Classy driving

I am able to read the classes' posts on my iPhone which picks up the 3G network as I type responses on my MacBook Pro. I got all my work done on our way to Sally and Buzz in Miami. I'll upload it to the Moodle class when we get there in about 20 minutes.

St Augustine Florida

Late lunch in a very old city and we can't find that fountain of youth. Got a late start this morning as I hAd some repair work on the wiki for my online class. We are into Session 4. Hope to make Miami tonight.

Almost to Florida

We spent the morning in Charleston and took in a tour of the Nathaniel Russell house which was built in 1803 in the Federal style. N Russell became a wealthy shipping merchant and made his money shipping rice, indigo and slaves.
We cruised quickly thru Savannah, GA in the late afternoon in 101 degree weather. By 7:00 it had cooled off to 99 when we stopped in Brunswick GA for the night.

Morning stroll in Charleston

Bert found the Dixie Kitchen. We had grits eggs and a biscuit, and passed on the tomato pie which sounded wonderful. We walked thru the French Quarter and waved at the tour bus driver from yesterday as he came thru on his first tour of the morning. OBTW I figured how to post directly from the iPhone to my blog- Googled it and followed the lengthy directions. Yea me.... And Google:-)

Charleston, South Carolina

We took a late afternoon tour of this Nantucket-like town in an AC'd bus- thank God, as the temp was in the mid 90's. We are staying at the Mills Hotel right in the heart of cute downtown on Meeting St. Bert did a deal on Priceline and we lucked out. Had she crab soup, biscuits, scallops, fried chicken and green fried tomatoes at Poogans Porch. Mighty tasty.

On the way to Beidler Forest

We walked in Frank's Audubon Forest today

We stopped just about an hour outside Charleston, South Carolina, and visited the Francis Beidler Forest. Bert's college roomie and long time friend is the grandson of Francis Beidler II who donated the forest/swamp to the Audubon. It is 17,000 acres of virgin Cypress trees and Tupelo Gum trees. There was a 1000 years old Cypress tree. It is a swamp- a forest in water. It was pretty dry today as there has been a drought. While the temps have been in the high 90's for the past few days, it was only 82 in the forest. A really beautiful place. Thank you Frank.
That's our "covered wagon" at the entrance. 

The Deed is Done!

21 years @ 24 Thoreau. Two awesome kids, many baseball games, concerts, plays, ski trips and house swaps! A dream come true. And on July 5th the moving van came and took all our "stuff" and put it in storage in Watertown. And on July 7th we passed the papers and the keys to Frank and Renee Wang who will be the new neighbors of Sandra and James Wong, our neighbors for many years. Our good and longest known friends, Tom and Diane let us sleep in their guest room for several nights as we tied up the ends of our Lexington lives. And my longest known Massachusetts friend, Tricia, housed us our last night. I gave Tricia my lovely Night Blooming Cereus plant which strangely had produced two buds in the last weeks we were in the house. It never blooms this time of year, usually saving its exotic plate sized flowers for September - yet on July 7th from 8-12 pm two lovely blossoms opened in Hamilton, MA, their new home.
Friday, July 8th, mid-morning we headed to New York City and the first birthday celebration of our grand nephew, Ellison Philips-Chheda. Saturday we saw Jerusalem on Broadway with Jenny, Ellison's Mom and my niece. It was as awesome as the reviews and the Tony award winning lead, Mark Rylance, was amazing. We left New York City after the cupcakes were eaten and the presents were opened - about 3 pm. We are now in Fredericksburg, VA on our way south to Miami and a visit with my sister, Sally and her partner, Buzz. We are traveling South, then West, in my Subaru wagon with a Thule clam shell carrier - a 21st century version of the "covered wagon".
OBTW - as we travel, I am facilitating a 6 week online class for teachers learning about Web 2.0 and personal learning networks. It is an amazing group of motivated teachers. I'll let them in on my location status when the class is over. GTGT bed now.

