EdVentures in Technology
teaching, learning and change
May 20, 2008 at 9:02 am · Filed under Random Thoughts
Want to help in the fight against childhood cancer? So does St. Baldricks! St. Baldrick’s day has been an annual event in our community for years and yet I knew little about it until this year. Turns out that St. Baldrick’s started as a challenge between three friends hoping to raise $14,000 by shaving their heads. Their efforts expanded and in the end yielded over $100,000! From that beginning, St. Baldrick’s has grown into
“…the world’s biggest volunteer-driven fundraising program for childhood
cancer! In eight years, events have taken place in 18 countries and 46
US states, raising over $34 million, and shaving more than 46,000 heads.” (
http://www.stbaldricks.org/about_us/index.html)
This year St. Baldrick’s wasn’t held in our community. However, my son’s Cub Scout troop put out a call for volunteers and Hunter, along with his friend and St. Baldrick’s alum Ian, have chosen to participate. We have our own connection to childhood cancer, as a family friend and schoolmate was recently diagnosed with and is currently receiving treatment for, a form of osteosarcoma.
So today, my son and I are beginning our fundraising efforts and are looking forward to losing our locks on the 31st. I’ll be posting pics as soon as the shearing begins!
If you would like to donate to my fundraising effort: https://www.stbaldricks.org/get_involved/donate.html?ParticipantKey=2008-53478
If you would like to donate to Hunter’s fundraising effort: https://www.stbaldricks.org/get_involved/donate.html?ParticipantKey=2008-53476
If you would rather not donate online, feel free to download a donation form here: http://www.stbaldricks.org/includes/downloads/donation_forms/53500/2008DonateS53476.pdf
As I type this, Jon Lester has just pitched a no-hitter against the Kansas City Royals. I’ll take this as a good omen, since Jon Lester is a cancer survivor himself!
Tags: stbaldrick, cancer, fundraising, hunter
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January 20, 2007 at 1:12 pm · Filed under Connectivism, Creativity, Learning Theory, TechTalk
Jeff Han’s amazing work with how we interact with our technology is not a new item, the video and buzz has been circulating on the ‘Net for more than 9 months. Yet it took Tim Lauer’s post, Jeff Han article in FastCompany, and another on Touch Interfaces… last week for it to sink in.
My issue of FastCompany (February 2007) arrived this week and I’ve only just now gotten a chance to sit down and flip through it. The article about Jeff Han (available online here) and his work on the touch interface is amazing and as I reflect, it strikes me as a way to kinesthetically interact with our technology in a much more organic and natural way than we ever have before. I also took the opportunity to view the FastCompany video clip thanks to Bryan Alexander and the TEDtalks video linked to by Tim. What I have seen resonates within me. It makes me wonder how this interaction will affect our learners. Will it improve accessibility? Is it intuitive enough? Will it lead to advances in learning?
We all have those kinesthetic responses: your PIN at the ATM, your password on your computer, phone numbers that you can only remember when your fingers simulate the act of keying them in. We don’t really have to think about them, they happen almost autonomically. But this action involves only our fingers, what would happen if our interactions utilized and/or required more of our body? What if recollections were based on physical gestures? I envision a musician or rock climber for whom their knowledge manifests itself in a physical form. Consider the new opportunities for kinesthetic learning that could be incorporated into the Wii system. There is already talk of creating a surgery sim but what else could be developed which would tap into this new tool for learning?
Data is no longer uni-dimensional, and as Han has shown it can be now represented visually in three dimensions. Think Minority Report meets the Matrix where tables, graphs and data can have a physical structure. How will this new way of visualizing and physically manipulating information allow us to retain, reuse and reconstruct knowledge? With visionaries such as Han, we may well find out within the next few years.
[tags][/tags]
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January 17, 2007 at 9:45 am · Filed under TechTalk, Web 2.0
I gave up using my WordPress.com blog when I decided I needed a bit more control over my content and my design. I hadn’t looked at my account in more than 6 months. But a recent barrage of spam comments that slipped past Akismet had me log in to clean up the presence as it still redirects to my present virtual home. Wow, all I can say is that WordPress has done some incredible things that may make me rethink recommending the self-hosting option for folks who want to start their own blog but desire, like I did, more control over appearance and its domain name.
