Wii: Commercialized or Incentivized

I was just reading Scott McLeod's blog, Dangerously Irrelevant. He shared a video that was a compilation of kids opening their Wii Christmas presents. The unique thing about these clips is the incredibly over-stated show of emotion. Girls are crying and dancing and screaming. Boys are driving their fists into the air and shouting. They were obviously enthused!!!!

Dr. McLeod explained this as an intersection of commercialism and children. Some of his readers lamented upon how ashamed they were to see the effects of commercialism on Christmas. These were obvious conclusions but not necessarily the only ones.

I don't fully agree with their analyses of the weeping wailers as they screamed, cried and drove their fists into the air in celebration of receiving the Wii video game system. While this video definitely portrays a commercial product that the kids saw on TV commercials that were designed to place the Wii on a holy pedestal to be revered by our digital natives, these reactions are not just a matter of rampant commercialism.

I think that they signify fulfillment of their wishes to have personal access to an environment where their efforts are positively reinforced in an incremental manner that guides them to success. The games were developed to motivate and reward - and they succeed.Image via Wikipedia

I must admit that I have a Wii and I have been using the Wii Fit system for about 10 days. I am TOTALLY HOOKED! I awaken in the morning thinking about weather I will jog or dance or meditate on my Wii. As the system boots up and I identify myself, my cybercoach congratulates me on returning for another hour of physical challenges and accomplishments. . . . and yes, daily I do most of the exercises shown in the Nintendo Wii Fit kick-off video. (Here is an example of the Wii fit exercise session with a cybercoach.)

Besides the the arcade accolades that I receive as I head soccer balls, navigate bubbles down rivers, walk tightropes and spin hula hoops, I have experienced physical developments that benefit my posture and overall well being. I have a great time using my Wii and it makes me feel successful.

The part of our culture that we should question is not commercialism. We should ask why don't all of our students feel this way on their first day of school? How many of them punched the air with excitement as they left their homes to return to school this week? Some of them did and we should identify what their teachers are doing to provide them with the sense of success that invites them back for more.

We should take a lesson in motivation and engagement from Wii and integrate it into our classrooms.

Z

What do you think? Do you used the Wii? Do your students?

Language Translators in Second Life

WOW!!!!!!
Impressive Language Translators!!!!!!

I have found some Language Translator programs in Second Life (SL) that remind me of the Universal Translator of science fiction lore (i.e., Star Trek and Dr. Who & ?)

There are two - The Simbolic Language Translator and the Free Translator by Ferd. Let me tell you how I found them . . .

A couple of nights ago, I was exploring in Second Life when I met a gentleman. He and I began chatting (only text). I noticed that it would take as long as 15-20 seconds for him to respond to me. Through conversation I found out that he was from Portugal and that he was using a translator. This translator took what he typed in Portuguese and translated it into English (I could not see his writing in Portuguese.) I would read his message in English and reply in English. The translator would convert my message from English to Portguese so that he could read it.

Pretty Tricky. He told me that this was the Simbolic Language Translator and directed me to where I could download it. I beamed over the Simbolic site and downloaded it. (I must warn you that this site is not in the "best part of SL" so be forewarned that you may see some strange stuff there.) This language translator is a HUD (Heads-Up Display) so I had to "wear" it for it to work. Once I donned the translator, a small control panel appeared in the upper left corner of my screen. It enabled me to select the language that I was speaking and then the language of the person to whom I was speaking. Engaging the appropriate settings, I tested this out with my new Portuguese friend and it worked quite well. There were a few times when the literal translation didn’t work too well but “it’s only a computer.”

Today, I was over at the Simbolic site to find out more about it. There are probably a half dozen avatars speaking an assortment of languages. I realized the primary limitation in the Language Translator. Before I could converse with another person through the translator, I needed to know what language they spoke so that I could make the appropriate settings. Before I had much time to think about this, I met Ferd Federix. Ferd told me that he had developed an even more sophisticated translator. This is the Free Translator.

The Free Translator is a language translator that will scan the area (within 20 SL ft) and determine the primary language of each of the avatars based upon their chat history. Having identified that, it provides a list of the individuals along with their primary languages on my screen. Moreover, Ferd’s Free Translator uses this information to make multiple translations simultaneously to multiple people. This means that when I type “Hello”, it will translate that into each of the primary languages of the surrounding avatars. Secondly, when someone responds in their primary language, it will translate that back into my primary language which is English. WOW!!!

I wanted to test this out, so:

• I traveled through SL looking for non-English speakers. First I met a woman from Brazil. I typed to her in English and her responses returned in English. When I learned that she was from Brazilia, I asked her if she was typing in Portuguese. She was.
• I went to a Japanese SL site looking for a Japanese speaker. The woman I met was from Holland. She was speaking English but when I asked her to speak in Dutch, the responses came to me in English. Once she began speaking in Dutch, my translator identified this and began translating to Dutch. Turned out that this woman was a profesional language translator. She said that the translations were pretty good but too literal. Well, “it’s only a computer.”