Thank You all for coming to witness my going

Moments before going to the much anticipated retirement party yesterday, a friend(?) asked if I was nervous and added that I had nothing to worry about, as she was sure my speech was all set to go. SPEECH! What speech ???
So here's the speech that might have been:

June 15th, 2011 - Retirement Party @ Bedford High School
Thank You all for coming to witness my going:

What I have accomplished, lived through and lived despite of over these 8 years is vast and diverse. These are a few of my memories of change in Bedford:

PowerPoint was the Power Users first choice – Google Docs is now the collaborative choice of teachers and students, alike

Floppy disks were coveted - now replaced by space somewhere in a cloud

A laptop was issued only to MEET members – now many carts of them are available to whole classes of kids

There were no phones for teachers – kids and teachers can’t live without their personal cells these days

An online class was something only the Virtual High School in Concord could do – any teacher may write and offer an online class easily

A SMARTBoard was mistakenly referring to a woman with a good mind – these days it's something you tap, touch, project ideas on and engage your students with

I shared my office in the evenings with tiny furry visitors who enjoyed cleaning out my candy dish – I still share my candy dish with nightly visitors, but they now leave notes to thank me for the chocolate

A video was something you rented on the weekends – Videos are now made on a regular basis by many students for projects in their classes and to win awards in Washington

Data was a dude in Star Trek – now it’s what measures our successes and is studied using spreadsheets and charts by students and teachers alike

Renovation was a threat that became a 3 year reality only to be replaced by NEASC which has left us knowing that we A-R-E BHS.

So here’s a huge thank you and vote of appreciation to all my colleagues in this awesome high school who have embraced change along with me and graciously accepted that technology would forever challenge and reward them and do it at an ever accelerating pace. Keep the faith and remember – when you don’t know how to do something – ask a kid for help.

Sue

PS- the food, the flowers, and the especially the lace tablecloths were real and beautiful and all so lovingly done. It couldn't have been nicer. Thank you to those who honored the occasion with their care.

50 Sites in 60 Seconds

Education blogger David Kapuler has created a free slideshow of 50 great sites for education, creativity, organization and more. Each slide includes basic information about the site, a link to the site, and a link to Kapuler's review of the site.

50sites ver2

View more presentations from David Kapuler

Smart Phones with built-in projectors!

 Slashdot announces smartphones with new chips that allow for built in projection.

Immersive Education - Interactive White Board

 Look at what Media Grid is doing in a virtual reality space for education.

Streaming Augmented Reality

iPhone + Book

It’s the hybrid book which combined iPhone and an ordinary book.
You can enjoy interactive actions there,
by touching the screen or tipping the book as you read it.

2009 Top 100 Tools for Learning

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

View more documents from Jane Hart.

Google in our Cloudy Future - Chrome OS

Google has big plans and wants to move all our "stuff" to the web.
Read the blog post for more background.

Wallwisher - No log in necessary

This is an online notice board. You create a background then add stickies and move them around to gather and organize your ideas. You are issued a URL even before you start, so you can embed the "wall" in another online doc, app, blog, wiki, etc.... Great ice breaker.

Publish it online - Just upload the .pdf

If you can type it - you can publish it online to issuu. Have your students turn their work in here, and be available for all to read. Re-think the tired Powerpoint or any other documents you want to make available. Publish to issuu - link to your own website. Even deliver your school newspaper through issuu.com.

Book Glutton - A Social Reading Event for your classroom

Read with a group, have a conversation about a paragraph, upload your own works, or read from their library. This site has a wealth of possibilities for Language Arts teachers, and many others. This site believes "books are conversations".

drop.io

Create your own shared space, then use a cell phone to add recorded information to this shared space. Add/upload images, files, too. Email directly to your space and also subscribe to receive all other updates from collaborators. Easy.
Simple real-time sharing, collaboration, and presentation.
Use drop.io to privately share your files and collaborate in real time by web, email, phone, mobile, and more. Create each drop in two clicks and share what you want, how you want, with whom you want.

Gapminder puts statistics into dynamic graphical images

Watch as the statistics gathered for hundreds of categories of information from countries around the world change before your eyes. A truly global tool for today's students.

Gapminder is a non-profit venture promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels.

We are a modern “museum” that helps making the world understandable, using the Internet.

Gapminder was founded in Stockholm by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling on February 25, 2005.