The Dashboard – what used to be a rather plain interface with a single option now has 6 sub-sections: Dashboard, Blog Stats, Feed Stats, Friend Surfer, My Comments and Tag Surfer. Now as you pore through you will notice that a lot of these are still in Beta but it is nice to see development occurring in WordPress nonetheless! I’ve included screenshots below of the new Dashboard features. All of these screenshots are available from my Flickr account in larger sizes so that you can see the detail but in the interest of keeping download sizes small, I’ve opted to simply place thumbnails inline.
Dashboard
Blog Stats
Feed Stat
s
Friend Surfer
My Comments
Tag Surfer
The next set of big changes comes in the Presentation tab. Where there used to be only the option to use the pre-loaded templates, there are now additional options: Extras, Custom Image Header, Sidebar Widgets and EditCSS.
Extras
(right now this just enables Snap Preview for your blog – which is a pretty cool tool for enabling a preview of the link destination in a small javascript window!)
Custom Image Header
Sidebar Widgets
EditCSS
Your Profile now allows for the inclusion of an image attached to your profile which serves as your avatar.
Options has a new feature,Domains and one that if it isn’t new bears reinforcing particularly for those educators who are concerned over having their class content shared with too broad an audience or for those using their blog for private collaboration. This feature is the Privacy filter.
Domains
Privacy
The last tab in the WordPress menubar is entitled Upgrades. This is an interesting twist as it represents the first time I’ve seen WordPress charging for add-on functionality. Via PayPal, one can purchase credits which will then allow them to purchase one of the five current upgrades: Custom CSS (which enables use of the Edit CSS function), Unlimited Private Users, and then a1GB, 5GB or 10GB Space Upgrade.
Upgrades
Gifts
Domains
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January 10, 2007 at 2:00 pm · Filed under TechTalk, Web 2.0
I’ve been testing Office 2007 for compatibility issues on our Plymouth State University campus. For those who haven’t seen the interface, it is SIGNIFICANTLY different from Office 2003 and will likely require some bridging support for those who may not enjoy being beta test guinea pigs like the rest of us! Our Office of Teaching & Learning Technologies anticipates an increase in demand for user training.
Note: All of the images below can be viewed in larger format from my Flickr account by clicking the image.
Microsoft Outlook 2007
I’ve dropped a couple of comparative screenshots of Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007 below.
Image 1: 
Image 2: 
One interesting thing to note is that Outlook is the one app in the suite which doesn’t look radically different. It has the same general interface with the addition of another column on the right which provides a heads-up display of your calendar, events and tasks.
Image 3: 
Microsoft did add RSS support to their app in this version. It integrates with mail and new
posts are treated as unread mail.
Image 4: 
Here is an example of the feed from think:lab
Image 5: 
First the things I like:
- Integration with my mail client is nice although not necessarily new compared to say Thunderbird. The ability to flag items and mark them for follow-up as you would your email is convenient.
- I like the display format as it doesn’t require retraining.
- Integrates nicely with Internet Explorer 7 for finding and adding feeds.
- Outlook provides the option to download the post and any embedded files as attachments (although I don’t know that it has a particular methodology for viewing or integrating those items with its other products such as Windows Media Player mimicking iTunes podcast service.)
- There is a nice context sensitive search feature (with an additional plug-in) that makes for quick searches through your feeds.
That said, therre are a few oddities with Outlook 2007 that I find inconvenient and/or frustrating:
- It may just be my install, but it takes forever to run through a Send/Receive process as Outlook processes both your mail and feed at the same time. Not a big deal for those on high speed internet but it has the potential to bog down dial-up users.
- My Inbox feeds don’t automatically refresh, it shows I have new mail but unless I click on another category and then back to Inbox, I can’t see my new messages.
- I’d also like the option to separate my new RSS posts from my actual mail when it comes to Unread items.