How do they do this? You guessed it - Google. (Don't they run everything? =-) Ferd told me that both of the language translators are running the text through the Google translator. I don't know much about this but he said that Google offers APIs for developers to use their tool. (You might also notice that I have installed a Google translator for this blog. Look in the right column and you will see a gadget that will translate this page into any of 35 languages.)

This is an amazing advance in SL communication. It builds a language link that can break down the language barriers that get in the way of humans communicating. It IS a literal translation and I wouldn’t use if for international negotiations, but these translators can further connections between people around the world.

SLURLs for the Second Life Translators:

Simbolic Language Translator
Remember that this is in the “wrong side of town” in SL. You will land in front of the Simbolic Language Translator board. (You may have to turn around and it might take a little while to appear.) Just click on it and it will allow you to buy it for L$0 (nothing). Click the Buy button and a transaction window will appear. You will now find the Language Translator by Simbolic folder in your inventory.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cupo/104/121/36

Ferd Free Translator
Find the Orange Globe (you may have to turn around). Press your up arrow to walk towards the orange globe. Touch the globe (Right/Command click) and the translator will be placed in your inventory. It just happens. There is no text window saying that you have received it. Check your inventory for a folder entitled Ferd's Google Translator Folder. http://tinyurl.com/freetranslator
(Updated 1/21/09)

What are your experiences, hopes or dreams in reference to this newly-developed language translator capability?
Leave me a comment about your impressions of a second life language translator.

Z

Finding Skype Connections for Your Classroom

During my ISTE Webinar, Dr. Z’s Creative Cookbook for Collaborative Communication, I demonstrated how Skype can be used to bring experts and other students into the classroom. At that time, Wesley Fryer (Moving at the Speed of Creativity blog and podcast) asked if I knew of any directories that were available to find people who were interested in sharing some time with students through Skype. Unfortunately, at that time I didn’t know of any such directories and was unable to help him.

Since then, Angela Maiers used Twitter to share the Skype in Schools wiki she had just found. This directory was developed by Dan Froelich based upon requests from teachers who participated in one of his sessions at the NCETC 2008 Conference. It is designed to provide a place where you can offer your services, post a “want ad” to find other classes to engage in a telecollaborative project with you or for you to share your experiences in collaboration.

Wesley Fryer recently addressed the Skype directory issue in a posting to his blog, Moving at the Speed of Creativity. He explores Skype in Schools as well as ePals and the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration. You should read this posting.

Since Wesley brought it up, I have been thinking about how you could contact special people and classes to introduce to your students. I would like to make two recommendations to you about how you might make these contacts:

Conference Programs – Most of you who are reading this posting probably attend at least 1 conference a year. If you don’t, you should. I often pay for conferences out of my own pocket but I learn a great deal and make many contacts. Next time you go to a conference, come home with the business cards of at least 5 people with whom you could work on collaborative projects or have them Skype-visit your classroom. Another way that you can connect with folks from conferences, is to review conference programs and contact the presenters who look interesting:

• National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) 2008
• Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) 2008
• Iowa Technology and Education Connection (ITEC) 2008

You might specifically want to contact the people whose sessions were podcasted – this indicates that they are interested in talking about their program.

Podcasts: Speaking of podcasts, you should review the Conference Connections podcast seriesApple Computer) involves interviews with presenters at conferences. They may be technology leaders or classroom teachers or ?? This may be a short 7-minute interview or it might be a recording of the whole presentation. Either way, it is a way to find out who is interested in sharing their ideas. You may find some of them who asked to be paid for a Skype-visit, but you can find someone else if their terms don't meet your resources.

for possible Skype-visitors. This series (sponsored by Global School Network: If you are interested in collaborating with students and experts outside of your classroom, then you MUST visit the Global School Network (GSN). The GSN has been engaging teachers and students in project learning exchanges for a quarter of a century.
In 2005, Teaching and Learning magazine identified GSN's predecessor, FredMail Network, as one of the top 15 “Breakthrough Products” since 1980.

GSN provides a Project Registry of over 3,000 telecollaborative projects. These projects may be from across the street or across the globe. They may last a week or be continuous on-going activities. If you want to join an existing project, there are over 3,000 of them. If you want to originate your own project, GSN has developed a time-tested format outline to assist you in making your project successful. Telecollaboration is a deep subject that I will cover more thoroughly in a later post.

Wesley’s question about finding people and classes to work with your students is an important one. The opportunities are there and video conferencing can be used to make your curriculum more relevant to your students by further expanding their learning experiences into the “real world.”

What do you think? Do you use Skype in your classroom? How do you find people/classrooms for collaborating.

Publishing Your Own eBooks

eBooks provide a venue for distributing your ideas with little or no expense in publishing your ideas. I write a great deal on my blogs and in my teaching. eBooks provide a way to professionally collect and publish your work. It also makes it easy to distribute to your friends and public.