Wiffiti is back! Post to the web from your Cell

Send a text message to 87884.
Start the message with @loca2730 and it will post a message to this screen.
Create many screens, each will have a different @loca address. Post from the web or from a cell phone. In the classroom??? Why not?

What Kind of Smart RU?

Take a quick test to see the different intelligences you use and where your strengths lie. Which are the strongest, and which do you use less? Try it with your students and let them discover there's more than one way to learn.

No Future Left Behind

When kids at the Suffern Middle School Tech Club were asked to talk about education and their future, they gave Peggy Sheehy, the SMS media specialist, an earful. Other students heard about the project and joined in. They brainstormed the script and started filming. Listen and learn the bits of wisdom that can be gleaned from the students, if we only dare to ask them.

wiffiti - What if cell phones could write

If you text me - 25622 - and start the message @02420sue, it will post your message on my wiffiti screen which is viewable when I login and view my site. I could project the active site to a screen in a classroom and receive text ideas from students, teachers, etc. Messages are screened by the site. Wiffiti is a start up located in Somerville, MA. Real cool.

Today I noticed my Cluster Map from last year finally had a hit from Africa and South America. 454 hits total for last year. Nice feeling to be so connected, if only this little bit.

jing - a ling

I love jing! I first downloaded it and installed it on my iMac and my Dell laptop because I needed to make training videos for my staff. It was so easy... but I'm using it all the time now as a screen capture for images while using my Dell. Mac has always had an easy screen capture built in, but not so PC. Jing does it and even includes a marquee tool to get just the piece I'm looking for. jing - a ling! I also like how the jing sun is always up in the corner of my screen, too.

Your virtual SMARTBoard

Just heard about this tool on twitter. If have an overhead projector connected to your classroom computer, and a whiteboard as your "chalkboard" you'd be all set for active board activities.
Simple and easy online multi user whiteboard, start skrbl, give out your URL & start working together. Sketch, text, share files, upload pictures all in one common shared space. There are no new tools to learn, nothing to download, nothing to install. Brainstorm on our simple whiteboard to start thinking together, everyone sees the same screen, everybody gets on the same page. More about skrbl here

Did You Know?

The latest version of Carl Fisch's video originally shown August 2006 to the teachers in his Colorado school.

Wordle - Images with Tags

Wordle will create a design using your del.icio.us tag cloud. It will also create a design with any collection of words. This is my cloud. I love how it really tells about the focus of my interests now. Do you see Tim's name in there, too? I'm working on a digital storytelling class now, and will start my VTClass in July and finished up the Virtual Projects class last March. Moodle should be bigger, but then again, I just use it, I don't read about it. All on Web2.0. Nihce.

23 Things - Web 2.0 at its best

The librarians of Macom County have created a fun list of activities that will instantly get educators involved with the best Web 2.0 tools and concepts. They have picked the best; flickr, rss, blogs and wikis. Along the way you record your experiences and challenges and if you complete the 23 tasks in a given amount of time, you get a prize! Yippee. And if you get stuck they suggest you consult the other staff members in your school for help. A wonderful concept. Planning to try it in my school next fall. I might even plan it out as an iGoogle adventure through their list of Web2.0 wonders.

Adobe PhotoShop Express

Adobe is now making it possible to do a quick fix to a photo and also save it online, right in the fix-it shop. Crop, adjust color and lighten images. Also apply simple effects and wipe out red eye. Nice gallery feature, too and direct access to other sharing sites. Wish you could get to flickr... but maybe in time.

PHUN - a new fisicks toi

Just heard about this new physics interactive free downloadable "toy" for experimenting . Picked it up from a twitter post on Saturday morning... Thanks Remote Access and glassbeed.

Finally tried VoiceThread - it's awesome!

I made a tiny voicethread about my favorite April vacation spot.

This is all free, and if a teacher wanted to use it for a project, they would be able to create different users and have their students comment along with the teacher in a class thread. I've made some alias's to show how this works.

bookr!

I just made this tiny book using bookr! It took less than 5 minutes. I accessed some photos from my flickr account using a link right from this site. Great flickr toy!
bookr!


