Migrating to the 27" iMac

I do not usually post information that is extremely timely in nature, but I cannot cover all of this in 140 characters in Twitter, so I figured a blog post was in order!

I am a Bootcamp user for running Windows on the Mac, and have been since day 1. The types of applications I want to use really do need the "whole" machine, and, although I have tried all of the virtual machine choices, Bootcamp is the best solution for me. I run things like Adobe Premiere Pro and other graphic and RAM-intensive apps, and do not need to move back and forth between the two operating systems. (I am a recent Mac convert but the left-side of my brain still controls how I work!)

I have been running Windows 7 Pro under Bootcamp since Win7 came out. Even though it was not officially supported, it worked fine. Of course, yesterday, Apple released Bootcamp 3.1 which provides official support for Windows 7 (32 bit and 64 bit) and the newer Apple peripherals under Windows. But I did not know that earlier yesterday.

However, yesterday was also the day I received my new 27" iMac. I used the Time Machine back-up to migrate everything from my 24" iMac with only a few minor glitches.

• As suggested, I had de-authorized iTunes on the previous computer before I did the back-up. After migrating the back-up to the new machine, the new launch of iTunes complained it was corrupt and I needed to re-install. I did the re-install and did not have to do anything else. All music, movies, settings, etc. were still there and fine. I had a little trouble with Audible in iTunes, but, after authorizing a few audiobooks, all the others worked.
  
• When I launched an Adobe CS3 app, it brought me to the registration screen and the key was already showing. I had to re-activate the suite. I hope it did not register another licensed copy.
  
• When launching FileMaker Pro 9, I also received the activation screen with the product key already showing. However, the FileMaker activation server never accepted the activation. After a call to FileMaker, it seems as if they are activating in a different way now. I have to uninstall FMP, wait for them to send me a new product key, and reinstall the program. If you are a FileMaker user, make sure you can locate your install disks!
• All of these were minor inconveniences. I then used the Bootcamp Assistant to partition the drive and installed Windows 7 on the iMac. I have done this lots of times before, without any problem. This time, there were times when the screen would go black and nothing would progress. I would whack the partition, and try again (and again) but it happened each time. I was lucky enough to find this page (don't ask me how) and I followed the 14-step process that helped this along for the 27" iMac and all is well. (Apparently, the same process should be followed for the 21.5" machines, too.) Lucky for me that all of these components were released on the day I was setting up the machine!
  

I have since upgraded all my Macs to Bootcamp 3.1 on the Windows 7 side of the machine so I can try out the new wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse. That will have to wait until I get home!

ION niche products

I have recently acquired two Ion Audio products and have been very impressed with them.

The first, picked up on sale at my local Bed, Bath, and Beyond on sale for $45, is the Ion Profile Pro USB Turntable. I have been transferring lots of 33rpm albums into iTunes and the results are surprisingly good! The turntable also includes a line-in to attach another input peripheral if needed, the ability to transfer 45rmp records, and the connections to allow the turntable to act as part of a regular stereo component system.

The software is provided for the both Windows and the Apple OS, and differs in one aspect. The Windows version of the software creates new tracks during recording in-between songs. One has to baby-sit the Mac version and manually hit a button to create the tracks as the album is being recorded.

The results sound like real albums, with the hisses and scratches, but can easily be cleaned up in an audio-editing program if so desired. I have been recording on the Mac side, and the items run seamlessly into iTunes. So far, I have been recording "niche" albums that are not available for purchase on CD or digitally, such as my highly coveted Rutgers 1975-76 championship basketball season LP, "Run Rutgers, Run"! Am I a true audiophile? No. Do I want to transfer my albums while the technology is still around to do that? Yes. Do I want to finally get rid of some of them? Yes.


The second Ion Audio item I have recently acquired for my parents, is Ion's new version of the Film2SD scanner. I wanted an item that would be easy to use, did not necessarily require a computer in the mix, and produced a good image.

This item arrived yesterday and works like a charm! You simply load the appropriate carrier with four slides, a strip of negatives, or roll film, and manually slide the carrier into the device. You can then rotate or flip the image if you want, and press the button. In under 2 seconds, you can move on to the next one.

There is an SD card inserted in the back of the device, and the scans are saved there. The results from slides that were from the early 1950's (and had not been stored archivally) were great! In addition, even without rotating or flipping, one can easily fix that and any color or contrast concerns in the post-processing time on the computer.

This device can output its screen to a TV, which would allow the user to enjoy their slides as they are scanning (instead of huddling around the screen on the scanner as we were doing). The power cord is a USB-plug adapter, allowing the user to scan directly to a computer if so desired by using the USB cable alone. Here is a link to the user guide if you are interested.

Ion Audio seems to have a whole host of new products on the horizon-- they have announced a fullish-size keyboard that you place your iPhone into and can easily type, a musical keyboard that does the same thing, and a variety of film and print scanners. This may become another of my favorite companies!

Project 365

Being a latecomer to the Project365 meme of posting a photo a day, I decided yesterday to try it out this year. I figured I would use Flickr for hosting the photos and automatically send a quick tweet when I post a new one. As I started to do that today, the "email to flickr" with a copy to Twitter soon became a little problematic. I had to remember where to put what, and it just seemed like it was going to be too much work.

So, I decided to use my MobileMe Gallery feature. I have never used this before, and it seems to be easy enough! Steps thus far:

1. Create a new gallery in MobileMe.
2. Copy the RSS feed that is generated.
3. Sign up for an RSS2Twitter account for auto-posting of the new item each day.
4. Here is a screenshot of the things I typed in to try to get the hashtag for Twitter to show up, too.

We will see how it works out....

Follow up:

Well, it seems to work!

2009: What I bought this year

Following Tony Vincent's lead, I decided to share my most interesting purchases of 2009.

Here they are, in as chronological order as I can get them. (The links sometimes link to the exact model I purchased or, if it is no longer available, to the most current version.)

MSI Wind U100 netbook
This netbook was one of the first to have n networking, a 6-cell battery, and Bluetooth. I purchased the pink Valentine's edition with Windows XPH, and, later in the year, turned it into a netbook running another popular operating system!

Samsung HZ10W 10 megapixel digital camera
This digital camera has a great lens, a 24-240mm optical zoom lens, and was very reasonably priced as the HZ15W was released. Oftentimes, I wait until new models that are not so very different to come out, and pick up the current model at a substantial savings.

Kindle 2
I loved my first Kindle, and really love the new Kindle 2! Electronic books are wonderful, and the Kindle is easy on the eyes, easy to operate, and fun to use!

Mac Case Flight Jacket Laptop Case
This leather laptop case is pricey, but I managed to find one in the vintage brown on eBay for very cheaply. I only take it out when the weather is nice, but it is beautiful!

Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station Dual Band
Since we basically have the house o'Macs now, and n networking on everything, I opted to get the AirPort Extreme for the head of the network. However, our weather station server only has g networking and it co-exists quite nicely because of the dual band. It has worked flawlessly and has the added bonus of letting me access items stored on the data side when I am on the road.

Apple AirPort Express
I purchased three of these over the course of the year. The first two were purchased to extend the AirPort Extreme network to various areas of the house, which allowed me to roam far into the yard to work this past summer! The third one was purchased to carry with me on the road to allow, in some conference situations and hotel rooms, the ability to both be wireless and also allow others to share the connection.

Slingbox Solo
The Slingbox is one very cool invention. It attaches between your DVR and your wireless network to allow you to access, via a client on a computer or the iPhone, your DVR at home from wherever you are! You can watch live TV or your saved Days of Our Lives recordings (or any recording on the DVR). There is no monthly subscription charge or anything and it works like a charm!

Altec Lansing Orbit Portable Speaker
This little speaker is small and light, but produces a large sound. It works well in a classroom setting or a presentation room with about 75 chairs. The audio cable is rather short, so it has to sit next to your computer, but it is a great addition to your tech toolbox!

Scosche passPort Charging Adapter
This little adapter allows most Firewire iPod accessories to work with the newer USB-based devices like the iPod nano 4G, iPod touch 2G, and the iPhone 3G/3GS. This little adapter was the lifesaver to allow the Firewire iPod connection in my new Nissan Cube to work with my iPhone 3GS. The iPod part of the phone is controllable directly from the radio now! I know that others have had luck with older iHome radios and such working with their new devices with the addtion of the passPort charging adapter.


EyeFi Share Video Wi-Fi SD card
This SD card automatically uploads, while the card is still in your camera or camcorder, your photos or videos to your favorite photo-sharing, social networking, or blog site when you are in a wireless environment. I found it a bit disconcerting to automatically send everything as it is taken, so now chose to manually send only the things I want to be shown online.

iPhone 3Gs
What can I say? Best. Piece. of. Hardware. Ever.

MacbookPro 13.3”
I love the backlit keyboard, the SD slot, and everything about this laptop. I received it before Snow Leopard and Windows 7 were out, but upgraded immediately to both new operating systems and iLife 09 as soon as the all became available. I run Windows under Bootcamp, since I need to have access to all the processing power and RAM for some of the graphics and video-intensive apps I run on the Windows side.

Western Digital MyBook External 1TB Firewire Hard Drive
The link leads to the newer model of the one that I have, but this drive is rock solid for backup use on the Mac in conjunction with Time Machine.

Kodak Zi6 Pocket Camcorder
I purchased this at Radio Shack as they were getting ready to put the newer model on the shelf. It has an SD card slot and shoots in 720p HD. This camera has a following, as does the Flip Mino HD, and both groups are vocal on the best features of each. You can decide for yourself. (I have the Zi6 HD and the Flip Ultra 2, so I cannot compare the capabilities of each since one is HD and one is not.)

Wacom Bamboo Touch
I was very excited when the Wacom Bamboo Touch was released. I purchased it right away to see if I could replace my trackballs with it, and use it as an external touchpad on my computers. I also wanted to experiment with some of the neat features it added on both the Mac and Windows sides of my machine. It was not as smooth to use as I hoped it would be, so I wound up returning it. Soon after, the Bamboo Pen and Touch Tablet was released, and, since I already had a Wacom pen tablet, I did not purchase that one. I cannot speak to how well it works, but, it is really useful to have a small pen-based tablet available and, with the added bonus of touch, it probably would meet the needs of most occasional users. And Wacom products are well-made and often come bundled with some very useful software.

Dymo Label Writer 400 Duo
This model is still available new, but is at a very nice price point right now. If you have never had a Dymo Label Writer, you would be impressed with the speed, the ease of use, and the ability to print stamps and labels effortlessly. This model takes two types of tapes, so is extra useful!

Chumby One
With the release of the new version of this "desktop appliance", I took the plunge and purchased it. With over 1500 widgets to install, the inclusion of a faster processor, FM radio, streaming radio, and a simple network set-up, this little device is fun to have around! I wrote a blog post about my first impressions.

Cocoon Laptop Case
I was sold on the Cocoon Innovation products as soon as I saw their GRID-IT! organizers, which are sold separately and also come with the laptop cases. I purchased the hard-sided case, and, even though it is intended for a 15.4" laptop, the 13.3" MBP is held sturdily and the power cords fit nicely next to it. The GRID-IT! panel holds all the accessories for the laptop and is just so organized!

Canon Vixia HD Camcoder HF20
I did a lot of research before deciding what HD camcorder to purchase. I wanted one with flash internal memory (this one has 32gb) and it also has the ability to also hold up to a 32gb SD card, too. The features on this camera are varied, well-thought out, and it is fun to use. It is easy to get the video off of the camera and onto the computer for editing.

Netflix
We are not huge movie-watchers in our house, but, with the ability to stream over 17,000 Netflix titles to one's computer, with the one-DVD at a time, unlimited account, I took the plunge. In addition, I am waiting patiently for my Samsung Blu-ray BD-P3600 player to arrive, since it streams Netflix right to the television! The Samsung comes with built-in wireless (and wired) access and also streams Pandora Radio and YouTube. Of course, it also plays DVDs and Blu-ray disks.

Well, the year is almost over, so this list is probably complete. I am looking forward next year to the possibility of an Apple Tablet of some sort as an bridge device between the iPhone and the laptop. Time will tell! Please feel free to share your opinions on any of these devices or share your favorite purchases of 2009.

Happy Holidays and New Year to all!

Edublog Awards - 1st Runner Up!

Thank you to all who supported me and voted in the Edublog Awards "Best Individual Blog" category! I came in second, which is amazing, and I am so honored and feel so lucky! Apparently it was a close race among the top three and the tallied numbers will be posted on their site soon.

Here is a screenshot from the awards show:


















Thanks muchly to Steve Hargadon and Sue Waters who work so hard on this yearly program of bringing exciting new edubloggers to the attention of educators. And, of course, with social networking tools, you can follow some of the nominees, and then follow the blogs they follow, and on, and on, and on!

Edublog Awards 2009

This blog, Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch, was recently nominated for an Edublog Award for 2009 in the category of "Best Individual EduBlog." I was so excited and honored, since this was the first time my blog has been nominated in this competition!

I just finished looking through all of the other blogs nominated in the same category, and found some gems that I did not know about! I will be adding some of them to my blog page where many teachers start when trying to find some good stuff.

Every blog I looked at deserved to win, so please cast your vote for your favorite by December 16th!