I was just reading about Social Media on Brian Solis's blog, PR 2.0, when he mentioned his eBook, The Essential Guide to Social Media. This is an eBook that he created as a "quick start" overview about participating in the social media world. He collected the most commonly asked questions and answers and turned them into a downloadable ebook. It has a number of good ideas that I will cover later, but the format was what really enchanted me.

The eBook was printed through a website entitled Scribd. A potential author can upload a file/book/set of document to the website where it turns the work into what they call iPaper.11 different formats (e.g. Word, .pdf, Powerpoint, Excel, Open Office, etc.) Moreover, Scribd is building a huge library of resources that can be searched and accessed. iPaper is a rich document format that was built to be displayed through the Web. Originally created with Adobe Flash, it can be viewed through a variety of operating systems. You can upload your document in wide range of formats. 

Imagine how this can be used in your classroom. The opportunities are endless in presenting content and publishing student work. Here are a few that I have found:

• Publishing student anthologies.
• Creating a collaborative publication that is shared and enjoyed between classes.
• Providing course content to students in book-like format
• Creating brochures

I must admit that I am new to iPaper and Scribd. iPaper appears to me to be an online version of .pdf. One of the advantages that I see is that it allows you to embed articles into blogs (see below) or onto webpages or ???

I just wrote an article for my other blog, Keyboarding Research and Resources, where I discuss the research into the effects of covering a computer keys when learning to keyboard. Just for fun, I uploaded this paper onto Scribd and below I have provided some ways to access it including embedding the file into this posting. Have fun.

============================

Here's a link to the online Scribd page of this article, Can Learning to Touch Type be Facilitated by Covering the Keys on a Computer?

Here is the embedded version. I embedded this document by copying the HTML code from the Scribd website and then pasting it into the HTML version of this blog posting. Look at all of the various formats available for viewing this document. Click on the iPaper dropdown menu to see that you can view it in a book, document or presentation format. You can email it to a friend or print it or whatever.

Can Learning to Touch Type be Facilitated by Covering the Keys on a Computer?

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Education research covers

What do you think of this the iPaper/Scribd options?

Have any of you used this tool?

What are your opinions?

How would you use it?

HyperStudio is Back!!!!

An old friend is back in the classroom!!

HyperStudio is a program that has enabled students to share their ideas, thoughts and creations through a multimedia for many years. I have had the good fortune to use it with students in my classrooms and share it with educators on 3 continents.

Unfortunately, this wonderful program was sold to Learning.com in 1999 which resulted in a series of flawed updates. Eventually, this lead to the program disappearing from the educational scene about 5 years ago. The originator, Roger Wagner, bought back the rights a few years ago and enlisted MacKiev to completely reprogram the product. The new product was announced at the 2007 NECC in Atlanta but it never shipped. MacKiev showed it again at the San Antonio NECC in 2008 and it began shipping earlier this year. HyperStudio is BACK!!!

I must admit that I haven't had the opportunity to thoroughly examine the new version, but I liked what I saw at NECC. HyperStudio now has the capability to export to self-contained programs, webpages, podcasts and even iPhones. It is fully integrated to share media with iTunes and iPhoto. The opportunities with version 5.0 are great.

Philip Roy gave positive reviews about HS5 in his NZMac blog.

I look forward to working with HyperStudio 5.0 in the future.

You DON'T have to be an Expert

As a teacher, you DON'T have to be an expert in using technology before you allow your students to use it.

This is probably the greatest barrier to integrating new technologies in the classroom. Many teachers believe that they must master technologies before allowing students to use them. Teachers often feel that they must be their students' safety nets in case they fail. This is NOT the case. Teachers should be the instigators of thought and investigation, but they should allow their students to explore ways to express themselves through a plethora of new technologies.

This attitude is something that is explained through a slideshow created and displayed by Mike Fisher in the 1 Thing project that Clif Mims is running over at his blog, Clif's Notes.

JustOneThing

You might notice that Mike Fisher created this slideshow using MyPlick. This is a site where you can upload your slides, synch them with your voice and then share them with friends. It is REALLY easy to share them with friends. I just use their embed feature to transfer this file over to this blog posting - no muss, no fuss. You will probably see me begin to use this in the future. It is Tres Cool!!
Tags: Web2.0 classroom technology tools apps

Webspiration: Inspiration on the Web

Inspiration HAS DONE IT!!!
The folks at Inspiration have developed an on-line version of their prize-winning software gem and named it Webspiration. Thinkers, large and small, have huddled around computers for almost two decades using Inspiration to help them organize and develop their ideas. They have worked alone and in groups but the limitation has always been that they could only diagram their ideas on a single computer at a time.

Webspiration elevates Inspiration to the level of online collaborative work tool. Students create an account and then can create diagrams/outlines that are saved on the Inspiration server. Having these maps online makes them accessible from any computer. This is handy for students who want to work on their diagrams at school, home and ??

