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.