Want 25 green screens in your computer lab?

Thanks to Tom Barrett for publicizing, on Twitter, the TeachMeet09 Ed Tech Roundup. I happened to catch one tweet and watched a two-minute tutorial about greenscreening and iMovie 2009 by Kevin McLaughlin. It was so easy, once the advanced tools were turned on!

I started thinking about the use of this in our technology classes, and suddenly realized that one could put a green background (#00FF00) as one of the user-created backgrounds in PhotoBooth on the Mac, record the greenscreen video, and then use Kevin's tip for using that in iMovie. This way, each student has their own green screen!

Steps

1. Import a 500x500 green (color #00FF00) solid color JPEG as the background in one of the effects boxes in PhotoBooth.
2. Record the video in front of this green background.
3. Save the MOV file.
4. Import the PhotoBooth MOV file into iMovie.
5. Import the background video into iMovie.
6. Use Kevin's tips.
(I realize you can import the background video into PhotoBooth and record yourself on top of it, but keeping the two videos separate gives you the option of applying additional effects and options to them in iMovie.)


Here is my feeble attempt to show you a quick finished product following the above steps.

Presenting Glogster Using Adobe Premiere Elements

I just returned from a technology conference that was chock full of presentations dealing with the effective use of Web 2.0 tools. I have presented a lot, and know the pitfalls of presenting in a venue that is unfamiliar to you. Will the bandwidth be sufficient? Will the projector work with my laptop? Will the sound be loud enough? Will the site I am about to demo be available? Will the site I am about to demo be accessible through the content filter at the conference venue?

Of course, I am always over-prepared for any emergency. I have the presentation on my computer, on a Flash drive, on a CD-R, in the cloud, in SlideShare, in Adobe Connect and even on paper. This works for a static presentation, but would not work well for an online application presentation.

My suggestion, for demonstration of Web 2.0 tools, to create a screencast of the things you want to show ahead of time and carry that along with you. It is better than simply static screenshots, and can get you through the time when the tech support team is frantically trying to get the Internet back up! Screencasts that you can carry with you can be created with Adobe Captivate or Techsmith's Jing Pro.

Screencasts work great except for those that incorporate video. At the conference this week, I watched a team of teachers successfully showcase their interdisciplinary Glogster project. I was contemplating what they would have done to show the multimedia Glogs if the Internet had not been available. (Don't forget, if you want to use Glogster with your students, sign up for a Glogster EDU account!)

I wanted to share the way I would prepare if I were planning a presentation about a site such as Glogster. I would first screencast myself creating the Glog, step-by-step, so the audience would understand how it works. And, if it were simply a Glog with images and text, I would screenshot the final product to show. A Glog shows up rather large on the computer screen, so you probably would have to make two screenshots and then stitch them together in an image-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop Elements. The other alternative, to avoid the stitching component, is to chose to embed the Glog on a blog or Google Doc, and change the dimensions in the embed code so you can see the entire Glog on your screen and simply create a single scereenshot.

However, if you create a Glogster project that includes videos, there is another easy solution I have discovered that will give your audience as close to a real-live experience as possible.
Adobe Premiere Elements, as opposed to Windows MovieMaker or Apple iMovie, includes three timelines of video and audio. By putting items on separate lines of video, one can layer and re-size one video on top of another. This is really easy to do, and it can help you simulate a multimedia Glogster page, with a limit of two videos. (Premiere Elements is a Windows-only program, but I use it on the Bootcamp side of my Mac.)

Here is a link to my original Glog and the one I am going to create a local copy of.
http://kathyschrock.glogster.com/orchestra/


Steps

1. Create the screenshot of your Glog and have it saved as an image on your local hard drive.

2. Gather two original video files you uploaded to Glogster and have them available on your local hard drive, too.

3. Open Adobe Premiere Elements.

4. Place the screenshot JPEG on the Video 1 timeline. The default length will be 5 seconds, but you can stretch it wider.

5. Place one video on the Video 2 timeline and one on the Video 3 Timeline.

6. Drag the video on the Video 3 timeline to the right so it begins at the end of video on the Video 2 timeline.

7. Stretch the JPEG on the Video 1 timeline to match the end of the video on the Video 3 timeline. It will now stretch from the beginning to the end of the project.

8. When you move the playbar over each clip, the clip shows up large on top of the background JPEG in the preview window. Simply grab the handles of the clip, resize it, and place it on top of its static counterpart on the background JPEG.

9. Once you are done with placing both videos onto the background, export your project as a movie and show this movie when demonstrating your Glog. The videos will start automatically in your movie, but your audience will get a real flavor for your multimedia Glog! Here is the finished product that can live on your hard drive.

There are other options for creating "back-up" versions of your Glog, too, working on the same principle of placing the multimedia elements over the static background image. One can do this in a single slide in PowerPoint by rotating the slide to the portrait mode, putting the screenshot Glog as the background, and placing your local copy of the videos over this background and re-sizing and rotating them as needed. The advantage of using PowerPoint for your demo version is that you would be able to start and stop both the audio and video when you wanted to. Don't forget you would have to make sure your local videos traveled with the PowerPoint slide, since they are not embedded, but just referenced.

However, I love the multiple lines of video feature in Adobe Premiere Elements. I use it a lot for things like having videos show up in the background graphic of a vintage television set or having a moving image in a picture frame within another video.

Chumby is your friend!

I just received my Chumby One yesterday and all that you hear is true-- you cannot help but love the little information device! After setting up Chumby on your wireless (or wired) network, you simply visit the Chumby site to both activate your device and to choose from the list of applications to install.

The adding of applications to the Chumby takes place via your Chumby's personal page on the Web site. Here you add and customize (if necessary) the widgets. It could not be any simpler! The applications cycle through, each staying on the screen for the time you have determined in the set-up. There is also a large button to push that both allows you to pick a certain widget to show, but also allows it to stay on-screen if you wish. Some of the widgets are interactive, like the Twitter widget which allows you to tweet using an on-screen keyboard and the sticky-note app which allows you to leave notes to yourself. You select items from the screen using the tip of your finger or your fingernail (or a stylus), and it works easily.

In addition to the 1500+ widgets you can install, the Chumby also allows you to choose from a list of streaming radio stations and podcasts that can even play in the background as your widgets cycle by. Of course, there are lots of clocks to select from, and there is a nighttime setting that dims the screen or even shuts it completely off if you want.

If you want to see how to set it up and how it all works, simply visit their FAQ page.