Also view it like this:
walk with me by sue

And here's another one about Christo's Gates:
Christo's Gates by Su
And this one about Nantucket:
frame finding by Su
And this one about our swap to Paris
Paris Swap 7_07 by Su
Couldn't forget Wellfleet
wellfleet by su

Check out all the flickr toys @ http://www.pimpampum.net/toys/

A SMARTBoard in every room!?

I've just read Will's post about using a Wii remote with infrared pens to make any surface that has a projected image interactive the way a SMARTBoard or ActiveBoard is interactive. The video that describes it by Johnny Chung Lee, makes it look very simple. You don't even need the Wii system, just the remote and the infrared pens and the software from his website. I wonder how long it will take for someone to package the whole deal and make it possible for every classroom to get SMART?

This is how twitter works

It is extremely hard to describe twitter to anyone who has not actually tried it. I was reading over the tweets this evening and there was a shout out to Steve Sokoloski's post. He has written a beautiful description of his experience with twitter and lurking. It is very close to my experience, too. Thank you Steve for getting the words to come together.

Going from reading blogs to actively participating in Twitter is like going from the garden hose to the firehose. In reading blogs I could pick up an idea here, and idea there. With Twitter, it is a constant flow, in real time. Really smart people, talking in real time to other really smart people and posting links about what they are checking out. The pace of new ideas has grown exponentially.
Twitter has provided a view into other professional’s lives. They all do not do exactly the same job as me but as others have tweeted I have found that lots of other tech educators are like me. They have their computers on beyond work hours. They work hard at their jobs in the hours beyond work. They try to balance family and technology. I am not nuts to do what I do. There are people like me out there. Lots of folks are puzzled, confused and trying to make sense of all of this stuff, and working hard outside of school to try new things and work it all out. They are thoughtful, wise, kind, and funny.

Steve Sokoloski

Giant Global Graph

Tim's blog has a very lengthly, yet fascinating explanation of the Internet - the Web and his new term, the Graph of links. Tim has been promoting the Semantic Web and the ability the semantic web would provide to connect bits of data across the web, so that web pages are no long the important bookmark, data is. Using rdf tagging, and other software types, information may be linked and reused separate from the page on which it appears. It is very exciting, and something I've been following for the past several years, as Tim continues to explain it and promote it. Here's his description of the graph:
In the long term vision, thinking in terms of the graph rather than the web is critical to us making best use of the mobile web, the zoo of wildy differing devices which will give us access to the system. Then, when I book a flight it is the flight that interests me. Not the flight page on the travel site, or the flight page on the airline site, but the URI (issued by the airlines) of the flight itself. That’s what I will bookmark. And whichever device I use to look up the bookmark, phone or office wall, it will access a situation-appropriate view of an integration of everything I know about that flight from different sources. The task of booking and taking the flight will involve many interactions. And all throughout them, that task and the flight will be primary things in my awareness, the websites involved will be secondary things, and the network and the devices tertiary. tim berners-lee

There's a word for it

It's a multilingual dictionary that will translate any word from a website that you open from within it. It defines words and also will translate into several different languages. You may even keep a list of words for yourself.

I just found this site

I just found this

top 100 tools - for learning

Jane Hart, Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, has published a list of Web2.0 tools that enhance learning. It is available as a .pdf document and is sorted and annotated in several useful ways. Includes direct links to each of the tools. You may even request next year's update of the list. Good collection... mostly free tools. Did I see Google in there many, many times????

Screencast-O-Matic

Screencast-O-Matic is the free and easy way to create a video recording of your screen (aka screencast) and upload it for free hosting all from your browser with no install! You may export the video clip in QuickTime as a .mov file. It is also available as a URL that you may link to, and also send in an email.
Test your mic, pick a screen size and even leave notes if you pause the capture. You can back up and redo a capture that hasn't been encoded yet. Viewable in many browsers.

Map of Future Forces Afffecting Education

Look around the map. Explore it. While we'd never suggest that this map contains all of the answers and perfectly predicts the future, it does offer a clear point of view based on countless hours of research, analysis and expert opinion. Think of the map as a provocative tool, as the beginning of a movement, or, at the very least, part of a good conversation. Join in. And help us shape the future. kwfdn

VoiceThread

Create a photo album and add voice comments to the images. Easily capture voices that narrate a field trip that is documented with images. Add the finished scrapbook to a blog or web site. Easy and free. Great for young children still learning to write.