Collaborative? Yes, the creator of a diagram can share it with collaborators by sending invites to friends who have Webspiration accounts. Collaborators can sign onto Webspiration and work on common diagrams whenever they are interested. Multiple collaborators can also be online simultaneously and work together on the diagram. The only limitation is that the they can't work on the file at the same time. As the video shows, one person works as the editor and the other collaborators are spectators until the active editor passes control over to the next person in line. This makes it less collaborative than Google Docs that allows multiple collaborators to work in a document simultaneously. Is this a problem? It can be. I found that some of my students were OK with waiting in line but others became quite frustrated when they had to "holster" their creativity until it was their time to emote.

Watch this short Jing video that I created to demonstrate Webspiration in my ISTE Webinar.



Watch a larger version of this demo at http://tinyurl.com/5cnxr4 (3 minutes to download)


What's it cost? Right now Webspiration is free! The folks at Inspiration have identified the present version of Webspiration as a Beta Version and they want you to get online and give it a try. They even provided a place where users can provide feedback (although I couldn't find it just now when I checked the most recent version.:-)

Give it a try. Go to http://www.mywebspiration.com and try out the Inspiration of Tomorrow.

For more information, visit the MyWebspiration site.

Children CAN Make a Difference!

I just found a moving video through Facebook. It is entitled “The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes.” This video depicts a 13-year old girl, Severn Suzuki. who addressed the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. She and four other children in their organization, Environmental Children’s Organization traveled from Vancouver to Brazil to tell the adults at the conference that they must stop destroying the world.

There is no way that I can explain the emotional impact that this can have on you, so you should watch this yourself. I don’t know what difference this girl’s speech had on the UN conference attendees but it is a fine example of a self-motivated person working to impact the world.

"Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has." (Margaret Mead)

Macintosh Enters the Netbook World

I love the opportunities that the new mini-laptops (also known as netbooks) have provided for learners and users. This idea began with the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) which originated with Nicholas Negroponte at MIT. He was the advocate who went to vendors with a vision of a minicomputer that ultimately weighed only 3.2 pounds. I bought one of the first XO computers and am constantly amazed at its capabilities.

Asus was also a pioneer in this field with their Eee PC (Wikipedia says Eee comes from "Easy to Learn, Easy to work, Easy to play.") They say that they now have an all-day netcomputer with a battery that lasts 6-7.8 hours.

The missing player has been Apple. Why hasn't Apple thrown its hat into the netbook ring so that we can edit our videos using iMovie '08 (ouch) on a 2.2 pound OS gem? Well, I DON'T KNOW. I would guess that Apple is having a problem with the idea of creating a computer that costs less than $500. While I am an Apple evangelist (not at the Guy Kawasaki level but I luv my Mac), Macintosh computers are typically priced higher than their competitors. Personally, I think that these computers are worth paying a few extra sheckles to own a Mac but $500 may be too low for Apple to get its typical profit margin.

Never fear!!! I just found some resources on the web that can help you find eternal satisfaction by having a Mac OS netbook under your arm.

These resources include a rumor about Apple releasing a netbook at the MacWorld 2009 and, for those of you who can't wait until January to see/have a Mac netbook, I have found a site that tells you how to load the Leopard OS onto a netbook.

Mac Netbook at MacWorld 2009
Rumor has it that Apple will be announcing a Mac netbook at MacWorld 2009. While it appears that Steve Jobs is not going to be doing his typical new product introduction at MacWorld, InformationWeek is reporting that pundents are predicting a Mac netbook that will probably run about $599. Technically this doesn't place them in the true netbook (< $500) genre, but it Apple has never been a company that cares about labels. It is also predicted that Apple will justify the additional $100 expense by offering "an array of content, applications, and games through the App Store, which is accessible through the company's iTunes software." Information Week predicts that this will be released mid-year 2009.

Hadley Stern of Apple Matters provides "5 Reasons Why An Apple Netbook will be Released at MacWorld." Hadley says that these reasons include 1) The economy, 2) Chips, 3) The iPhone, 4) Jobs gets to say he invented it, and 5) Extend iTunes reach. It is a lot of logical ideas that are based upon Apple's history. These ideas are fun to read and I think that they can support InformationWeek's predictions.

Running OS X on a Netbook
If you can't wait until July to have a Mac netbook, Wired magazine's site has a video by Brian X. Chen entitled Running OS X on a Netbook. This video shows you how you can make a couple of small chip changes on an MSI Wind Netbook and then load Mac OS X onto the computer (Note: this is a hacked version of Mac OS X which is illegal so I am just sharing this with you as an exercise in exploration.) How well does this run the Mac programs? I don't know, but wouldn't it totally freak our your friends if you opened your MSI netbook to reveal Mac OS X?

