this and will wait for their reply.
Tweet Safe and DON'T take the Phishing bait!!!
What have been your experiences with Twitter Phishing?
Animoto is an online video production application that was released in 2007. It is simple and effective. Animoto has turned video creation into a 3-step process:
Upload photos/videos - You upload the files from your computer.
Select music - Selecting music is easy. They provide a wide selection of music licensed under Creative Commons. This means that the artists WANT you to use their music for free as long as you acknowledge them - and Animoto does. You can also upload your own music if you wish.
Process the video - Now it's time for Animoto to select the transitions. Then it scrambles and cooks your video into a tasty media jewel.
Control freaks don't need to go completely off the handle. There are Video Tools that allow you to rearrange the clips/photos as needed. You can add text as slides all unto themselves. If you don't like the transitions, you can click the 1-Button Remix button to have it re-mash your photos (I have a re-mash at the end of this posting. It is the same photos in the same order but the transitions are different.)
Best thing is that you can share it from the Animoto website or through social media, email and even YouTube or SmugMug. Yes, you can even download it as a standalone video file. If you don't want to deal with any of this, they will mail you a DVD for $22 which seems a bit overpriced.
This program isn't designed for creating your typical educational video because it doesn't appear that you can overdub a narrative. Never-the-less, if you want to share a bunch of video resources. This is quick, easy and good quality.
Talk about an ego-maniacal professor. This professor has serious issues with student-based learning. Watch the video above and you will see Kieran Mullen, a physics professor at the University of Oklahoma, bathe a laptop in Liquid Nitogen and then shatter the computer on the floor with the threat, "Don't bring laptops and work on them in class!"
What does this mean? Why is he scared of students bringing computers to class? Laptops in class can be a distraction, but it can also be an amazingly interactive tool that will enable the students to find new ideas to integrate with the discussion. Robin Galloway writes about how we run a backchannel in our lecture classes so that students are able to discuss the ideas that are covered in lecture.
What do you think?
Do you allow laptops in your lectures or classes?
Do you encourage students to use their laptops in class?
How do you use laptops to engage your students in the classroom learning experience?
Just in case you don't recognize the players, it is an Overhead Projector positioned to shine transparencies onto a Promethean interactive whiteboard. A document camera (left) is at the ready as well.
I have been looking into the formatting differences in the APA Manual (6th Edition) to prepare for the seminar I will teaching this semester on Writing Graduate Papers.
I just found that this updated edition has a new and different headings format system. As you may know, the headings format has to do with where the headings should be placed and what sort of font they should carry.
They talk about Levels of Headings. These have to do with the ranking of the text section (or subsection) that is being titled by the heading. Each level is numbered.
The section titles (e.g., Methodology; Analysis and Discussion; or References) is at the top and it is a Level 1 heading. A topic heading in the Analysis and Discussion would be a Level 2 heading. Subtopics within that topic would be Level 3. It continues all the way down to the sub-sub-sub-subtopic Level 5 headings.
The headings format in the APA 5th edition was quite confusing because the format for headings if you had 4 topic levels was different than if you had 5 topic levels. Our Instructional Technology Division at the University of Northern Iowa didn't like this ambiguity so we just created a standard guideline (.pdf) for how headings would be formatted regardless of whether you had 4 or 5 levels.
Guess What? APA came to their senses and they followed our division's lead. They have released a new set of guidelines that apply to your headings no matter how many levels you have.
This set of guidelines is quite different than before. If you click on the link to our previous headings guidelines (above), you will see that some headings were all caps while others were upper and lower case. Some were italicized while others were plain. Some were centered while others were left justified.
This set of guidelines includes bold lettering. Actually, every heading level is in bold except level 5. There is a great deal more indenting than previously used. I like the bold, but don't know if I like all of the indenting. They printed the APA 6th edition using this format and it looks OK, but I don't know . . .
Here are the guidelines:
Level 1
Centered, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase
Level 2
Flush Left, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase
Level 3 Indented, boldface, lowercase paragraph heading ending with a period.
Level 4 Indented, boldface, italicized, lowercase paragraph heading ending with a period.