As good as Inspiration....well almost

Collaborative online mind mapping - MindMeister supports all the standard features of a classic mind mapping tool - only online, and with as many simultaneous users as you like! All for free. I gave it a quick try and was excited to find out you are able to export a .gif image of your final map and then post/share it in a discussion forum, or a blog, or wiki, or whatever.

OM for Sir Tim

The Queen of England just awarded Tim the Order of Merit.

The Order of Merit is one of the most prestigious honours - it's given as a personal gift from the monarch and recognises exceptional contributions in arts, sciences and other areas. The Order is restricted to just 24 living members who are entitled to use the initials OM following their name.

Audacity

Use Audacity @ www.sourceforge.org to record and edit.

Did You Know?

Last fall Karl Fisch showed his faculty a PowerPoint that told the new story. It is a story that needs to come into every school and every school room. The video version is posted on You Tube and currently has had 225,000 viewings. Watch it carefully, it will move you.

I put together a PowerPoint presentation with some (hopefully) thought-provoking ideas. I was hoping by telling some of these "stories" to our faculty, I could get them thinking about - and discussing with each other - the world our students are entering. To get them to really think about what our students are going to need to be successful in the 21st century, and then how that might impact what they do in their classrooms.
Karl Fisch - August 15, 2006

Introducing the Book

Imagine dealing with a Book as new technology for the first time. There were some issues with opening and saving and how to consult the manual, too. Technology issues have not changed much, even though the technology has changed.
a good laugh

Web2.0...The Machine is Us

Watch the YouTube video that shows you the power of Web2.0 while zipping you through some of the great apps available out there now. See flickr, blogger, del.icio.us and google all integrating into the power of the web.

No more Keyboards or Mice!

Watch the latest interface designed by Jeff Han that has no keyboard or mouse. Shown at the TED conference. Jeff Han is a research scientist for New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Here, he demonstrates—for the first time publicly—his intuitive, "interface-free," touch-driven computer screen, which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 09:32)

ZOHO

Zoho Writer
Online word processor with collaboration features.
No download, No install, just sign up to create documents
Zoho Sheet
Online alternative to traditional spreadsheet applications
with powerful features like charting, collaboration & more.
Zoho Show
Online presentation tool to create, edit, publish, and show presentations.
Zoho Wiki
Wiki that is as easy to use as a word processor
with group concept, versions, sub-pages and more ...

You can make a difference

Kiva lets you lend to a specific entrepreneur in the developing world - empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty. Search a country, find a small business in need of a small loan ($25. - $600.) and help someone continue in their business.

A Library Good Thing

This is a delicious way to keep a flickr of an idea about who reads what I read, and what other things do they read that I might like to read, or might have read. I think I'll try and keep track of our book club's selections as a way to come up with new ideas for the group. Looks like you may also join groups and discuss your latest reads.

Nobel Tim

Web inventor receives 'engineering's Nobel Prize'

Tim Berners-Lee

Copyright: EICC

The US engineering profession's highest honours for 2007, presented by the National Academies' National Academy of Engineering (NAE), include the award to Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who holds a Chair of Computer Science in ECS, of the prestigious Charles Stark Draper Prize -- a $500,000 annual award that honours engineers whose accomplishments have significantly benefited society -- "for developing the World Wide Web."

The prize will be presented at a gala dinner in Washington, DC, on February 20, 2007

Tim on the Trail

Those of you who know me, know I have a Google Alert on him, have read his book, gone to his lectures, and let's just say, idolize him. So today I decide to turn left at the end of Thoreau on my Sunday walk, instead of turning right as I usually do and decided to walk down the bike path. I sometimes think it's safer to walk the streets, in case I run into a "stranger", but today I said, forget it, it's prettier down the bike path and into the woods along the stream and by the blackberry bushes. So I did. And was happily listening to my iPod when a man walking a large black lab came walking towards me. And I knew him. I totally recognized him and just said as he got close, "Oh My God...TIM!" Well I almost forgot to take the ear buds out, but did, and said something silly probably, and he said, "Well some projects just work out!" Some projects!... like the whole WWW-thing????? oh well, guess he still lives here and probably along Saddle Club road, where some really nice tear-downs have become lovely brook side mansions. Good for him. Apart from just winning the Draper award, he was also voted the 3rd Most influential Unitarian for 2006. I like the Unitarian award.
regards all, from
Sue, still a little shaken

Have you asked Ms. Dewey about our President?