- The feed view also does not seem to provide a way to view all new messages as is found in most other feed readers. You have to click on each feed individually to see the feeds. Clicking on the RSS Feeds header simply displays the screenshot seen in Image 4 above which touts the new RSS feature.
- Not all my feeds imported nicely from my OPML file. While the feeds render just fine in other readers, for some reason Outlook 07 has issues with some feed formats. I’ve seen posts around the web which mention that Outlook 2007 really depends upon Internet Explorer 7 so I did upgrade my browser to see if that would remedy the problem. I now do not have as many errors but still see a few feeds which will not render. Hmm… I sincerely hope that Microsoft is not taking a proprietary stance with its RSS reader to ensure that it only works well with IE7 rather than via other browsers and/or the copy/paste or import of feed URLs.
All in all, Outlook 2007 is an interesting development. Now I am no seer, but I do feel that the adoption of RSS in Outlook and its integration with IE7 will lead to a surge in the use of RSS, particularly among those who aren’t familiar with the technology. It may not be my primary offline feed reader as I prefer the simplicity of SharpReader but with a few improvements I might consider using it instead.
technorati tags:microsoft, outlook, 2007, msoutlook2007, rss
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January 4, 2007 at 9:41 pm · Filed under TechTalk
Ok, so we just posted about LEDs providing backlight to LCD screens in laptops and the potential for increasing battery life in systems. Now consider what it might mean to have a flash-based hard drive (or drives) in your laptop. How much more life might we eek out of the battery and how much less heat might the system produce without moving parts? Thanks to SanDisk, we’ll find out soon enough.
I’d heard rumors about flash-based hard drives before but now ZD-Net UK has posted a piece on SanDisk’s new product. These are 32GB solid-state drives, and if SanDisk is to be believed, blazingly fast.
In its own tests, SanDisk says its flash drive can boot up WindowsVista — the next version of the Windows operating system — in 35seconds, 28 seconds faster than the 55-second boot-up time requiredwith a conventional drive.
ZD-Net was quick to point out that the drives will cost about $600 initially but if we compare this to the initial cost of flash drives when they first came out and what they run now, I would venture that the cost of these drives will fall substantially as they gain a mass market.
They also mentioned that hard drive manufacturers were claiming that flash based drives were no threat to their market, but has anyone reminded them that in only a few years flash drives have grown from 16MB to 32GB?
technorati tags:flash, drive, laptop
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January 4, 2007 at 4:47 pm · Filed under TechTalk
Macophile alert!
If the rumor-mill holds true, then a Mac tablet could be just around the corner. According to C-Net, Other World Computing is planning on unveiling their modified MacBook which utilizes Apple’s Inkwell technology for screenwriting at the upcoming MacWorld Exposition on January 9th in San Francisco.
Exciting possibilities!
UPDATE: On Tuesday, January 9th, Other World Computing unveiled their three versions of a Mac tablet based on the Macbook. Their website lists three pricing schemes $2199 for the base model with a 1.83GHz processor (with a pre-release special offer of a GPS add-on!), $2399 and $2699 for the 2.0GHz models. The biggest difference in these last two models is in the amount of memory (1GB/2GB) and size of the hard drive (80GB/160GB). Otherwise they all sport iSight, Apple Remote, 802.11g wNIC, Bluetooth, Superdrive and integrated GPS module.
The tablet uses a WACOM digitizer, Axiotron digitizer pen and Forceglass screen which covers the LCD and camera.
Yummy!
technorati tags:apple, mac, tablet
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November 16, 2006 at 3:47 pm · Filed under Higher Education, Random Thoughts
Ok, so this really is shameless self-promotion but an incredible opportunity nonetheless!
As part of the USNH e-Portfolio Summit, our convening committee invited Dr. Helen Barrett to give the keynote address. Since she is in town this evening, the opportunity arose to invite her to dinner. From my perspective, the opportunity to share a meal with someone of Dr. Barrett’s stature is rare and so I am really looking forward to this evening.