Well, I don't know the exact future plans that Apple may have in the world of netbooks but I predict that by this time next year I will be writing this blog on NetMac (or whatever they intend to name them.)

Photo: flickr.com/karenilagan/

Dr. Z Turns into a Potato

Well, it finally happened.

Dr. Z has turned into a potato. (This photo used to be a live, interactive animation, but I got tired of him saying "Hey, Cheer up! Why the long, gnobbly face?" everytime I returned to this page, so I screen captured it. You can see the animation of you use the links in the next paragraph.)

Thanks to the twitter referral from Gina Hartman, I have spudded myself. This Spud Yourself website is run by Walkers Crisps (I believe they are similar to Frito-Lay in the States.)

It allows me to write my own script (text-to-speech) or I can use their pre-recorded pieces. The only problem is that the computer voices that red the text are pretty bad. It would be great if they allowed us to upload our own voice files.

Spud Yourself - It will be fun!

How to Make a “Terrific” Web Show

I just found a 10-minute video on Epic FU on how to make a K-A Web Show. Epic FU identifies themselves as the Zadi Diaz runs through a epic list list of resources that you can use to create your own video shows. Fortunately they have a list of the scores of resources that Zadi introduces. Epic FU uses the Epic FU blog to support each of their broadcasts with additional resources. While this video appears to be designed for Web-based video producers (be they professionals or teenagers), this could be an Awesome resource for educators who want to integrate video into their learning environments.

They referred me to a place that I hadn’t seen before – wikiversity. This is a place I had never visited but it appears to be where you can learn about a myriad of topics for free. It is run by the Wikimedia Foundation that is the same group that runs Wikipedia. They specifically linked us to the Filmmaking page which they describe as “a preparatory school for budding filmmakers who plan to go to film school or take classes in motion picture production.” I haven’t tried wikiversity before. What are your experiences?

Personal Note: This is funny, I feel a difference in the voice that I am using when I discuss using video in education versus using it in the “Real World.” Why is this? Is it because of the “anything goes” feeling of a production like Epic FU. When we are working with students we have to worry about propriety.

Epic FU says "popular culture -- it's about conversation and interaction." Is that our problem? That's funny. Good teaching/learning is about conversation and interaction too. Are we doing that enough?

I don’t know about this. What are your opinions?

A New Look @ Research-Based Keyboarding Instruction

Last summer I wrote a white paper for Sunburst Technologies, A New Look @ Research-Based Keyboarding Instruction, which was a review of the existing research in teaching keyboarding. I want to share this document with you because I believe that it is an important overview of what has been found out about best practice in teaching keyboarding and addressing the needs of students in their pursuit towards becoming efficient and effective keyboarders.

Admittedly, this document was sponsored by Sunburst Technologies but that doesn’t reduce the importance of the research synthesis provided here.

A New Look @ Research-Based Keyboarding Instruction

If you have further interest in Teaching Keyboarding and the research behind it, visit my blog - KeyboardingResearch.org It is filled with references that you might find useful when you are trying to answer questions about keyboarding or need research to support what you are trying to do in your classroom.

photo: www.flickr.com/atcbugman

Consumption Causing Global Warming

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

Leo Murray has released a dramatic illustrated video, Wake Up, Freak Out - Then Get a Grip, that talks about the scientific and social causes of Global Warming. He explains the scientific process but takes it all the way to the potential social implications of the global warming effects. This change will not be an either/or situation where today we aren't affected and tomorrow we are. As global warming brings gradual change, many humans will take extraordinary measures to hang onto what they have.

I must admit that I had not thought of the societal implications of global warming as citizens work to keep what they have. As some countries are dramatically affected by rising sea levels and erratically violent weather patterns, their inhabitants will look for somewhere else to live. This will cause a mass migration to already stressed nations throughout the world.

Murray's video doesn't leave us with Doomsday Despair. He talks about how reduced consumption is a matter that all of us need to address. We need to identify what it is that we need and how that differs from what we want. We need to reduce, reuse and recycle to relieve the strain on our planet.

This world is the only one we get. In the 70s we tried to tell the world about the impending implications of overconsumption. I have been actively recycling for over 40 years. I can't say that I am the beacon of conservation, we all need to make conscious changes in what we do and how we think about consumption.

I STRONGLY suggest that you watch Leo Murray's video. Teachers: You MUST preview this video before you share it with your students because there are some sections that are almost scary to consider. But consider it we must as well as act upon it beginning TODAY.

Story Visualization

I was just reading Guy Kawasaki's blog, How to Change the World, when he referred to Garr Reynold's Blog, Zen of Presentation. I had never heard of this blog before but it is filled with Garr's reflections on "issues with professional presentation design." We talk about Visual Literacy in our classes but Garr is living it. He discusses how the media succeed and fail in using visuals to convey their messages. Looks like he has a book called Presentation Zen.

