Friday, August 1, 2008

Thing 23: Recap and reflection

I really liked the variety of technology that we were introduced to.  Even though I thought they had spread out some of the issues where there needn't have been.  It was a great way to discover and an excuse to play with some features I had never had time to play with.

Thank you, Mike, for your patiance with my venting about some programs.  I am quite open minded and like to try a whole slough of new software/webaps but when I have already spent a year or more playing with one and don't like... I let people know.

I wish we (as a class) spent more time commenting on other peoples blogs.  That would have been nice to see what other were doing.  I am to blame as well.  I commented on other for steps 1-4 but then stoped.  Perhaps because I got just a tad busy this summer, or because there was really no reciprication, or like most people I started working and didn't engage the others around me.  Not sure.. something to ponder about.

I say we keep challenging each other to try new software.  I'll keep sending out my e-mails over the school year and lets hope people keep sending them to me.

Thanks Mike.

Thing 22: Keeping Up

I had to laugh at this post.  The idea of being able to keep is neigh impossible.   There are thousands of new widgets, tools, software, webapps per year.  However, by having a high interest and the willingness to try new programs one can at least be on the front end of things.

I attribute on-line tool development to be sort of like writing novels.  90% of them are terrible, they are written poorly, bad plot etc.  So you have to wade through all the bad books before you find the gems.  The same is true for new computer technology and development.

By continuing to challenge ones self and trying to utilize the tools found in the classroom puts you on par with the person who likes a genre of literature and so reads everything they can.  They put down a lot of books, finish others but don't like... but with the ones they really like, they spread the word.

That is sort of our charge.  We need to pick up that new piece of software, try that new application and most of them we will uninstall, or stop using.  But the few that we find and really like we will spread the word.  No matter how good we are at doing this, a colleage will find something that we missed and share it with us.  Thus that sharing (thus the usefulness of comunicating via e-mail or network sites like ning).

Keeping up is about:

  • trying
  • evaluating
  • sharing
  • staying on line
  • comunicating

I promise that I will continue to do all of these things and more.

Thing 21: Beyond Myspace

Although crude in its appearance and user interface, I am having larger hopes for Ning.  

The fact that it self filters by definition will help.  This will limit the number of lurkers and "false friends" from being part of the system.  It keeps people of like issues together, I like that.  Not only that, but it has better privacy for setting up "by invitation only". 

The interface is really crude and visually it is terrible.  However Ning has some potential.  I will continue to play with it and see what is available.

I didn't really spend much time with Gather or with Webjunction.  There is this whole time, signing up for one more accunt, one more password, setting up another avitar... account information etc.  So I let them go.  But Gather is looking like an even better option than Ning.  I'll have to do some more exploring to see what is looking good to me.

Perhaps my attitude will change...

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Thing 20: Social Networks

My hatred of Myspace has been a pent up volcano waiting to burst.  You have let me unleash my anger and so now let me rail against this cancer.  I can quickly sum my thoughts on the topic up:

  • It is ugly. Really, really ugly. Letting 100 million people with no formal design training loose on your eyeballs is not an enjoyable user experience.
  • The place is basically a dive bar/meat market at 1:45am- everyone’s ugly, wasted, and desperate to hook up. The band playing (loudly) is terrible, and there are a few mostly naked girls taking pictures of themselves standing on the bar. And the bouncer at the door sucks, so there’s some 12yr olds running around making a lot of really annoying small talk. (not that I'm speaking from experience or anything)
  • The spam accounts/messages/comments/bulletins are unbearable

For the above-stated reasons, I started using Facebook just to try it out and to see what all the hubub was about, and I genuinely liked it at first. The UI is clean and your network is closed and protected, so you really do only know the people in your friends list- no fake accounts or rampant stupidity or annoying bands. Then they opened the site up to 3rd party developers, and the whole thing just went to pieces (for me at least).

I started getting all kinds of messages, invites, etc that all require me to install some idiodic 3rd party application to my own profile just to even see what the message is. Imagine if you got an email that required you to install a program before you could read it. Yeah, you’d be pissed too. So instead of an awesome thing, these 5000 or so Facebook apps are making it worse than Myspace, a gigantic feat I previously thought impossible. I ignore the hell out of those invites, because I am not a Zombie, Pirate, or Vampire Hunter, nor do I need to share movie ratings or have a superwall. And here is something nobody is taking about- in order to use the apps, you need to allow it to access your profile information. I predict there will be a Facebook app in the near future that is caught harvesting marketing data, even spamming users. If you think I am a lone man in a shack in the woods howling at the moon on this, I’m not alone, there are many concerns about the potentially massive privacy violation potential that Facebook is building towards.