You have to meet Ms. Dewey! Yup. An essential web experience! Ask her questions, she not only gives you actual links to sites, she herself is a sight!. Way too much fun.

Glogging with Boogle

So it looks like Google ate Blogger. If you want to blog with blogger.com, you have to also be a Googler with google.com. This means you need to have a Google account. Well that's OK, you get their gmail account along with it and a google start page, etc.... but it begins to feel creepy right about now. Everything connected to Google. They've got my house on Google Earth, my thoughts on blogger, and my mail on gmail....... and they totally know anything about everything, just ask them.
Soon all my blogs will move to the new location. They will put a click box on my login to let me know it's my turn to switch over to Glogging with Boogle, or something like that.
In the meantime check out MsDewey.

Born Again......

I started a new life this weekend. I'm seriously having fun, exploring this world. A MMORG (massively multiplayer online Roleplaying Game) could take over your real life I suppose, but I'm trying to imagine this as a viable tool in education. Wouldn't it be so exciting to actually learn about things is such a stimulating interactive environment where you can talk to people, build things, work together to make communities, etc. So many avatars (people) I met helped me learn how to navigate, get things I needed and be able to operate there. Humm....... this could become addictive I'm sure.

Skills for Learning?

I read this today on Will's blog.
Wow. Play in school? Adopt alternative identities? Use content, not regurgitate it. Wouldn't it be loverly?

A Read/Write Web Learning Curriculum

Clarence summarizes the points in Henry Jenkins’ latest white paper and adds more fuel to the conversation in terms of moving away from teaching content simply to regurgitate it and moving toward teaching content in the context of developing skills for learning, and I think they are worth repeating here:

• Play— the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
• Performance— the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
• Simulation— the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
• Appropriation— the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
• Multitasking— the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
• Distributed Cognition— the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
• Collective Intelligence— the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
• Judgment— the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
• Transmedia Navigation— the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
• Networking— the ability to search for,synthesize,and disseminate information
• Negotiation— the ability to travel across diverse
  communities,discerning and respecting multiple perspectives,and
  grasping and following alternative norms.

Creativity - What's missing in Ed - U - K - shun

Watch this video of a speech given by Ken Robinson given at the TED Conference 2/06. This just about gets at what scares me so much about what's happening in our schools.

Free online storage - 1 Gig!

Have your students set up an account here. It's better than a floppy or even a flash drive. It's a place to put all the files, documents, photos, etc. they may need for projects at school. Easy to use and available anywhere, any platform.

Found Flock

Just loaded Flock to my new iMac Intel. It looks pretty neat. I had to open Flock using Rosetta Stone. I found out about this at the plugin site. I couldn't view the flash content when I opened Flock, but the plugin site had directions on how to set Flock to open in Rosetta. I like the instant access to photos from my Flickr collection. I can also publish instantly to this blog, or any other that I chose as the default blog.

Blogged with Flock

eyespot.com

Just made this little bitty video totally online with eyespot.... my camera, my photo collection and some sound from the site. Not bad

Posting a movie to a blog

It is possible to link a movie file to your blog. To do this I had to load my finished movie to a server. I used my FirstClass web account on our server at school. I Upload-ed the movie file to my HomePage folder. I then created this post and used my webpage address, ending with the name of the movie file stored in the HomePage folder. The movie downloads to the viewer's machine and they may view it with Windows Media Player or other media player. The movie I used is the sample project for the Word-Video class in Windows MovieMaker2 I recently offered my MEET team at BHS. It defines the word tome.

Tastes Great!