I’ve had the opportunity to hear Dr. Barrett at the 2006 WebCT IMPACT Conference in Chicago this past July where she spoke about her current focus, digital storytelling. While the focus of the USNH summit is much more basic, more along the lines of an introduction to the world of electronic portfolios, I’ve not had the opportunity to hear Dr. Barrett speak at this level. So while it may be old hat, it will be new to me and I look forward to hearing her thoughts. But that’s tomorrow, and who knows what this evening’s conversation will bring. Although after having read and enjoyed her whitepaper on Authentic Assessment, at least I have a few things to take somewhat intelligently on.
[tags]eportfolio, barrett, portfolio, electronic, usnh, summit, digital, storytelling
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November 14, 2006 at 1:45 pm · Filed under Higher Education, TechTalk, Web 2.0
Thoughts from the presentation.
From Maureen’s handout, which included an article from Learning & Leading with Technology which is available to ISTE members here:
(In) A Constructivist Learning Environment:
- Knowledge is constructed, not just reproduced.
- Previous knowledge is valued.
- There are relationships to the real world.
- Multiple viewpoints are represented.
- Collaboration and social interaction are encouraged.
I love the following quote as I’ve used another from Marvin Bartel in the past:
“I kill creativity when I demonstrate instead of having students practice. ”
- Marvin Bartel
Webquests – Bernie Dodge – Change a fact finding question into a compelling, intriguing challenge. A good question involves:
- Going beyond fact finding,
- Analysis, evaluation, discussion and debate
- Demonstration of new knowledge
Guidelines for group interaction
- Rubrics: individual and/or group; project and process
- Reflections of members of the group; journals
- Evaluation of work; group or individual assessment
[tags]sstl2006, electronic, constructivism, yoder, iste, creativity, webquest, dodge, rubric, reflection{/tags]
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November 14, 2006 at 8:45 am · Filed under Random Thoughts
Subtitled Insights from Early Adopters, this SIG advertises sessions on the following topics:
- Social Software in the Classroom: Happy Marriage or Clash of Cultures? (Eric Gordon, Emerson)
- Teaching and Learning in a Virtual World (Rebecca Nesson, Harvard)
- Electronic Constructivism: Inspiring and Motivating Students with Thought Provoking Questions and Emerging Technologies (Dr. Maureen Brown Yoder, Lesley University)
- Social Computing Tools in the Curriculum (Katie Livingston Vale, MIT)
More information is available at the Social Software SIG website including links to presentations and referenced materials.
It also leaves time at the end for furthering the creation of an online community of practice for EdTechies. This is probably the part I am looking forward to the most. I’ll post the details of the sessions that strike me although I’ve got to duck out of the first one to call into a teleconference to discuss Friday’s e-Portfolio summit.
The trip down from NH was a good 3 hours and 45 minutes but luckily, I’ve travelled down here with a colleague of mine, Casey Bisson of Maison Bisson fame so the trip was far more enjoyable than it might have been otherwise.
technorati tags:sstl2006,nercomp, sig, social, software, teaching, learning, technology, constructivism
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November 3, 2006 at 1:48 pm · Filed under Higher Education, Learning Theory
The University System of New Hampshire will be hosting an e-Portfolio Summit at the University of New Hampshire – Manchester campus from 9-2:30 p.m. on Friday, November 17th. Our keynote speaker will be the noted Dr. Helen Barrett.
Dr. Helen Barrett has researched strategies and technologies for electronicn portfolios since 1991. She maintains a resource Web site, http://electronicportfolios.org, and an Apple Learning Interchange exhibit, on e-Portfolios, and has authored chapters in several books and numerous articles on the subject. Dr. Barrett is the Research Project Director for The REFLECT Initiative, an international research project assessing the impact of e-Portfolios on student learning, motivation, and engagement in secondary schools.
Additional sessions include an overview of the current state of portfolio initiatives in the four representative institutions and a brainstorming session on how our institutions can and/or should work together to pursue these initiatives.
The full program is available here: USNH e-Portfolio Summit
This summit is the precursor to an anticipated $450,000 University System of New Hampshire block grant to support electronic portfolio initiatives system wide.
technorati tags:eportfolio, electronic, portfolio, helen, barrett, usnh, college, university, summit, psu, plymouth, state, nh
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