To expand on this... Face book is in holy $h!t on this one. Not to mention this is the second time that ceo Mark Zuckerberg has had to apologize for rolling out a privacy decimating feature with little warning, no explanation, and no way to opt out (at the time of release).

I hate the new Facebook- it’s like Vegas in there now, and I find the majority of what is happening to be counterproductive to staying connected with your friends. Social networks are an interesting thing, but I have decided over the past year or more, ultimately, they are not anything I feel like wasting my time on. I use email and aim more than ever now to keep in touch with friends and family, and I like that kind of communication better.  Besides, can you really call someone a friend you have only met on Facebook?  Rediculous.

At some point someone will create the killer social networking app, and my guess is that it will look like this: a website or application that syncs automatically with your photo, calendar, IM, email, addressbook, and office programs, and allows you to easily post, edit, tag, etc. any personal data you want to, on any site. It will basically act like an RSS aggregator, pulling in and pushing out messages, comments, emails, IMs, photos, videos, calendar events, documents, etc. from Myspace, Facebook, Friendster, and all the like, as well as Flickr, your own site, etc. etc. etc. A sort of one-stop shop to managing your online presence. Hell they could even roll in forum posts, news and other RSS feeds, podcasts, you name it. Having one central hub means one login, entering your personal info one time, and tracking any news in one place.

Imagine a system that makes the following possible: you boot your computer to find out that there is a party next weekend. It gets added quickly to your calendar, you IM the host to ask if you can bring anything, they email you a list, which is added to your todo list. You go to the party and take some pictures, uploading them automatically to the group pool for the party and adding a few tags to them. You met someone new at the party, and using some profile browsing you find them, add a comment to their profile and get an IM back and add each other’s details to your address books and go from there. Now imagine all of this in one application, and having that application sync with a mobile device so you can update and check things on the road. Nothing I just listed is impossible, but currently to do all of that would require a bunch of different programs, a lot of manual data entry, and way more hassle than is necessary in 2008.  Oh... I forgot to include twitter in there as well.

Thanks to Andy Cochrane for your words for they helped to express mine

Thing 19: The Podcast

I must say, I LOVE the podcast.  I have multipul subscriptions to different podcasts.  Some are just rebroadcasts of radio shows:

Wait, wait don't tell me

This American Life

AM Marketplace

Sound oppinions 

etc. etc.

I also listne to podcasts that are podcast specific.  Meaning they are published a made exclusivly for computer podcast viewers.

CATO institue

The Tome (yea.. super geeky you may want to stay away)

Hatchling animations

First Amendment Center

etc.etc.

Can I just say that I love my iPod.

Podcasts are one of the great inventions.  I can link a key speech, presenter or expert to a moodle page.  Students listen to the whole podcast or to a select portion and then they go on to moodle and discuss the podcast (following set prompts).  

When I'm in the car and only catch half of a really great story, or interview.  I can podcast it.  expose my students to it and my friends.

I absolutly LOVE podcasts.  

Admitatly I don't have my kids make podcasts in the classroom.  They make videos and that takes enough work as it is ;).   I however could start making podcasts.  That would be pretty cool.  

Hmmmmmm it gets me a thinking!

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Thing 18: You Tube

Ahhh YouTube.  One of the great time sucks of all time.  It just totally destroys the afternoons and keeps me up way past my bedtime.  I love the youtube.

Here is a great clip that I would like to show in my class 4th quarter when we go over the Amendments and are discussing our civil liberties.  In this Clip Ed Norton plays the attorney defending Larry Flynt.   Ed Norton so sums up the implication of the case.  It isn't about obscenity or pornography... it is about civil liberties:


Thing 17: ELM Productivity Tools.

From what I can tell.  This is very similar to what we use at school.  I have the kids using ProQuest and EBSCO at school all the time.  What I like about ELM is that it merges the different databases and help guide you in your search.

Sort of "what are you looking for?"  and then guides you down a decision tree until you are at the right place.  What was a bit more difficult was that it required the use of your library card.  Luckly, I make all my students register for a library card at the begining of school ;)

I loved the (k-5 and 6-12) search features on the right had side.

I also like the fact that you can sort your search by medium, time, place and source.  It really will be a great reasource.  

6 traits?  Maybe?  :)

Thing 16: Student 2.0 tools

Ding Ding Ding Ding.  this is AWSOME!  My service project is just waiting for a calendar like this to shape the kids.  built in rubrics and "how-to's".  I really like.

This was totally worth it!  I will be using this.

Gripe:  this is not a web 2.0 feature.  Where are the student adding content to the globe/world/internet?  