Level 5 Indented, italicized, lowercase paragraph heading ending with a period.
=== Sample===
Analysis and Discussion
Types of Learners
Adult learners.
Learning needs of adult learners. Knowles (1984) describes a set of assumptions for adult learners which include . . .
The need to know. Adult learners need to know why they need to learn something before undertaking the process of learning it.
===============
What do you think? Is this an improvement? When will you change over to this format?
You can read further online explanation of these new headings styles at the APA Style Blog.
BTW, I think that I found a mistake on page 63 in the sample headings. There is an example of a level 3 heading and it is written as "Life History Calendar."
Have you ever purchased a research paper? What does it mean when you purchase a paper? Are you too lazy or too rich or don’t you “just get it” about why professors ask you to write papers?
I just had a company that sells research papers leave a comment on my blog and I rejected it. Maybe I am just being idealistic because students can always use Google to find these sites but I have no intention to support this criminal activity. For that reason, this posting will lack the many links that I like to include in my blog.
Not familiar with these research paper mills? Let me tell you something about what they are offering: These businesses market themselves as centers for “research paper assistance.” They suggest that you can purchase their papers to provide additional research for a paper that you are presently writing. HOGWASH!!!
They claim that all of their papers are guaranteed to each of their customers an “A+”. HOGWASH!!! This is ironic when their sites are filled with grammatical errors and misspellings.
They build upon the “Us and Them” structure that they claim educational institutions provide where the teachers make assignments and then “cast off” their students to fend for themselves. One of the sites asks if the students are “victims” of any of 5 research paperwriting problems. These problems include:
Where to find research paper help.
No knowing how to organize your extensive research.
Not have a clear idea of how to write a research paper.
Stuck on research topic selection.
Don’t know how to format a research paper.
Clueless about who to address your writing problems.
(Yes it IS true that their title says 5 problems and they list 6.)
Wondering how much this service costs? There is one site that simply charges $10/page but that is not the norm. Typically, the prices are not based upon quality or quantity, but rather urgency:
6 days or more $15/page
3 days $20/page
24 hours $25/page
8 hours $37/page
This means that these sources say that a student could order a 10-page university-level paper on Thursday morning for $250 and submit it to meet a Friday 3:00 pm deadline!
AND
These mills are claiming that each of the papers is ORIGINAL!!
What HOGWASH!!!
What is your opinion on this? In my next posting I will talk about why teachers assign research papers and what they can do about this plagiarism issue.
NO self-respecting educator would allow students to cite Wikipedia in a research paper!
NO professional would try to cite Wikipedia in a refereed journal!
Why waste the time and effort to even consider how to cite it?
It's funny how the title of this posting will raise the dander of many an academic. It will cause them to respond exactly as the quotes above indicate. Many an academic will complain that Wikipedia is an indicator of how far our world has plummeted when they consider that a resource created "by the masses." It is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
This reminds me of a little known fact that Dr. David Thornburg mentioned once in a presentation I had the good fortune to enjoy. He was addressing this very issue of Wikipedia being considered unreliable because it was created and maintained by people who were not christened as "experts" in the field. He pointed out that the first Oxford Dictionary had been compiled by 800 volunteer readers back in the mid-1800s.
Many question Wikipedia's reliability. It can be edited by anyone with an account. Most teachers and publications don't accept it as a valid reference. I don't accept Wikipedia as a valid reference from my students.
But ask a room full of academics and educators about how many of them use Wikipedia and the only liars in the room will be the ones who don't have their hands raised. Wikipedia is a WONDERFUL starting place for beginning research or getting familiar with a topic or even finding relevant references in the References and External Links at the end of each article.
Run a Google search on most any topic and there will be at least one Wikipedia reference in the first 10 links. Wikipedia is ubiquitous. It is everywhere.
So what do you do if you want to refer to a definition in Wikipedia (not necessarily as an expert resource but as an example in a discussion) and you want to make an APA-appropriate citation? Listen to Timothy McAdoo in the APA Style Blog. His posting, How to Cite Wikipedia in APA Style, explains that it is quite similar to any other electronic citation with a couple of modifications to make it Wikipedia-specific:
Infinite Monkey Theorem. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved December 9, 2009, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Monkey_Theorem
Give it a try. Do you use Wikipedia? What is your call on using it as a reference tool?