Here are the specs from the Chumby One page:

3.5 inch LCD color touchscreen

Access to free chumby content

Uses rechargeable lithium ion battery (not included)

USB 2.0 high-speed port

Stereo headphone output

2W mono speaker

Volume knob

FM radio tuner

Accelerometer (motion sensor)

Wi-Fi connectivity (802.11 b/g)

USB Ethernet compatible

Over-the-air software updates

Dimmable backlight

454 MHz ARM processor

64 MB DDR SDRAM

2 GB internal microSD card

AC adapter included

3.5" wide x 4" tall x 3.5" deep

$119.95 with free US shipping

Student Technology Survey Results

I wanted to gather some information from our grade 6-12 students to help me better support them in their use of technology both at school and at home. I sent the 1500 middle and high school students the survey as a Google Form in their Google Apps email account. The survey was open for two weeks and I received 98 responses. I did not do anything additional to convince students to complete the survey, so I was happy with the number of responses I received. I appreciate the students taking the time to respond!

Here are the results from the first 8 questions:

(Link to full-size online version.)

The last question gave the students the chance to comment when I asked "Anything you would like to tell me about your personal use of technology?" Here are some of the responses.

"I think it would be great to have WiFi all over the school for students to use. I often find myself at school and needing WiFi, especially being part of the theatre program and having long rehearsals when the library is closed. It would make doing online research and such during these times much easier."

"In school I do school related stuff on the school computers. Also at home I use my computer to IM (AIM) friends, update my MySpace, or check homework and grades daily."

"I use technology for mostly browsing, typing papers and research. Other than that, I use it only for Facebook and playing music. :)"

"I am a frequent Facebook user and if the high school were to go wireless with an assumption of the student body having access to it, Facebook wouldn't be as important to us since Nauset students are at school with you and non-Nauset students don't have access to the Web during the day."

Your comments or thoughts on the collected information?

Camtasia for Mac

I just downloaded the 30-day trial of Camtasia for Mac and am quite excited! Of course, most people think of Camtasia as a screen-capture tool for creating tutorials and such, which it does very well in this version, too. (It only captures full-screen, but it is very easy to crop to the selection you want later.) Here is a chart of the comparisons between this first version of Camtasia for Mac 1.0 and the Camtasia Studio for Windows 6.x product.

Only having spent a little time with it, my first impression is that, as well as an easy tool to create tutorials and screen captures (including video and sounds), Camtasia for Mac is a fairly full-featured video editing program that is also quite intuitive! You can import images and layer videos on top of them, layer videos on top of videos, easily separate audio and video lines, apply effects such as one similar to the Ken Burn's effect to videos after the fact, and much more!

The share menu item allows you to share to Screencast, YouTube, or iTunes, and the advanced export function allows exporting to AVI, QT, MPEG-4, and more, with the ability to pick your codec and quality options.

The TechSmith Web site has a great set of tutorials located here if you want to get a feel for the options it offers.

I might have found an easy-to-use tool that allows me to both create tutorials and access to a simple, but effective, video editing program! If you try it out, leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

Can Twitter replace blogging?

I am still trying to figure out how best to send information to support my Personal Learning Network. There are a few hundred people subscribed via RSS to this blog (although that is no real indication of how many others are reading it). On the other hand, I have almost 5000 people following me on Twitter. Even if only 10% of my followers use Twitter on a regular basis, it means that my Twitter posts are getting out to many more educators than the blog posts.

Can Twitter, the micro-blogging tool, replace blogging? I don't think so. Since it is hard to say much in the 140 characters Twitter allows, some people's tweets wind up just being links to their longer blog posts. And Twitter will not replace email, either. If someone asks me a 140 character question in Twitter, I don't even try to fit my response into 140 characters. I just send them a note and tell them to email me so I can share some good information with them.

However, is Twitter convenient for both posting items of interest and asking questions to tap my own Personal Learning Network? Absolutely! It is all about choosing the right tool for the job. For me, I think about it this way...

-- Blogging: I have not used blogging much to express my opinions. I use it as a place to publish information that I feel other educators might benefit from. I often ask users to contribute their thoughts, ideas, and to add to the conversation, which enriches the blog posts. However, when a reader has a follow-up question, I wind up commenting along with the readers in the comments area of my own blog. I am not sure how useful that is when someone is trying to re-construct the information in the blog post.

-- Email: I receive lots of questions from teachers who would like my help, opinion, and/or pearls of wisdom. These lengthy discussions do, and should, take place via email. The conversation is often personalized to the sender. At times, if I get the same question from lots of educators, I wind up creating a blog post about it so I can easily point others to the information.

-- Twitter: I use Twitter every day, all day. I follow about 125 very smart and tech-savvy educators, and the power of this group to find super resources to support teaching and learning is unmatched. I am a big believer in "pay it forward", so I try to do my part and post items that I feel my followers would find interesting. In the past few days, I have posted about my first foray with Google Wave, Aviary's new audio-editing tool, a well-done Time article about Google Wave, the fact my son won a programming contest, the new version of Tweetie for iPhone, Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, and the Hotmail phishing scam. I follow a lot of blogs, and, in the US, I am in the time zone that gets up first and I get up early, so I am often able to "announce" things before most educators are out of bed.

-- Web pages: I continue to update Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators daily. I add new sites, send out a site of the week to tens of thousands of educators, and add content that supports my presentations and workshops. I check all 3000+ links by hand each month to make sure they are still working and valid. Is this "old skool"? In this time of collaborative tools, it seems like it might be. However, I truly believe there will continue to be a place for experts to offer information that is useful without the comments, critiques, and collaboration of others. That place would be the Web page. The great thing about some of the new online tools is the creation and housing of Web pages has become a non-issue for teachers. With Google Docs and Sites, all educators can easily create an online resource to share with their students and colleagues.

-- Facebook: I would be remiss if I did not include this social networking tool. I have lots of friends in Facebook, and it is really where I get to learn more about them. Educators are careful to include enough information to interest you, but not too much information, so it is fun to both share in personal events (like weddings and such) and also share their successes in the classroom. I don't really like getting reference questions via Facebook, since I then have to log-in and answer the question there. My email address is prominently on my profile, and I hope that most people just email me vs. me having to go to yet another place to answer questions. However, the use of a social networking tool is a powerful thing for schools, and I see the use of similar platforms, such as Ning.com, becoming more and more used in schools by teachers and their students.

This blog post started out to explain why I tweet more than I blog, but has turned into more of an explanation as to how I use the Web-based information-sharing tools. I am sure many of you have quite different opinions, so feel free to share!

Credit: Phone image courtesy of Dan Brady.

Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet Review

Based on a post last Thursday by a user who was able to find the new Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet (Model: CTT-460) at his local Best Buy, I took a chance and visited my local store. There was no sign of it with the other Wacom tablets, but I asked a friendly salesperson who looked it up on the computer, and said they seemed to have one in stock. He went to the storeroom, but came out and said it was on the "new items" end-cap, which, in my store, was kind of out of the way. In any case, the one was there, and I scored! (I guess I might have given him the only hug he will get all day!) It is not yet on the Wacom site or the Best Buy site, but it is really out!

The Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet is a USB tablet that can act as a mouse, a multitouch trackpad, and a small drawing tablet. I installed it on both a Macintosh (Snow Leopard on an iMac) and a Windows machine (Toshiba laptop with Vista Home Basic).


The Bamboo touch is 8" x 5.5" in size and the input area is 5.5" x 3.25", with the four "ExpressKey" buttons located outside of the input area. These ExpressKeys are configurable for various functions as most input device buttons are.

You simply start the software install, pick right- or left-hand orientation, and then plug in the Bamboo Touch to complete the installation. It shows up, after the install, in the System Preferences and Control Panel panes as "Bamboo" and you can set the pointer speed, double-tap speed, etc.

There is a nice tutorial on the CD which illustrates and explains all the multi-touch features. The full user guide is also downloaded to your computer in PDF format.

Here are a few screenshots from the manual, illustrating the capabilities of the Bamboo. (Click on the thumbnail to enlarge it.































































How well does it work?

Let me start out by saying I am not a mouse user-- I use a trackball on my desktops and the built-in trackpad on the laptops. I also do not take advantage of all the whiz-bang features of the MacbookPro multitouch trackpad on a regular basis.

However, I did put the Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet through its paces on both the Apple and the Windows machines, and all of the multitouch features worked great! I also opened Adobe Photoshop and used the Bamboo touch both as a mouse and as a drawing tool. I could navigate and "fingerpaint" with no problem, but I would still choose to use my Wacom Graphire for serious drawing. My finger is not half as steady as my hand with a drawing pen is.

I am going to replace my trackball on my iMac at work with the Wacom Bamboo Touch Tablet, locate it in front of the keyboard, and use it as my mouse. As well as adhering to the sound ergonomic principle of having the input device as close as possible to the middle of your body, so there is no stretching going on, I now also will have the multitouch features available on the Mac and Windows side of my desktop! I plan to take advantage of those swiping, panning, rotating, and the other whiz-bang features!

Results from Twitter goals survey

I am preparing an introductory Twitter presentation and am using information from a blog post by Charlene Kingston dealing with setting goals for your own use of Twitter.

I asked my Twitter PLN to answer a short survey on this topic. I sent the tweet out to my 4625 followers, and some of my followers re-tweeted the request to 4019 of their followers (who may or may not overlap with my followers.) I received 196 responses, many in the first few hours of posting the request on Twitter.

The yes/no questions were as follows:

1. I am a K-16 educator or pre-service educator.
2. I use Twitter to talk to friends and family
3. I use Twitter to find business customers.
4. I use Twitter to form a professional network
5. I use Twitter to send out and share information.
6. I use Twitter to receive information.
7. I have more than one Twitter account so I can keep my personal and professional tweets separate.

Results:

7% of the respondents were not K-16 educators

93% of the respondents were K-16 educators

8% of the non-K16 educators had separate Twitter accounts for personal and professional use.

24% of the K16 educators had separate Twitter accounts for personal and professional use

The goals for the use of Twitter by the non-K16 educators are illustrated in the graph below.

The goals for the use of Twitter by the K-16 educators are illustrated in the graph below.

The graphs were created using the NCES Create-A- Graph site.

A big thank-you to all who responded!

Wordle

Blog URL: http://kathyschrock.net/blog/


I decided to run a Wordle query on this blog to get a sense for what I am really writing about. If you have never tried Wordle, the site defines Wordle as "a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text."

I feel it is much more than a toy. Imagine students running Wordle queries on blogs they follow to see the author's most written about topics? Or creating a Wordle from the text in their own essay to see what topics they cover in depth?

Tom Barrett has a great slide show with many suggestions for using Wordle in the classroom.

The Wordle from this blog is below. It provides me with useful information and reminds me that I should probably branch out a bit in my areas of discussion!



Give Wordle a try for yourself!

File Magic review

Okay...this is pretty cool. Using Splash Data's File Magic desktop and iPhone app, I am typing this blog post in the email component of the File Magic desktop app. Once I am done, since I have no data connection from my laptop, I simply hit "send" and the email moves over to the open File Magic app on the iPhone, and then I can simply use the iPhone's cellular data connection to send this post! (Now, I know I could have typed this message directly on the iPhone, but it is quite long, and it is easier to use the full-size keyboard for this purpose!)

However, that email component is secondary to the main strengths of File Magic. This app allows you to easily move files, with both the iPhone/Touch app and the desktop app (Mac/Windows) open, from your desktop to your iPhone, or just via the iPhone app from iPhone to iPhone. These both work as long as both devices are on the same wireless network or accessing a WAP on the same network. You could just use the File Magic app on the iPhone/Touch as a data transfer-and-storage app if you wanted to.

But, the File Magic app on the iPhone/Touch also allows you view several different file types, some of which are not native to the iPhone or iPod Touch. If you move a Word doc, a MS Powerpoint presentation, an Excel spreadsheet, or an Adobe PDF file to the iPhone/Touch, you can view it through the File Magic app on the device. Pretty sweet!

You can find out more about the $4.99 app here if you are interested:
http://www.splashdata.com/filemagic/ or in the App Store in iTunes.

Interesting phenomenon

I have been noticing something more and more lately. When I chaperoned the recent 8th grade trip to New York City, I observed that students in every pair of seats were sharing a single set of earbuds attached to one music or DVD player; one student was using the left one and one was using the right. I wondered how it sounded, since one student was listening to the right channel and one to the left. Was one hearing just the melody and one hearing just the bass line?

I also noticed this was not happening because every other student did not have some type of a device. Every student on the bus seemed to have a music player of some sort.

I would never think of sharing music this way. I guess this has become a common practice because, first, many of the popular audio players do not have a speaker, so the use of a headphone is the only way to listen to the music, and, second, the dramatic rise in the use of the earbud style of headphone lends itself well to this practice.

Interestingly enough, I noticed a few laptops at the local computer store that now have two audio-out jacks built-in. Well, at least if students are sharing a movie on this brand of computer, they will each have access to the full stereo experience via their own set of earbuds!

Have you noticed any other "interesting" cultural practices lately due to technology advances?

---

Photo attribution:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rogpool/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

NECC 2009 Interview

After my presentation on Tuesday, ISTE asked to interview me about a few things for the home audience who were watching via Ustream. That video is below. After watching it, I have adopted a couple of new rules for myself.

1. Don't give an interview directly after presenting to 1500 people. The adrenalin is still flowing and I seem a tad frenetic!
2. Don't give an interview in a referee's uniform (or any costume for that matter!)
3. Learn to control my hand movements, thought this will probably be unlikely.
4. I know I slow down my speech when I present, but, boy, I was whipping through this interview!
5. Go get lunch first, then do the interview...