Thing 15: online games

I hate to say it, but this is a section I could write for 23 things.  Pirate Puzzle and second life?  really?  Pirate Puzzle I get, but second life isn't really a game.  It is more of a virtual world with virtual real estate.  (read Snowcrash and weep at how accurate Neal Stephenson portrays the internet from the perspective of someone who published in 1992)

Not all of these games are RPG  but they do represnt a very small margin of what is out on the web.

Below are a series of on-line games that range from puzzles, shoot-up-up, strategy, real-life, fun, funny, adventure and tragic and combinations of the above:

Starcontrol and Starcontrol II :

These harken back to when games were simple.  They are SCII based games.

Play the News:

ImpactGames has figured out a way to combine my old D&D love with my obsession with the news via the community web game, Play the News. The premise is that news stories allow you to choose a role defined by the story and then present your choice for what that newsmaker should do going forward. As stories develop, you’re shown what your actions were contrasted with what actually happened. 

There are also ways to predict future headlines and events, further pitting your geo-political prowess against the world.

Typeracer Beta, which pits you against other online visitors in a Java-based race to type out passages from famous books and films. 

The biggest stumbling block to me was trying to keep from reading ahead (which is how I normally type from another text) and just focusing on the word at hand. Anyone with a fairly comprehensive media knowledge might glean an advantage, as you can tear right through a race if you know the passage in question. 

Rollercoaster creater:

You know, I wondered how long it would take for someone to apply the Line Rider mechanics to a rollercoaster game, and whaddayaknow? Rollercoaster Creator does exactly that.  It is fun, takes physics into play and its free!  Unlike Valley Fair.

Cannon Challenge

Discovery Channel’s Future Weapons site goes decidedly old school for the NLOS (No Line of Sight) Cannon Challenge game by aping the Scorched Earth game method. As it stand, it’s a fun little time-waster, though a decidedly easy one. Just adjust your angle and velocity and then pound away at unsuspecting targets

Of course, if you really want to go the distance, you can revisit the classic Scorched Earth via this Java based port (Scorched 2000), or you can just full one old school it and download the classic DOS based Scorched Earth 1.5. There’s a reason this is called ‘The Mother of All Games’, folks. Trash talking tanks, a bevy of inventive (and destructive) weaponry, and the kind of graphics that make you long for the glow of your 14 inch VGA monitor.

Puzzle Quest:

Mixing RPG, multiplayer, and puzzle games, this turn based puzzle fighter actually taxes your strategy skills at the same time as it’s beating up your cognitive logic lobes.

darfur is dying:

This is were you have to play a displaced darfuian and try to survive.  First you have to make it to a refugee camp.  If you survive then you have to try and navigate the camp.  Great lessons abound.

Holy War:

Yes you too can play the the Christian soldiers berring down on the Iberian Penisula.  Or you can play the Muslims defending their hold on Spain.  You could also play the Jews who are getting devistated and mutilated by both groups.  Heck you could even play the Gnostics if you want.  Go ahead and pretend its the crusades.

Against all Odds:

This simulation ratcheted up the social context by putting players in the shoes of political dissidents and refugees, while never once shying away from the horrors (both visceral and seemingly innocuous) that displaced persons face every day on this planet. In addition to a strong lesson, Against All Odds just happened to be a well-designed game, albeit one that will leave you a little less chipper than when you started.

I think that is enough for now.  Whew!  If you want more let me know.

Thing 14: LibraryThing

When I was reading the 23things on a stick page about Library thing I had the whole... this has no bearing on what I do going through my head.

Upon examination, this is super cool.  I had an accout with a program called collectorz.  I got in before you had to pay for it (Beta).  Collectorz had some huge advantages, such as you can catalog music, DVD's and many other items... not just books.  it had a place to check out items to friends, keep track of quality etc. etc.  however, it costs money and I have let it laps and now what to do?

What Librarything does that collector z doesn't do is link the info to online sources.  I don't just mean an isbn and then tell you a synopsis and the author.  No it links you to similar books: books on the same topic, by the same author or books that are a counter point to the book in question.  This would be great to put the books I buy for my classroom to help determine how balanced my collection of books really is and where the holes in my collection really are.

This is a really cool resource.  So are all the libraries in Edina going to put their whole collections on Librarything and see what happens?  heee heee heee :)

Thing 13: on line productivity

Here is a realm I really accel.  

I have been using igoogle for a number of years... really since its inception.  I love it.  I have it customized and modified with my own widgets to help with many, many things.

in additiona, (as stated in Thing1) I use Opera as my web service and they have a large number of widgets and addons to their browser to customize it to your liking.  

I have been using google calendar and at present use a number of "sub calendars":

  1.  a game calendar that I link to my other blog page to keep all my gaming friends in the loop
  2. a personal calendar for things that I am participating in on my own time
  3. a school calendar (that I have linked to my school outlook calendar so it updates automatically)
  4. A joint calendar with Sara :)
  5. Sara has her own calendar.