I was presenting at the Iowa Technology and Education Connection conference in Des Moines, Iowa. The great thing was that I got to meet a number of people who follow this blog. One of the interesting questions that I received was about the photo that I have in header above ^^^^.
Just thought that I would share "The Rest of the Story" with you.
This is from a photo of me in Berlin at CheckPoint Charlie in 2000. I was one of the professors who escorted a group of UNI students to visit schools in Poland and The Netherlands. We landed in Berlin so did a little exploring the streets. I had actually found a hat that fit my huge head and had Joe Smaldino take this photo.
I know that this posting had nothing to do with educational technology but just sounded like it might be of interest to some of you.
LifeHacker asked their readers to submit their favorite Free Apps. It was a simple process. They posted the challenge and the readers were to comment with their favorite apps. It appears that they had 484 comments with hundreds of suggestions. After a great deal of review, they whittled is down to:
Twitter and Facebook have DEFINITELY made an impact on Academia!!!! APA Style now has defined how to cite them in a formal APA-formatted paper/article!
It's not even in the latest 6th edition of the APA Style Manual (you remember, the one with so many mistakes in its first printing that they had to call back all of those copies and have issued a reprint - the question is, how do you cite the second printing of the 6th edition? =-)
Well, Chelsea Lee on the APA Style blog has provided guidance and examples for citing these social media sources. She says that these formats will work until more "definitive guidance is available." So I guess this means that she has received the blessing from the APA Oracles to share these rules.
I teach a Seminar at the University of Northern Iowa on Writing a Graduate Paper. I find it humorous how paranoid students get when they have to write in APA format. It becomes a barrier to writing because they are afraid that they don't know everything there is to know about APA.
IT'S ONLY A FORMAT, FOLKS!!!!!
By the end of my class, I have tried to demystify APA and convince the students that the important part of their writing is what they say and how they organize their thoughts. The APA format is only to ensure consistency between authors and it can be implemented (and refined) towards the end of the writing process.
Sometimes it works . . . =-)
Trying to format the plethora of sources available in the world today is a moving target and I take my hat off to the folks at APA. It's genius to run a blog that can be used to channel recommendations about formatting sources between their editions that are published about every 6 years. It's just that educators shouldn't take the format's importance to the point of squelching creativity and original thought.
This posting about referencing Facebook and Twitter is only a small part of the many suggestions available.
What is your opinion about APA and how it's importance in teaching writing in schools?
On January 20, 2009, photographer David Bergman covered his first inauguration and took a photo (actually 220 photos) using his Canon PowerShot G10 camera and then "stitched" them all together to create a 2 GB 1,475 megapixal photo (59,783 x 24,658 pixels). That's HUGE. Big is good, but what is exciting about these shots is that the viewer can look at the whole photo from a distance or zoom into specific people in the photo. (Click here to see the dynamic photo.) It is similar to the kind of technology that you see in Google Maps or Google Earth but the typical photography enthusiast can do this.
The trick wasn't in his camera but in GigaPan technology. This CarnegieMellon University GigaPan technology includes a robotic arm and the Gigapan Stitcher software ($450). Bergman attached the robotic arm to a railing. The Gigapan will take the photos for you. You just have to designate the upper left corner and the lower right corner. Press the GigiPan button and it will automatically take the photos (video tutorial here). When Bergman's photosession was complete, it took over 6 and a half hours for the Gigapan to stitch together the 220 images on his MacBook Pro. GigaPan has set up an agreement with Google. Google Earth will begin including Gigapan panorama photos. This began in 2007 and I haven't checked it out yet, but should be rather exciting for seeing closeups of places in the world.
Taking closeups like this can be a little scary as a continuing intrusion into our privacy, but it should also be considered a new opportunity for "the rest of us" to venture into new photographic territories at a reasonable price. What do you think? How can we use the Gigapan Technologies in our educational settings?
"Wow Man!! I was SOO wasted!!"
"This job is really boring."