However, I don't think I did too bad with the content, so I am happy with that, anyhow!

Google Apps for Education overview

I receive lots of questions and see lots of posts about the effective use of Google Apps for Education in the K-12 environment. Following are some of my thoughts.

• We used a separate domain for the staff and students since staff mail had to be archived (as per the eDiscovery regulations) and student email does not. We purchased staff email archiving from Gaggle who have a Gmail API that makes it simple. We do not use Gaggle for email accounts, however.

• Google Apps for Education works the same way as Google Apps Premier, with a tad less online storage space per user. The wonderful things about it is that any user can limit any publication to just those who are on the domain, if they wish. We use this when we are publishing something for only district staff. In addition, users can always selectively choose outside users (like our students on the other domain) to see their Docs, Calendars, Sites, etc.

• When you administer Google Apps for Education, you can chose to allow access (or dis-allow access) to the suite of tools -- Email, Calendar, Docs, Talk, Sites, Video, and Web Pages -- for all users. Google Groups and Blogger are not in the suite, but, of course may be easily used.

• We received explicit permission from our parents in grades 6-8 to give their students email accounts. Here is the permission slip we used for this special purpose. If I were to set this up again, I might simply create three domains-- one for staff, one for the middle and high school students with email turned on, and one for the younger students with email turned off, but with log-in access to Docs and Sites, to allow collaborative work to take place in a closed environment. You do not need to have email turned on to use these tools.

• We used the last two digits of YOG-last name-first initial for the student accounts. In addition, so their real name did not show up in the header of mail they sent, when setting up the accounts, I used the YOG-last name for the last name of the student and their first initial for their first name.

The use of these Google Apps has moved technology ahead rapidly in our district. Between shared calendars for school-based meetings to internal Google Sites acting as mini-Moodle packages, both teachers and students have made good use of the apps for communication, collaboration, and creation.

Here are some links to Nauset Google pages:

• Superintendent's Newsletter : this is coded to look like one of our Web pages, but is a Google Doc that the Superintendent's assistant updates each month. This is an easy way to distribute some of the updating of Web page info to others. She simply overwrites the content in the Google Doc each month and republishes, thus the hyperlink on the Web page remains the same.
  

• Cache the Wave: this is a summer professional development announcement and sign-up Google Site with embedded Google forms

• Google Goodies: this is a Google site with three parts-- a round-up of a weekly tip I sent to all staff and students, embedded screencasts for the basic Google Apps usage, and an RSS workshop I created for our adminstrators.

• Middle School Newsletter: although dated, this can give you some idea on how to distribute the work involved in your school-produced newsletter since each user can update their own pages of the shared Site. There is one thing different about Sites than Docs, though. When you make a change to a Google Sites page, it automatically goes live and with Docs you can choose to do it that same way or manually publish it when you are ready.

Updated information 10/11/09

• We continue to use Google sites inside the domain for teacher/student sharing.
• Many teachers have begun to create resource pages for their students using Google docs.
• We make extensive use of the calendaring functionality in Google Apps for Ed for staff purposes. IEP meetings, vacation schedules, literacy meetings, couselors' student meetings, etc. are scheduled with invitations to staff on non-public calendars.
• With the addition of Google video, which provides internal-only storage and access to videos, we have been able to post some school-wide items that we would not have wanted outside.
• Students are beginning to use Google Sites as a personal portfolio, attaching their work to the file cabinet page and embedding those items that are embeddable.
• We are using Google Forms for all types of data collection-- everything from registering for workshops to survey data of parents and community members, and much more.
• We have changed the student naming convention to start with the entire 4 digits of the year of graduation. The administrative sort and search is easier that way.
• We have made use of the offline capabilities of Google Calendar in a school that was having Internet-connection problems. Although the calendars are static on the machine, at least they are accessible.

Wolfram Alpha thoughts

I have spent quite a bit of time with Wolfram Alpha today. It is going to be interesting to introduce this to teachers and students. The user really needs to think about the appropriate time to choose this tool for information.

I suggest you spend a bit of time on the examples page. As you click through the examples, there is a description of the type of search that can be conducted in the search box based on the topic you have chosen. This is a great way to help users to learn the most appropriate use of the tool and the proper syntax for searches.

I have discovered a couple of really cool features about Wolfram Alpha. First, at least on the Mac side, in both Firefox and Safari, a student can simply drag any of the information boxes off of the WA site and the item winds up as a GIF on their computer desktop. It can easily be inserted in a project. (Even all the tables wind up being GIFS!) The student can then add the citation information needed for the GIF they are using.

Secondly, all of the source information (both Web-based and print) consulted for that topic is included as a link at the bottom of the results page to both allow for further research and for determining the reliability and credibility of the results. I so love this!!!

Images source:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=icosahedron

Twitter is not for email

During the past month or so, I have realized people are beginning to use Twitter as their main form of communication. I am a regular Twitter user and follower, but do not keep it open on my desktop all day. I use it how it is intended to be used-- to post quick items of interest or respond with a short message to someone seeking help on a topic. And I think carefully before I answer, to determine whether the response is only useful for the questioner (and DM the answer) or if others might also benefit from the answer (and reply with the @questioner). I try not to clutter up the list with responses that are meaningless to most others. That is part of the Twetiquette (Twitter etiquette).

(Addendum: I was not implying above that people should not post "meaningless" (read "fun") items to Twitter. What I was referring to is the practice of replying to a post via an @username on the list when the actual answer only makes sense to the person who asked the question. It often does not make sense when one sees only an answer.)

I am starting to receive some of the reference questions I receive regularly from educators via Twitter. The direct messages from Twitter show up in my email inbox, and I then have to go open my Twitter client, locate the DM, and respond to the questioner.

It is easy to ask a question in 140 characters, but not so easy to answer with anything meaningful in that number of characters. So, I wind up DM'ing three or four separate messages to the questioner, including having to shorten a URL or two in the Twitter messages.

Twitter is not the place for that kind of communication, in my opinion. If you have a question that you want answered which you know will require me to search the Web and do some research, please don't send it via Twitter.

I am easy enough to find on the Web, and, if you don't have it, here is my email address: kathy@kathyschrock.net

I am always glad to help, but not always in 140-character bursts!

My two favorite things-- shopping and the iPhone

I just download a new application from the iPhone app store called Coupon Sherpa which defines itself as an "in-store coupon application for the iPhone."

You simply browse for a store or restaurant by category or check the alphabetical list for your favorites. Most coupons show up with barcodes that can be scanned in at the register when checking out. (Others lead you to the offer on the vendor's Web site.) As of this posting, there are 178 coupons in 111 stores in Coupon Sherpa, including many major retailers.