This has helped a bunch.  I just have to get better at adding things to the calendar.  It is pretty busy as it is, but I always forget to add items to the caldendar and then problems arise.  

I believe that is what we call "user error".

On a whim I took a look at pageflake.  I really liked it.  The interface looks better than most and a bit more advanced in places (ie. local new feed).  But because I am so linked into the google features (calendar, blogger, RSS reader, and now a new found addiction to zoho) it would take a lot for me to switch.  I am giving up some for the convienience.

I must say I am kind of thinking about the Netvibe page.  Based on what you set up Mike.  Its pretty slick.


Monday, July 28, 2008

Thing 12: Social sites

O.k.  so maybe I need to read ahead before I start posting.  It just seems to me that delicious, digg, reddit and stumbleupon are pretty much all in the same cattegory.  I didn't realize that 23 things was going to seggregate between delicious and the other three.

I don't really understand why.  They all pretty much do the same thing.  In fact the home page of Del icio us says "social bookmarking".  This seems to be a bit strange.  

As stated in my last post I have been using these sources for a few years now. 

I am more of a fan of Digg and am Stumbleupon is growing on me quickly.  Not as much of a fas of Reddit.

The problem with these sites for me is that they become a HUGE time suck.  Not that the info they are giving me isn't useful and cool.  But they totally get me off track and then the next thing you know 2 hours have flown by and the origional goal for getting on the computer is still not completed.  (note why I am still on Thing 12).

Well, that and selling a house, getting a house ready to sell and getting ready for a wedding.  Whew.

I digress

The issues with these sites for student is that they are hard to focus.  YOu can't go to them and say "find info about the framers of the constitution".  They are however great for finding cool current events.  But I see them really as a way to boost my own knowlege base and to keep up with the younger generations.  I need to do some searious brain storming to figure out how to use these as a classroom tool.

Thing 11. Del icio us

I love del icio us.  I hate typing it.  ARGGGG.

There are a number of similar sites that I have played with and for the most part they all do the same thing.  The difference really is in the user interface and options.  Let me give you an example:

Digg.com is far more efficiant that del icio us and has a higher traffic rate.  But, because of your tags have to be one of the prewritten tages devised by Digg you lose autonomy.  However, you gain efficiancy.  Let say you "Digg" someting about the election campaign.  In Digg you could put it under "news, campaign, president".  In Del icio us you would invent the categories.  What you think they should be are different than what another person may think.  Thus making it harder to find things you like.

Becuase of this I prefer Digg on in that it is easier and the prewritten tags add ease to the system.  each person doesn't have to develp their own tag.  

ps.  besides it is a lot easier to write :)

But wait.... there is more.  I just found a great article that compares the two.  Hmmmm rethink perhaps?

Check out:

Reddit

stumble upon  I am quickly liking this site more and more.

Thing 10: Wikis

I love wikis and have been using them for many years.  However, I have not been generating/creating my own wikis. I tried to use wikis in Moodle but the program was so poorly put together that it made it unusable.  I have also used PB wiki.  That worked well as a program, but my execution needs some revision.  It was a bit chaotic and to administrate and track changes took more time than I thought it should.

I love wikis, but my main gripe is that they have a very specific use and when people learn about them they go crazy and use them innaproapreaty, making the task harder than it needs to be.  People want to use them as "web page".  wikis are specificly designed as a colaborative tool for people to privide content and edit other peoples content (with or without administrative approval).  So when people just want to give information (web 1.0) to a large group of people.  By putting it in a wiki they are making things more complicated and inviting changes to content that they might not want changed.

The most famous of the wikis in the world is of course: wikipedia.  Study and findings have been hurled over the bow claiming that wikipedia is innaccurate or accurate.  What studies have also found is that there is approximatly a 10-15% error in topics of accademic research (history, science etc.).  Is this a greater error than others encyclopedias?  who knows.  What I do know is that school is about teaching kids to be critical of their sources and to verify information.  I have no problem if kids want to search topics on wikipedia.  However, they can not site wikipedia.  They need to verify the information from a secondary source so they cooroborate.  I did this before wikipedia as well... you know, when kids were looking up stuff in books :)

People just need to be very carful about certain wikis and the information they give.  wikipedia is on the forfront.  They are quite open about articles that need verification and/or articles that are under dispute.  The one issue I have with Wikipedia is that the topics are democratic.  Meaning, if I edit an entry (wrong) and it is verified by enough other people... it becomes "truth".  For 90% of the time, this is a great way of doing things, however there are times when the public is wrong.  Think about the number of people who think Barack Obama is Muslim... or the misinformation about AIDS in the 80's and early 90's and of course the conriversies over topics like global warming.  These issues need to be overridden and edited by experts.