"I think that I am getting tired of my girlfriend."
These are all phrases that can get people into BIG trouble when they share them on FaceBook. FaceBook is a great way to communicate with your friends and share what's happening in your life, poorly selected photos and descriptions of your adventures can cause SERIOUS problems in getting jobs, being admitted to college, or even being sentenced in the courtroom.
Students don't realize how much their presence on the Web will affect their futures. Every semester, I discuss this issue with my university students and the fact anything they post on the web will "be there forever." They see their social networking sites as great places to share things with their friends, but they don't consider the fact employer and admission offices search the web to find out information that isn't conveyed on their job/school applications.
Be careful what you post because it just might come back to haunt you in the future.
BTW, related to Facebook but unrelated to what I have been discussing, I just found some research by Aryn Karpinski reported in April, 2009, compared the grades of students who use FaceBook to those who don't. They surveyed 219 students from Ohio State University and found that Facebook users in the study had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5. Students in the study who didn't use FaceBook had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0. They also found that FaceBook users spent an average of 1 - 5 hours a week studying and non-users studied between 11 - 15 hours.
It should be noted that this research DOES NOT find a causal relationship between low school performance and using FaceBook. It merely found that those who used FaceBook tended to have lower grades and study less. Chances are that if they didn't use FaceBook, they would have found other distractions instead of studying.
Another question is how can university students have a 3.0 GPA average with only 1 - 5 hours of studying per week? I have plenty of ideas about that, but that deserves another posting.
I was intrigued by the first two videos including:
Digital Dossier which describes the digital trail that we leave from birth
Food Fight which is an incredible example of stop action video creation. It is literally a war between foods. I would suggest previewing this before sharing with students due to the graphic depiction of food annihilation.
I would like to add a few of my personal favorites:
Bob Sprankle's I Had a Dream where he asks "If we didn't have today's schools, would we build today's schools?"
The State of Iowa has been hit HARD by the recession. Admittedly, it is nothing like what California or Michigan have seen, but it hurts none-the-less. In mid-October, Iowa's Governor Culver announced that ALL governmental entities would have to cut their budgets by 10%. This include the courts, governmental offices, AND schools.
Yes, our University of Northern Iowa (UNI) has felt the cut of the sword. The greatest expense in education is faculty and staff. Personnel compose at least 85% of the budget. Faculty will suffer an average of 6 furlough days (unpaid days off) which will mean a salary cut of probably $2,000 - $4,000. UNI has announced that they will reduce their contribution to our retirement accounts and our health premiums will probably increase.
The scene is not pretty. President Allen has even opened a Budget website where he is trying keep the public posted about how the budget is evolving.
To top it all off, our College of Education was just told that we need to return another $142,000 on a permanent basis by the end of December 2009.
What to do? What would YOU do?
Time magazine ran an article, Colleges Find Creative Ways to Cut Back. It talks about mowing lawns less frequently and dumping free laundry services, but when it comes to academics it is always a matter of cutting people and programs.
A couple of days ago I had coffee with my friend, Gordon Dahlby, and he told me a story that “added a new dimension” to my life.
Gordon told me about one afternoon when he was walking with a friend around the Mall in Washington D.C. They came to a “buggy way”. This looked like an alley, but in reality it was one of the passageways that was designed in the early 1800s to accommodate horse and buggy vehicles as they traveled around the nation’s capitol.
Gordon said that he stopped for a moment to take time to absorb the sight. His younger companion said something like “If my mom were here, she would be taking pictures from here and there and getting all excited about this old alley. It’s so embarrassing.” Gordon thought for a moment and then responded “You need to remember that your mother would be experiencing this moment in 4 dimensions.”
4 dimensions – what did he mean about experiencing in 4 dimensions?
Aren’t we limited to only 3 dimensions: Height, Width and Depth? (My favorite description of the 3 dimensions is in the 1960 movie, The Time Machine. I couldn't find that specific clip, but here is a trailer clip that "kind of" addresses it.)
The answer is a resounding “No.”