One of his postings that I found exceptionally inspiring was entitled "Beautiful example of the visualization of a story." He discussed the D-PAN (Deaf Performing Artists Network). This is an organization that creates "media designed specifically to serve deaf audiences through the use of American Sign Language (ASL). It would be repetitive to post them here, but Garr has embedded samples of videos the D-PAN created as well as a CNN new report. The message that they "have a dream" is beautiful.

Oh, well . . . I guess I will be repetitive by embedding the "Waiting for the World to Change" Video here.



P.S. I also found Guy's posting The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint This is where Guy says that no PowerPoint should have more than 10 slides, last longer than 20 minutes or use a font less than 30 pt. The first two were incontrovertible, but he got soft on the font rule by saying that you should take the age of oldest person in your audience and divide by 2 to determine your minimum font size. That would mean that I would cause you to use 27.5 fonts. Should be interesting. ;-)

Map Generators are Easy

My Travel Map*
Although I am not a worldly traveler, I saw Paul Glazowski make a reference to this Simple Map Generator on the Mashable blog and it suggested that I should map out the places I have visited. I did so and the resulting map is embedded above. It actually lists all 215 countries (yes, I counted them) on seven continents and all that I had to do was click on the checkbox to select a country. While simple, this utility has an incredible potential for allowing students to "color in" maps for a variety of applications.

This Google Maps/Earth hybrid that is hosted by 29 Travels can be used to chronicle one's travels or visually identify the groups of countries or create comparative maps that can be used to document chronological change. This is a simple though effective answer.

How do you envision using it in your educational setting?

*You might note that this map is not embedded in this posting. I tried it, but it didn't format properly and took too long to load. SOOOO, I simply included a screen capture of the map and then linked it to the original map.

Comparing News Articles from Around the World

I was just reading the EdTech listserv to which I belong (how's that for fancy writing? ;-).
A teacher was asking about how she could use Google to compare news perspectives from different newspapers around the world.

I was fortunate enough to have attended Alan November's presentation at the ITEC conference in Des Moines last month where he explained how you can do this. After a little experimentation, I was able to reconstruct these steps for finding news articles that are written in specific countries about specific topics.

Let's assume that you want to compare news articles about the President-elect Barack Obama. You want to see what they are saying about him in Poland. You can go to google.pl to use the Polish Google but it will only direct you back to the articles here in the US.

The best way to find articles published in Poland is to search only the Web addresses that end in .pl (Polish domain):

1. Begin by selecting the Advanced Search option on Google.
2. In the "Search within a site or domain:", enter .pl (this will limit it to URLs in Poland).
3. In case you don't speak Polish, select English or your native language in the Language section.
4. Enter Obama in the Search box at the top and you will have a huge list of Polish-published articles that are written in your native language.

Here is a link to an advanced search page that would achieve this.

This could also be used to compare articles on a specific topic that were published in the Los Angeles Times (latimes.com) or the New York Times (nytimes.com).

This could be a powerful tool for learning about the world peoples' opinions on thing that happen in the U.S. and elsewhere.

I am interested in whether you have ever used this in your classes? If so, how did it go? If not, how do you envision yourself as using this strategy?

photo: flickr.com/cikku

AECT Google Forms Example

This form was created using Google Docs Form. Please fill it out so that we can see what it looks like to have the information appear in the Google Spreadsheet.

Using Google Form for Surveys

As you may or may not know, Dr. Z and Garey G are giving a presentation at ITEC 2008. It is entitled Dr. Z and Garey G's Creative Cookbook for Collaborative Communication. During that presentation, they will be sharing the incredible opportunities available through using Google Forms with Google Docs.

Hopefully, they will have an auditorium full of laptop-toting folks so that they can enter their information into this form. If you would like to make your own contribution, no matter where on earth you are, please complete the form below. You might even tell us of your actual location in the last field.

It would be useful to have your input but it would EXTREMELY IMPRESSIVE if you could add it between 3:00 - 33:0 Central Standard Time. That way the could see you doing it live.

Tools for Video Authoring

Ever create a video and upload it to YouTube? Everybody's doing it. Although the statistics haven't been openly available since Google acquired YouTube for $1.650,000,000 (in Google stock), Comscore estimated that in January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users had made over 3 billion video views.

Here is a video by Jon4Lakers about how to make a video using Macintosh iMovie HD and upload it to YouTube. It is not too complicated. You will note that he did this video while on a studybreak from "writing essays for business school" (note that it has been viewed almost 11,000 times - not bad for a studybreak.)

Jon4Lakers was also courteous enough to provide some instruction on how to use Photobooth on his Macintosh to create YouTube videos.

Wondering how to do this with Windows Movie Maker? It is a little more complicated, but JohnGregory08 from Australia provides a 10-minute video about using MovieMaker to create a video.

Want to know how to do specific things in Movie Maker?
Atomic Learning has a set of 63 free videos for Windows Movie Maker 2.