Wikipedia says it has a team of experts looking at these contriversial topics.  

What is and expert?

Thing 9: Online Collaboration Tools

I must say that editing a historic document was pretty fun.  Although it was really confusing with the number of people that had already contributed.  My brain of course has to figure out how they made this work.

In essence, it is a templated wiki.  Totally a great an inovative way to use the technology.  I can see this as being a great way to explore other primary documents, but it would also be a great way to do peer edited papers,  to do movie storyboarding... [as a teacher you post the storyboards as a template and the kids fill it in].  I'm sure there are others, but I am at a loss to think of them right now.

I have used Google docs before but never Zoho document writer.  Nor had I thought about using them as a colaboration technique in school.  It really is a great way to get kids who "can't get together" to get together and write the essay, put together research etc.

It puts some really great ideas in my head.  I need about 3 months to figure out how to incorperate all of this into my curriculum.  

Owe.. my head hurts.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Thing 8: create and share a slide show

I kind of feel like I did this in "Thing 6".  But I have been using Snap Fish since 2006 and have some albums there that I can share with people.  

Quite frankly, Snapfish isn't as good as many of the other programs that are out there.  But at the time, it was awesome... now... it pretty much sucks.

So, off I went to use the tool Zoho.  I can totally see the usefulness of this tool.  Nice for posting and creating ppts.  If you don't have PPT.  What I really like about it, is that anyone with access to the internet has access to any PPT I post.  Good stuff!

Thing 7: Communication

Well, I would have to say of the items mentioned so far this seems to be the most repetetive and the most pase of the "things" thus far.  Not that these communication tools are bad.  By no means am I saying that, but, all of the communication tools they mentioned are all 8 years old or older.  

e-mail has been around since the 1960's

IM has been around since... well I'm not sure when, but it has been part of the regular txting crowd for at least 12 years.  I have it set up on my computer at school.  I am surprized that all of a schools administrators don't have it set up on their computers for easy reference questions are "emergency" calls for help when talking to a parent etc.

i've had an IM account for years.  Especially since I played my first MMORPG in 1996.

TXT... this has been a standard feature on phones since 2000 or earlier.  a great tool.  I use it all the time.  Quick messages, when you are in a loud restaurant etc. 

What happened to Skype or oovoo?  two tools for the computer that combine the above programs as well as adding VOIP and document sharing.

All of these piece of communication are fantastic but these are not Web 2.0 technologies.

Web 2.0 is about adding to the collective.  all of the above are for two or more people and no one else.  they can be deleted and are often nearly impossible to share with the public because they are meant for just one or two other people.  In the case of IM... the conversation can be deleted as soon as both participants log off.

That is not to say these technologies aren't fantastic teaching tools etc.  but they are NOT web 2.0.  

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Thing 6 continued: Flektor

So I have been doing some playing with OnLine Media Gods and found this awesome sight.  I mean truely awesome.  This would be a great training for all teachers sort of sight.

Its called Flektor.  You can make so many templated photo albums, video etc.  It allows sound editing, pictur editing and video editing.  It is amazing!

Here is what I created in about 10 min.  It looks at my trip to Cambodia.  But there are ton of other options and video creation picture editing etc.

Anyways, take a look. (start clicking on the photos)

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Thing 4, 5 &6: I think I over posted

Just looking ahead to see what I needed to do for Thing 5 and realized I had incorperated it into thing 4.

Then jumped to Thing 6 and noted the same.

Is it O.K. to have lumped them together or would you like me to post additional info on those topics?

Thing 4: Flickr and other photo tools

Like all things created 90% of it is crap.  90% of all novels are terrible, 90% of art generated is terrible etc.  That being said, probably 99% of what is generated on the web is also crap due to the fact that it is so easy and requires little to no talent.

I find what people post on to Flickr to be pretty much crap.  However, if you mine Flickr and sift out the slag there are some precious gems to found.  Unfortunatly it takes some time, effort and equired skill on how to appropreatly search.  When those three come together... you can find some cool stuff:

*This is an artist that outlines shadows of immagies in chalk and colorizes them.  Very cool art that might not get noticed if not for Flickr.

*Here’s a sweet little photoset: A collection of street shots sassed up to evoke the HDR-stylized look of ‘Sin City’ and ‘300′ using Adobe Lightroom: The Street as Graphic Novel, by San Diego photographer Steve Gubin. 

It’s worth reading Gubin’s comments on the set, as he admits some distaste for post-processing while revealing how he achieved the effect.

*A collection of advertizing, illustration, cards etc. from the 1950-1970's.  

*Another example of cool use of Flickr is the posting of "Wanted posters" and Mug shots.  For some reason these photos are really fascinating.  take a look.