The app is only $1.99, but, in celebration of Earth Day, and to highlight one of Coupon Sherpa's goals "to reduce the amount of paper that is wasted by printing coupons", the application is free until this Friday, April 29. (But well-worth the cost of the app anytime!)

I cannot wait to try it out later today when I go shopping. It will be interesting to see how handing the iPhone to the cashier will go over, but I think they had better get used to it!

YouTube is great!

I can (seemingly) find anything I want to on YouTube! I find myself searching YouTube for things that come up in general conversation the same way I do with the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).

Having "primary source" information when having a discussion about old television shows, segments on Sesame Street that one remembers, or old footage of a favorite rock band is great! (And this is in addition to the huge number of educational videos to be found there, too.)

Here is today's sequence of events that led to YouTube and continued to amaze me as to its breadth....

1. Talking about the NCAA Final Four championship game with two colleagues.

2. Continued the discussion about the women's Final Four game tonight.

(My son is a UConn student and a rabid fan and is in St. Louis for the game.)

3. He had told me, if UConn men had made the Final Four, that Dale, the "blue and white" guy, was going to try to get back and forth between the women's and the men's games.

4. My colleagues and I then moved on to conversations about other famous "painted" people, most notably the Tin Man and Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz.

5. We discussed how scared we were when Margaret Hamilton would come out as the witch, and one colleague remembered watching an interview with her on Mr. Rogers. She remembered how kind and gentle Ms. Hamilton was during the interview, and how she tried to humanize the witch to make the character less scary for children.

6. One quick search, and I had the clip to show her.

YouTube rocks! (And why is it blocked in so many schools?)

April Fools' Day or not?

In the "old" days, I used to love the creative things Web page creators came up with on April 1st. The items were always clever and easily understood to be spoofs.

However, with the changes in technology moving so fast in the last few years, I found myself, while doing real work on April 1, trying to decide if the information I was viewing was true or not! It was kinda scary that I could not tell. Are the spoofs getting better? Or is technology changing so fast that I will believe anything?

However, people still continue to amaze me with their creativity on April 1. Here are a few of my favorites from the day.


(Link)














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(Link)

Live Tweeting

Last week, I set Twitter to follow Rebecca Lobo as she tweeted from the sidelines of one of the UConn Big East games. She kept up a constant conversation, and it was too much to take in, so I quickly "unfollowed".

Today, I was so excited about the new iPhone OS3, that I decided to share the keynote via Twitter. I was not there in person but refreshing a few tech blogs as they posted quotes and photos, most notably Engadget, and summarizing what I saw and read.

The keynote was 90 minutes long, and I tweeted a lot. I tried to stick to the important points, but did interject some personal comments at times. After about 30 minutes, even though I was receiving direct messages from some of my followers who were interested and grateful I was summarizing for them, I became worried. I have over 2600 followers in Twitter and perhaps only a small group of them would be interested in the iPhone information.

Would I lose valuable members of my PLN because I tweeted every 30 seconds for 90 minutes? Would people find it too much to take in, just as I had with Rebecca Lobo's sideline updates? What if someone was receiving their tweets via SMS and they incurred charges for an overage of text messages? Would people be upset, when they opened Twitter or their Twitter client, when tons of messages from me clogged up their screen?

So, what should I have done? Should I have used CoverItLive or some other backchannel tool and just posted the URL to Twitter? Should I have only followed the blogs and put a link in Twitter to the most comprehensive coverage page based on what I had read?

I will have to give it more thought, but I don't think Twitter is the right place to "live blog". Your thoughts?

Old browsers never die...

I receive monthly statistics about my personal Web site that gives me a lot of data. I can see that the most popular pages at http://kathyschrock.net/ are my blog, Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch, my Unofficial Guide to American Graffiti, and Rockwell Schrock's Boolean Machine, an interactive demonstration of Boolean search strategies usable on an interactive whiteboard.

However, the statistic I also find interesting is the one that tells me which Web browsers the visitors are using who come to my site. This past month, Netscape 4 led the way with Firefox and IE6 not too far behind. Those three covered about 66% of the visitors.


The surprise comes when I look at the bottom of the list. About 10% of the visitors to my site use browsers such as WebTV 1.x and WebTV 2.x, Netscape 2 and 3, Internet Explorer 2, 3, and 5, Safari 1, Firefox 0 and 1, and AOL 3 and 4.

The users of these older Web browsers can probably get to my site, and navigate it, since it does not deploy the use of too many new technologies. I can just imagine the frustration these users feel when they try to visit some cool new sites or employ the use of some new Web 2.0 tools. Granted, their computers may not be able to handle the plug-ins or add-ons that some of these new technologies require, and they will continue to be frustrated until they can get a newer commputer.

Some of your teachers may not realize there are updates available to their Internet browsers that will run on older machines. Or that there are some additional browsers, such as Avant and Opera, that may work for their particular situation.

A short mention of something like this at a PD session or a faculty meeting could provide one of your teachers with the information he or she needs to be able to effectively use their older computer to navigate the Web sites of today.

(And while we are on the subject, perhaps talking about upgrading their Adobe Acrobat Reader to the highest version possible for their machine might make sense, too! You can still find the a download of Acrobat Reader 5 for Windows 95 and 98 if you look around!)

Photo courtesy of OiMax as per the Creative Commons licensing.

Amazon Kindle 2 Thoughts

Having been an avid Kindle user since it came out, I immediately upgraded to the Kindle 2 when it became available. It arrived today.

There are plenty of unboxing videos and reviews already on the Web, so I am not going to do an in-depth review. I am just going to share some thoughts.

- The new five way control button. It is slower than the previous scroll wheel for moving up and down within menus and books, but definitely useful for moving sideways in the browser, in some of the pop-up boxes, and for use with the updated highlighting feature which actually works like true highlighting!

- The expanded support for conversion of personal document types including Microsoft Word, PDF, HTML, TXT, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PRC and MOBI documents is a welcome addition.

- The text-to-speech option which is "interesting" to listen to. I found the female voice, slowed down one notch, was the most pleasant to listen to. I can see using this function while hooked into the aux jack in the car or on the deck after sunset in the summer.

- The new experimental Web browser is great! It is more like a real browser in how it functions, and the 16 shades of gray make the images much, much clearer. Using the mobile versions of Facebook and Twitter, I was able to read and post, so my PLN is available to me while I am reading on the Kindle, too!

- The note-taking feature is easier to get to and the new keyboard works just fine, although I liked the tilted keys on the thumb board of the previous version a bit better. There is also no @ key on the keyboard, and it takes an extra step to get to it on the symbol button.