The 4th dimension is Time. It involves being able to integrate the past or the future into your perception of an object or person or experience. Dr. Dahlby's observation that when this woman's mother experiences something she includes the Time dimension as well implies that she is including all of the things that she knows about the "experience" from personal experiences, historical accounts and related experiences.
Typically, when people discuss dimensions, they require that we must be able to move between them. My daily life is lived in 3 dimensions because; I can move side to side (width dimension); I can move forward and back (depth dimension); and I can move up and down (height dimension.) This is my life. The question remains, however, "How am I limited to experience these 3 dimensions in my life?" The potential to move through these dimensions is there, but can I really do it?" Probably not. I probably can't experience all of my world through 3 dimensions.
I can enter a room and experience most of it by moving forward, back (depth) and side-to-side (width.) I am over 6 feet tall, so I can probably almost reach the ceiling (or stand on a chair if necessary) to experience the height dimension. But what about when I leave the comfortable confines of my house? I can perceive the three dimensions, but can I experience them? In my home, I can experience all three dimensions because I can see and feel them in three directions. But these 3-dimensional experiences are extremely limited.
What about when I go to the shore and stand with my feet in the waves. I can move forward, back, side-to-side and up/down (6 feet) but the rest of my reality is limited to what I can see and hear. I can see the sky, but I can't touch it. I have to imagine it in my mind. I can see the ocean disappearing off into the distance, but I can't feel it in the distance. I have to experience it in my mind. I am limited by the physical boundaries that are imposed upon me by gravity, distance and the fact that my soul is contained in a physical body that has limits. I can move around in the 3-dimensional world but some of my movement is in my mind because I can't physically do it.
I must admit that the only time that I felt that I was truly in a 3-dimensional world was when I was SCUBA diving off Cozumel. I was 30 feet down amongst a school of Clown fish, and as I looked up to watch my bubbles drift to the surface, I realized that I wasn't limited to the 6-foot band of height that I have on land. I could move up, down, forward, back, left and right at will. I was truly living in a 3-dimensional world because I could navigate my way throughout this world.
Time is another dimension through which I have traveled. Admittedly, my physical movement is uni-directional. I live life by moving forward in time. It is possible to to move back in time, but at this time it is only by remembering it in my mind. I may remember an exact incident because I lived through it and I retain the details. I might have to imagine it because I only read an account or saw a video or heard a discussion about the event. Either way, it can be as exact as touching the sand (remembering) or as vague as imagining the sky (recalling someone else's account of an incident). It is another dimension of experience through which we live.
This also applies to the future tense as well. Jennifer James talks about Thinking in the Future Tense. When we are experiencing/viewing and event/object, we must integrate a future perspective as well because it allows us to consider how this event/object will/can be in the future. This attitude needs to be the basis in our teaching and educational leadership. Last month, at an ITEC conference, Daniel Pink said "We must teach for our students' future, not our pasts."
Living Life through the 4th dimension provides the context that gives our lives meaning. Teaching and leading with the past and present tense provides relevance to our activities and meaningful direction to our leadership.
photo:flickr.com/KevinDooley
BTW to all of you physicists. Yes, I know that 4 dimensions are no big thing when you are a String Theorist. The String Theory community boasts 10 dimensions. I have to admit that I don't know much about this, but it sounds like something I will have to research and share with you in a future posting.
What do you know about 10 dimensions? Share your knowledge with us.
Twitter is sometimes considered a tool that is "a solution looking for a problem to solve." it is cool and immediate and useful for people to keep in touch. Here are some resources that educators will hopefully find useful when considering using Twitter in their classrooms.
Twitter Handbook for Teachers An 18-page ebook for teachers. Begins with a basic intro about Twitter and then provides insight about using Twitter in the classroom. These ideas are from teachers and written for teachers.
Twitter for Teachers A collaboratively-written, wiki-based ebook to "Teach Teachers about Twitter."
Twitter 4 Teachers Another wiki created to help teachers find teachers through Twitter. This can be quite valuable if you want to find a group of twitterers in your field of instruction.
Twitter in the Classroom (YouTube Video) In this 9-minute video a high school AP Biology teacher tells how he uses Twitter in his classroom. Begins with an explanation of Twitter and then discusses the applications.
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