This is probably one of my favoite posts:

*Flickr’s The Commons project seeks to showcase publicly held photography collections from around the globe, and they’ve just launched a pilot program with the Library of Congress. Currently there’s some 3,500 photos available (a mere drop in the bucket considering the LoC’s massive archive, but a good start) across two sets: News in the 1910s and 1930s - 1940s in Color. 

These are the kinds of projects I like to see. Neat stuff, and I can’t wait for more to be made available. 


Lastly, and defintly not least:

*László Kozma adapted the excellent Flickrvision API gadget for Wiki use. By using Google Maps and the publicly available IP information Wikipedia logs for every edit, WikipediaVision displays on the world map where edits are coming from, and what subjects they’re contributing to. All just shy of real time, to boot.

Now, what is being show here isn't that great.  What it does do is show the power of using three or four great peices of web technology and merging them into one solution.   Albeit in this case a sort of lame use, but as a test case... super cool.

On to other tools

Now I know I'm supposed to make a "trading card".  Although cool and I have thought of some cool games to make with the cards (Electoral College game) etc.  And I would agree alot of those tools are fun to use.  They are not particularly "advanced" and are really specific in their usefulness.  Again, don't get me wrong.  I had a fun time playing with them, but there are other treasures out there.

So, I would suggest the following:

  1. On Line Media God:  Here is a sweet collection of apps and gizmos: Mashable’s Online Media God post has a collection of over “400+ Tools for Photographers, Videobloggers, Podcasters & Musicians”, nearly all of which are either free or dirt-cheap to use.
  • When exploring this post (which I have explored less than 1% of) it is broken into parts:
  • Photography God: which has over 90 programs dealing with photography.
  • Video God: which features over 150 tools for video bloggers
  • PodCasting God: which features 70 plus tools for making and delivering podcasts including helpful hints etc.
  • On-Line Music God: this has 90 audio and music site that will help you either download, mix, mash and or create your own music.
  1. Google Sketchup:  I have only spent a short time playing with this tool, but WOW is it impressive.

This is more, but I think I am signing off on this one.

I wish I had more time to play with some of the features.  Wow are they great.  I think I will spend many, many a month exploring the richness around ON-Line Media God.  Whew!

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Thing 3. RSS... been doing it. Hard to get other to do it.

First and foremost. I have to say I love the way you set up all of our blogs on your netvibes site. In affect making your site an aggregator for our class. Rock on. Very creative.

This will not be a particularly long post. I have been using RSS for about 3 years now. I used to use a Yahoo aggregator but now I use the Google aggrigator. It is great for my government class. News updates so fast and there are so many stories about issues so to choose 3 reliable news sources and two very extremist sources is awesome.

I would like to point out that itunes is in essence an aggregator. Every week it downloads the podcasts that I have subscriptions to and I can get them on any computer in the world. I draw the correlation that RSS is sort of like e-mail for your webpages.

If you are a user of Opera as a web browser (which I do) it sets up your home page as an indexed set of continuously updated pages. You choose your top 9 and they are at your click. Its a feature called speed dial. Take a looksy.
Now that I have extolled the virtues of RSS. My greatest frustration is getting others to use them. As you can see I love the RSS but my students are often playing the "dumb" on me. What I am happy about is that Moodle now has an RSS option (at least in 1.9 and beyond). That has some great opportunity for me and for helping set up info for the students.

Perhaps some project where they have to follow a "story" such as the lending crisis and by setting up an RSS to a news source, to Sound Money, to CATO Institute and to 1-3 other sources of their choice and put together the link between Economics and Government wouldn't be such a bad idea. If only to get the students to start using the feature.

If only I could get them to do something other than look at Myspace/Facebook, Youtube and World of Warcraft. ARgggg.

Well, thats it for the day on RSS. Check out the old Opera as a browser. Super great and virtually no malware are written to mess with it.

Not dealing with 23 but fascinating education discussion

Psychologist & Computer Scientist; Chief Learning Officer, Trump University; Author, Making Minds Less Well Educated than Our Own


No More Teacher's Dirty Looks

After a natural disaster, the newscasters eventually excitedly announce that school is finally open so no matter what else is terrible where they live, the kids are going to school. I always feel sorry for the poor kids.

My dangerous idea is one that most people immediately reject without giving it serious thought: school is bad for kids — it makes them unhappy and as tests show — they don't learn much.

When you listen to children talk about school you easily discover what they are thinking about in school: who likes them, who is being mean to them, how to improve their social ranking, how to get the teacher to treat them well and give them good grades.