Screencasting
Wondering how to share what's happening on your screen? This is called a screencast. There are a number of programs that you might want to use: Snapz Pro X (Mac) or Camtasia (Windows)

Another option for screencasting is Jing. This is a free, on-line version of Camtasia by the same company, TechSmith. Dr. Z has already posted on Jing in an earlier blog posting. It is a powerful tool that will allow you to create an online video up to 5-minutes in length. Read his posting to learn more about it.

Here is a video that demonstrates and explains Jing.

The world is full of examples of educators using videos to involve k-18 learners in expressing and exploring new ideas. Here are a few examples. Those of you in the EIT class should have received invitations for becoming authors in this blog so add your own examples (followed by your name). If you aren't from this class but have ideas, add your suggestions as comments:

• A Vision of Students Today (Dr. Michael Wesch - Kansas State University)
• A Vision of K-12 Students Today (bjnesbitt)
• . . . your ideas? . . .

Photos: www.flickr.com/Aster-oid, jon4lakers. atomiclearning.com, jingproject.com

Resources for Building in Second Life

Now that my Emerging Instructional Technologies class is exploring Second Life and playing with the opportunities, I have been researching more into how to Build for Second Life. We have the good fortune of having a "Mansion in the Sky" over Iowa Island. The designer for our house is Spirit Finucane (see photo on the right.)

I was talking with Spirit yesterday after she helped me out of a jam. I asked her where would be a good place to begin learning about building in SL and she directed me to the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives (SLurl).
I had visited this place before, but hadn't spent much time there. It is a GREAT FIND for anyone who wants to learn about building. It takes you on a step-by-step progression through the process of building. Begins with defining the shapes of prims (primitive objects) and builds up from there. Each level of accompanied with a notecard that explains the concept. I learned a lot!!! Will have to return soon to continue with my education.

I have been looking for videos of "building lessons", but haven't found any overall resources. There are a few videos that I have added to the 10/2 posting of Readings/Watchings/Listenings/Doings for my Emerging Instrutional Technologies course.

What have you found for Building Resources. I plan to update this page as I learn more from my readers and as I explore the world. (I must admit that I am sitting at a coffee house right now that has a woefully slow wifi system so I can't explore SL much. Will update later.)

Dr. Z Reflects Blog Up for Blog-o-the Month in Second Life

BIG NEWS!!!

My blog DID win the "Blog-o-the-Month" for November at the Blogger's Hut on ISTE Island.
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My blog, Dr. Z Reflects, is "in the running" for "Blog-o-the-Month" for November at the Blogger's Hut on the ISTE Island in Second Life. I must admit that I am awed by the contenders. They include Westley Frier, David Jakes and Scott S. Floyd.

The winner will be selected through a good-natured poll that takes place in the Blogger's Hut in Second Life.

If you would like to vote in this poll (and hopefully support Dr. Z), you can get to Blogger's Hut by clicking on the Slurl below. As you may know, a Slurl is a URL for a location in Second Life:

• When you click on it, you will go to a webpage that says "Welcome to Second Life."
• Click on the "teleport now" button.
• Second life will now open on your computer. You must enter your username and code.
  
• Once you enter Second Life, you will teleport over to the Blogger's Hut. When you land, you might want to turn your avatar around to get your bearings.
• You will see 4 colored bars with "Dr. Z Reflects" on top.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island/9/129/23

The Blogger Hut's manager, Scott Merrick, has even created a video describing how to vote.

Thanks for your support and I hope that things go well with you. See you In-World.

Dr. Z Runs for President

What if Dr. Z really DID run the world?

Unleashing the Tribe!!! Ewan McIntosh

Just watched (and listened to) Ewan McIntosh's presentation, Unleashing the Tribe: Small Passionate Communities. WOW!!!!

Unleashing The Tribe: small passionate communities

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: cell mobile)

It is a 25-minute discussion of how the real technologically-based world of our students is affecting or should be affecting our educational system. He discusses the importance/opportunity of social networking in our students' lives and hopefully education. He notes that we, as teachers, need to question the comfortable ways that we teach. We need to stretch ourselves to connect with students to make the content more relevant and meaningful to the students.

McIntosh (don't know what kind of computer he uses) discusses how teachers are stuck in the model of having to master skills and material before introducing it to their students. If we wait until teachers master the technology, we will never progress. It is not about learning the technology it is about using the technology to provide learning opportunities that were not previously available. He states that "Technology is not transformative, it is pedagogy that is transformative."

An especially poignant point that Ewan makes is the connectedness of students and the lack of connectedness of teachers. He shows a "friend wheel". This is a socio-gram that shows how individuals in a group of FOF (Friends of Friends) are connected. It shows a great link between students and virtually NO links between teachers. Now I can see that some teachers might be reluctant to create "friend" links with their students. It is a sad commentary when teachers don't link to one another.

We need to turn the page in education. We need to make students more responsible for their education. As teachers, we need to look for various methods for attaining desired ends. I will pontificate upon this more in another post, but I wanted to share this presentation with you now.