I've been working to update my Backflip online collection to del.icio.us. I love the way you can sort the tags and also collaborate with others to create collections. This has great potential for school. Teachers and students could work together to make lists of resources for research projects. You have to work with it a bit to get the sense of it. But it WORKS! Make sure you use Firefox as the menu icons for tagging and accessing your page are really helpful. Can also use I.E.

PowerGramo to record Skype conversations

PowerGramo is a powerful realtime recording solution for Skype. You can record and replay any Skype call easily and simply.

This free download is available for PC platform only at this point. I have not tried it, but thought it sounded very interesting. I listened to a conversation on a blog that had been recorded using it. The conversation was very clear. The directions suggest you transfer the PowerGramo .wav file to an mp3 file using Audacity. If you post to a blogger.com blog, you'll need to save the mp3 file to a web server for blogger to access.

Blog Safety

Blog Safety has many links for teens, parents, teachers and adult bloggers to learn about the benefits of safe blogging. Good tips, rules and advice presented well for teens and parents.

Podcasting - Directions to start

Blogger is not our first choice for weblog-based podcasting. Movable Type and Wordpress are better solutions for many podcasters, because they offer better support for podcasting, more power and greater flexibility.
Nevertheless, many podcasters are finding Blogger to be a good starting place to experiment with podcasting. Blogger is a free service, and getting started is as easy as filling out some forms on the web.
Here's a quick guide to building a podcast with Blogger. You should be able to set up a podcast using Blogger and FeedBurner in about the time it takes for all the images on this page to finish loading!
The directions also suggest you use Audacity (a free download) to create your podcast. You need to link to the saved .MP3 file that you've stored on a server.

Seedwiki

seedwiki -to start a wiki or a blog you need an account, accounts are free, with no limits on the number of wikis or blogs or the number of participants the only information required is your name and email address
I've just started a wiki to help keep track of the wireless laptop cart in the BHS library. People will be able to reserve the cart by adding their name to a calendar that I made on the wiki. Others can freely change the page to keep track of the usage of the cart.

Sir Tim has a blog!

Go read how the world so loves Sir Tim and the weely wonderful web he wove for us!

Tim Talking in Lexington

Tim Berners-Lee speaking in Lexington 12/10/05

Tim Talks in Lexington

Waiting to hear Tim Berners-Lee begin speaking at the Museum of Our American Heritage, Lexington, MA on Saturday, Dec. 10, 2005.

Setting up a blog for high school students

An English teacher in Arlington did this for her class. The kids didn't know each other's usernames, but she did. They knew she knew, but they didn't know who was who.
What I did to set up the blogs was a little labor intensive but saved me some headaches down the road. Basically, I set them all up and made passwords myself, then just gave the students their usernames and passwords. Blogger doesn't require that the email addresses be unique, so I set up a free dummy account on Yahoo and used that for all of the invitations ... the trick is that each invite only works once so you have to send the invite (while logged on to your blogger site), use it to set up that account (create username and password), and then send the next invite, repeat, repeat. So it really helped to set up all usernames and passwords in advance and put them in an Excel table so it was just "copy, switch apps, paste, tab," etc, etc. The other trick is to use two different browsers or even two computers side by side so that you don't have to log in and out of your own account each time.

Then I used that Excel table to do a mail merge in Word so that each student had some simple instructions to go with. I'll attach what that file looked like in case it can be of use.

No Nav Bar

If you don't want the top most navigation bar on your blog you can paste code into the template of your blog and remove it. This gets rid of the, Go to Next Blog option which may not always be a desirable option, especially with young bloggers. Click on the title to take you to the code directions.

Skype

Skype is a little program for making free calls over the internet to anyone else who also has Skype. It’s free and easy to download and use, and works with most computers.
I have loaded it to my 6 year old G3 at home and am looking for people to "skype" with. My name is su02420 (those are zeros, not o's as in my zipcode). The sound of the person you are talking to comes through the computer's speakers and is much like talking on a speaker phone. I have a mic plugged in and just sitting on my desktop and I can talk and type. We are planning to try Skype in Kindergarten classes to see if kids would be able to communicate between classrooms. There is a search feature that lets you see who else in online and interesting in having a chat. And they are ALL over the world! Definitely worth a try.