Schools are structured today in much the same way as they have been for hundreds of years. And for hundreds of years philosophers and others have pointed out that school is really a bad idea:

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a belly full of words and do not know a thing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. — Oscar Wilde

Schools should simply cease to exist as we know them. The Government needs to get out of the education business and stop thinking it knows what children should know and then testing them constantly to see if they regurgitate whatever they have just been spoon fed.

The Government is and always has been the problem in education:

If the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good education, it might save itself the trouble of providing one. It might leave to parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased, and content itself with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer classes of children, and defraying the entire school expenses of those who have no one else to pay for them. — JS Mill

First, God created idiots. That was just for practice. Then He created school boards. — Mark Twain

Schools need to be replaced by safe places where children can go to learn how to do things that they are interested in learning how to do. Their interests should guide their learning. The government's role should be to create places that are attractive to children and would cause them to want to go there.

Whence it comes to pass, that for not having chosen the right course, we often take very great pains, and consume a good part of our time in training up children to things, for which, by their natural constitution, they are totally unfit. — Montaigne

We had a President many years ago who understood what education is really for. Nowadays we have ones that make speeches about the Pythagorean Theorem when we are quite sure they don't know anything about any theorem.

There are two types of education. . . One should teach us how to make a living, And the other how to live. — John Adams

Over a million students have opted out of the existing school system and are now being home schooled. The problem is that the states regulate home schooling and home schooling still looks an awful lot like school.

We need to stop producing a nation of stressed out students who learn how to please the teacher instead of pleasing themselves. We need to produce adults who love learning, not adults who avoid all learning because it reminds them of the horrors of school. We need to stop thinking that all children need to learn the same stuff. We need to create adults who can think for themselves and are not convinced about how to understand complex situations in simplistic terms that can be rendered in a sound bite.

Just call school off. Turn them all into apartment houses.

Thing 2 Web 2.0.... or web 3.0?

Web 2.0 is such a bizarre concept for people to wrap their brains around. In essence, teachers have been doing this for generations, just not formally. Because something is on the Web, it takes on a strange quality of being difficult and so different that "we will never learn that".

What I mean is that in a school, teachers are creating new lessons, activities and curricular ideas and willingly sharing them with other teachers in their school or district. This is probably because of the limits to communication. What teachers were not doing were adding to the glorified and honorable text book. There has always been the feeling that what is said between those two hard covers is sacrosanct.

In the 90's there were a few people that were on the cutting edge of web 2.0 stuff. But really the web became a place for people to "share" with one another. To access information never thought possible. As soon as that teacher posted a lesson for other teachers to use. Like in their school, they were contributing to the whole. This time, however, the whole is made up of anyone in the world with access to a computer and a phone line.

Again, technology explodes faster than the average human can keep up. I, a self described tech geek, am often shown new web pages and tech tricks every day. There is just too much to know.

So, the advent of Ebay and Craigs list take what was once the Garage Sale and open it up to the world and more importantly... make it easy to find because the items you are looking for or are posting are automatically databased. Thus you no longer have to read through 75 car ads in the newspaper to find a 2002 Honda Accord. You just go to Cars.com or Craigs list and type in "Honda Accord". Tada! you got it.

Then came the behemoth Wikipedia. Despite its obvious faults, it is an amazing experiment on the web on human knowledge and condition. There was a TON of fictional info about certain topics for many years, but as Wikipedia learned there was more and more filtering and monitoring going on creating a remarkably accurate system. Generated by who? The common user. The real genius is not the information contained within Wikipedia, but the concept of a Wiki.

Some people are so enamored with Wikis that they are not being used proper. Wikis are only to be used when you want a large number of people to contribute to a final product. As shown by such wonderful spin-offs like:
  • Adobe Labs cut 1/2 of their support staff and just created a wiki. You have problems with an Adobe product. Not sure how to effectively use layers in photoshop? Check out this page.
  • Trip Advisor is a wiki put together by world travelers. Don't follow some guide that might get a kickback by Hotel x or y. what happens if the last travel guide was written 3 years ago? This is the place that will let you know what to look out for, where to eat and the hidden gems.
  • wikimapia This is a map feature that is just beginning where you can type in info about geographical features.
  • Wikihow is my favorite. it is the average person telling people how to... from how to make a mask out of tinfoil to changing the corroborator in your car. It totally rocks.
I guess this diatribe was to extol the virtues of how easy it is to contribute to the global community. To interact. In fact, the epitome of white tower knowledge, the Encyclopedia Brittanica is opening up a Wiki to add to their already very competent pages. Unlike Wikipedia, all the content will be read and edited before any changes are made.



I would like to note that I have not talked about blogging in regards to "live Joural, My space, Facebook etc." In that these are more private chat areas. Where as general Blogs (I.E. discussions about a news article) give instantaneous feedback and discourse on a specific topic. Thus the advent of blogs to sites like the New York Times, NPR etc. is awesome. Even many Blogger sites are open to the public and work wonderfully.