BTW, you will note that Ewan is using Slideshare.net to house his presentation. He has a number of presentations there. Most of the rest of them are just the PowerPoint presentations which you have to click through manually. This presentation looks like an enhanced podcast where he has taken the audio track and then placed the PowerPoint slides in appropriate spots. There are many ways to do this but I don't know how he did this. He could have captured the sound and presentation using software like ProfCast. Or he could have used a digital recorder like the Zoom H2 to record the presentation and then used GarageBand on a Macintosh to add the slides.

Mathway: It Solves Math Problems

I just bumped into Mathway on a tech coordinator listserv that I get. It is an interesting site. You can enter math problems that range from basic math through calculus and it give you the answer. Good or Bad? I don't know.

I began by entering a formula, -3y+3x=-7(x+3) (don't be impressed, I found it on the page). It asked me what class I was taking that required me to complete such a task and I selected Pre-Algebra. I clicked on the Answer button.

I progressed to a second page where it gave me a wide selection of what to do with the equation. Look to the right and you can see the variety of opportunities that I have available to me.

As an ignorant purist, I decided to continue with the more mundane opportunity which was to Solve the Equation. It asked me which variable I wanted to "solve for." I selected y.


The next page (see left) was a total surprise to me. It did SOOOOO much more than just give the value of y. It took me on a step-by-step progression through what one would do to "solve for y". It showed each step, explained what needed to be done, and even had hyperlinks to a glossary for words that I didn't understand. WOW!!!


As if this wasn't enough . . . it graphed the answer for me.



There was even code for embedding this equation and linking to the answer from my blog (see below). This will be terrific for teachers/students who want to instruct how to complete specific equations online.

QUESTION: Is this a good thing?

Is it a good thing to give away the answers like this? Will students use this website instead of their own ingenuity to complete their homework? Will this be used for cheating on tests?

Probably!!!

There will be learners . . .no . . . students who use this site inappropriately. I call them students instead of learners because they won't be learning anything if they use this site to cheat. BUT if they use this site to help walk them through math problems that they are learning to complete in class, this site could be QUITE valuable. It is the next step after putting the answers to all of the odd-numbered problems in the back of the textbook.

This is the sort of interactive site that can place the learner at the center of his/her education. This is where the serious learner can access individualized tutorials to improve personal learning.

Podcasting from Your Phone

Podcasting is a great way to record what is happening or what is on your mind, but the technology is sometimes daunting for some educators. That's too bad because usually simple is best. Cell phones are in everybody's pocket in schools today. Yes, school policy usually restricts students from having cell phones at school, but they have them anyway. Wouldn't it be interesting to find an academic application for them?


I just returned from joining 15,000 of my best friends to ride our bikes across Iowa (500 miles) in a week. This was an annual experience called RAGBRAI and I rode with Team Flamingo. This experience is something that I wanted to share with my friends and readers so I created our Team Flamingo blog. I tried to maintain the text-based blog, but the wireless access was limited from the back of my bike. =-)

I tried posting to our blog using by texting from my Treo 800p smartphone, but Verizon decided to add 9 additional lines of advertisements to the end of each of my posts. I called up Verizon and went to their stores to find out how to stop this but it wasn't possible.

Ultimately, I decided to use my phone to post audio podcasts to my blog. It was easy to call the 888 number and leave updates about our progress. It was easy, it was quick and it was effective.
The coolest part of it was that I could embed the podcast receptor into my webpage/blog. This made it easy to access and enjoy.

I used GCast. It only took creating an account and then putting the receptor on my webpage/blog. I called up the GCast phone number, 888-654-2278. I entered my secret code number. Then I created the podcast. When I was done, I could review the podcast to approve or deny its posting. Once I have approved the podcast, it was posted within minutes. Best of all, this is FREE. You can even upload files from your computer if you want to include a file that you custom-made instead of limiting it to the phone versions. I found that I could even subscribe to the RSS feed of my GCast podcast using iTunes.

A similar service is Gabcast. You call a toll-free number (they provide phone numbers for multiple continents) and leave your thoughts through your phone. Gabcast has a three levels of service. The free version doesn't allow you to upload files from your computer but you can do that for $6 or $12 per month. Paying for the service will provide you with more storage space services as well. One capability that I found in Gabcast that didn't seem to be in Gcast is that you can link to individual recordings. They suggested that you could use this to verbally explain things like eBay postings or interesting webpages.

Westley Fryer wrote an informative article about these sorts of tools entitled Mobile Digital Storytelling for The TechEdge: The Journal of the Texas Computer Education Association. This is an informative article with lots of links if you want to learn more about it.

I don't know that this storytelling is the only way that students will benefit from this mobile digital recording system, but it provides an exciting way to chronical throughts, ideas and experiences.

Have you used these tools? If so, share what you have done.

Z