I belong to a number of Blogs where the discussions have lasted for days in an A-synchronous chat. It has been fabulous. My students love using Bogs as a forum for debate outside of the classroom.

What this is pointing back to are two main features:
1. The necessity for the Text book is next to nothing (i haven't used one in 10 years)
2. there are some standards on the web... once you learn how to do one thing, you can apply the same basic technique to other programs and the learning curve is quite fast. So interacting with the world is not only easy, but the fear factor is misplaced. There is no nasty rejection letter from an editor.

So, with the marrying of technology like:
Blogs,
Wikis
chat rooms
traditional searches
podcasts
Video
with the standard classroom one can create a very dynamic setting that the kids have a full hand in helping create. Learning is far more the way Dewy would have preferred. Kids are doing and while doing are learning. For, in the future computers are not going away and thus proficiency key.


taking technology to the next level. Since the advent of programs like Skype and oovoo VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is a reality. We can have free long distance calls with video and at the same time be sending documents and files back and forth.

there is also Webtv and other communication tools. The merger of animated and/or scripted communication rather than with real people. Is this the danger that befalls society? Continually the weakness of western civilization has been the over exertion of technology and resources with out first mastering what came before. The real wisdom of 1st nation peoples is that they mastered social interaction and interpersonal skills. They had a VERY high emotional Intelligence. Although "civilization" conquered those people physically. Will our own advancement be our demise?

Remember more than 50% of communication is non-verbal. one of the most important issues to human development long into adulthood is human touch. Can we really supplant that with vast banks of computers? Or will we take a step back and recognize the awesomeness of being able to take a class on Chinese and in the class talk with and see Chinese students who are studying English. But then realize when that awesomeness is over, a good beer and the breaking of bread with friends and family will always be more important to the human condition than anything the computer can give us.

with that I say lets see what else we can develop but keep the human spirit pure.

Thing 1.4 Avatars (the good the bad and the ugly) 6-19-08

After spending many hours running around Second Life, I am actually quite disappointed given the hype.

I have played a number of on-line simulations that use avatars. although second life is akin to a wiki in that content is generated by the users. Generally the content is either:
1. cars and airplanes (note picture)
2. sex
3. violence
4. or world creation

Now, I will return to the "Good" but for now I must rant for a moment.

Because second life has this really really cool feature called fly. there is really no reason to have any other mode of transportation. There are no barriers to where you can go. So the fact that region after region people are designing cars and airplanes and jet skis is a bit crazy. The other reason why it is crazy is for the same reason I am angry about Sex and Violence.

The issue around sex region creation is an individuals right. The problem I have it that you often don't know that is what your getting into until you have "teleported" to that region. Additionally and quite frankly, if your going to have animated characters have sex you might as well have animated characters that are far more lifelike.

The next section is about violence. Now I have have dabbled in WoW but I have played some other Avatar rendered games quite extensively(The Witcher, Titan Quest, Never Winter Nights, Elderscrolls III & IV, Imperia, Fallen Sword etc). Why someone would make a world that allows tons of creativity and imagination and try emulate games of such extreme development in both how "combat" works as well as superior animation is just plane stupid. Not to mention some of those games (like NWN) give you a the capability of generating your own "adventures" not quite as open as Second Life but similar.

Where Second life shines, but it never really embraces is its ability to "transport" people to new cultures and places. I went to a virtual D.C. that was terrible. It had almost nothing to do with the real D.C. If I had the time I am beyond confident that I could make a better D.C.

However, because of the HUGE and open licensing surrounding Second life there is a ton of potential. Either those that are using it are just hard for newbies to find and/or have not really emerged into this new environment.

The best Secondlife region was the NPR second life site. they rocked! The meet every friday and discuss the issues and there are learning stations around the region. If more regions could have this focus and they could work better on the interface socond life could really become a frightening alternative to life. Gulp!

But for me... as much as I love playing with the many Avitars I have had in the past and... um... well present. I will always enjoy a good beer and discussion that I can actually taste, hear and touch the person in question.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Thing 1: Create a Blog

O.k. so this part isn't new to me... so I am going to try and mess with the HTML coding and had in a hyperlinked caledar from google etc. In my other blog although super geeky, I have done some of these things before. I will put the link up but I warn you, this is all about D&D and other game related matters.

I figure if I can expand in the HTML part, then the blog pretty much becomes as personalized as it can be. I dont' know HTML so that will be quite the experience.

So here is the link to my other blogger site. Gulp. Don't Laugh

Just starting 23 things

This is the first post to make sure everything is working the way it is supposed to.

I have other blogs but they are for super geeky stuff that I don't really share with the general public :)