- Audible books can be loaded in the top two qualities (4 and enhanced) only, which means they take up more of the internal storage space than the lesser quality spoken word files. (This info is from Amazon's site. Audible seems to allow one to download formats 2, 3, 4 and enhanced, but I have not tried it.)

- Being able to load MP3 files directly into the internal storage is much easier than having to put them on an SD card and re-insert it each time in the back of the previous version. (Update: You can also move from MP3 file to MP3 file on the Kindle 2, whereas on the first version you had to just play them all without any control other than on and off.)

- The 3G network connection is speedy. And the page turns seem speedier.

- The smaller buttons make it easier to hold without turning pages, especially since I do not use the leather cover and hold the coverless Kindle while reading, opting for a zippered Belkin case to keep the Kindle clean and protected.

- There is still a "flash to black" as the electronic ink refreshes between pages. That's how electronic ink works, but after reading about 10 pages on a Kindle, you'll never notice that again.

- Oh, by the way, the Kindle 2, as with the previous version, does a super job of letting you carry lots of books with you and easily reading them! The electronic ink is never tiring to my eyes and the ability to use the Kindle in bright sunlight and other natural light is great!

Update March 3, 2009

Amazon releases the Kindle Reader for the iPhone and Touch!

The free Kindle app for the iPhone/Touch works great! With adjustable type sizes and some navigation options, it allows non-Kindle users to purchase books (via their computer or the browser on the device) from the Kindle bookstore and download them to their iPhone/Touch. This works both over 3G and the 802.11x connections.

For Kindle owners, it also does another cool thing-- it syncs your place in the book so, when you open the book on either device, it asks you if you want to move ahead to the place where you left off reading on the other device.

There is no widescreen support for the Kindle app (yet!), magazines and newspapers are not supported, you can add bookmarks, and you are able to read the notes you entered via your Kindle, but you cannot add new notes via the Kindle app.

I have read ebooks for years on small devices via Palm's Reader and with Windows CE/Mobile devices. The clarity of the iPhone/Touch screen makes the experience much more pleasant, but I do have to turn down the backlight so the reading is easier on my eyes. (At least this might extend the rather poor battery life of the iPhone!)

I would rather read an entire novel on the Kindle 2, but having the same books with me all the time for reference or relaxation is great!

Added: 4/19/09

One commenter asked about the number of Audible recordings the Kindle 2 would hold if he had no books on the device. (The original Kindle had an SSD card slot, so you were only limited by the size of the SD card.) The answer to that question needs some explanation as to how Audible works. Audible offers its audiobook recordings in different quality formats. The Kindle 2 can play formats 2, 3, or 4, with format-4 being the best quality.

I chose a title, Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburned Country", to use for determining the answer to this question. Bryson's print book is 352 pages in length. Audible's format-2 of his book is 46mb in file size, format-3 is 86mb, and format 4 is 172mb. That seems to indicate that, on the Kindle's 2GB storage drive, you could have forty-five format-2 Audible recordings, twenty-four format-3 recordings, or twelve format-4 recordings. (And of course, various numbers of the combination of the formats.)

According to these figures, each page of this print book takes up .13mb for format-2, .24mb for format-3, and .5mb for format-4. Does this hold true for all Audible recordings? I am not sure, but at least this gives the commenter some broad idea of how many Audible recordings would fit on the Kindle 2.

Geek Alert: Netbooks & the Airport Extreme

I know that many of us attend and run conferences and professional development sessions, and with more educators getting netbooks, I wanted to share a problem that I experienced, and the solution, in case you are ever encounter it.

I just purchased my fourth netbook, the MSI Wind, with b/g/n network ability and it worked like a dream on the wireless network at home (Apple Airport Express) and out and about at public WiFi hotspots.

However, in my office, with the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station, the minute I connected to the wireless, the netbook would lock up my Airport Extreme. I thought I was imagining it the first couple of times and reset the base station and the cable router, only to have it happen each and every time.

I did some Internet research and found the combination of the MSI Wind (and a few models of the Asus eeePC) and the Airport Extreme Base Station can cause a problem. However, I also found the solution below. It is an easy fix on the netbook.

If you are using the standard Windows wireless configuration utility

1. Right click on the wireless connection in the taskbar and select STATUS
2. Click on PROPERTIES
3. You should be on the GENERAL tab
   
4. Choose CONFIGURE next to the wireless adapter box
5. Choose the ADVANCED tab
6. Scroll down the list and click on POWER SAVING MODE
7. Change the value to CAM (Constantly Awake Mode)
8. Click OK

or

1. Go to START, SETTINGS, CONTROL PANEL
2. Choose the SYSTEM option
3. Choose the HARDWARE tab
4. Choose the DEVICE MANAGER button
5. Expand the NETWORK ADAPTERS entry on the list
6. Double-click on your wireless adapter
7. Choose the ADVANCED tab
8. Scroll down the list and click on POWER SAVING MODE
9. Change the value to CAM (Constantly Awake Mode)
10. Click OK

If you are using the Ralink wireless configuration utility
(I am not, so cannot verify these instructions)

1. Uncheck POWER SAVING MODE
2. Enable CAM (Constantly Awake Mode)

I only post this for those of you that might run into this either at a conference you are attending or running, or at a WiFi hotspot using the Airport Extreme base station. Hope it helps!

Digital Pioneer: The Movie

A digital version of a blog post I made earlier this year and my (non-successful) ADE application video.


Digital Pioneer: The Movie on Vimeo.

Maiden name in Facebook

A little known fact in Facebook is that you do not have to put your maiden name as part of your full profile name for others to find you by your "former" name.

Instructions to make your maiden name searchable (for those that knew you "when") are as follows, quoted from Facebook's help file:

"There is a section for users to list their maiden name or alternate name. Please note that this name will not show up in your profile, and is only used to find you in search. To submit your alternate name, navigate to the Account Settings page, and click on "change" in the "Name" section. In the "Former Name" box, please be sure to include your full former name. You will now be found in search by your current name (as listed in your profile) and this alternate name."

This would also be useful if you use some variant of your first name (i.e. Elizabeth vs. Beth), too.

Tools for Schools: Live Online Conferencing

As an Adobe Education Leader, I am lucky enough to have access to a full version of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, a full-featured video conferencing and synchronous collaboration tool. (If anyone ever wants to see how it works, please let me know and we can set up a time for a meeting demo!)

Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro is not free, and I have yet to find a no-cost option for schools that comes close to its capabilities. However, here are a few free options that provide more than just video-calling (like Skype and ooVoo). The sites listed below will allow you to experiment with a more full-featured toolset and, perhaps, provide enough justification in your school or district for the purchase of a full-fledged system!

These are just brief overviews of the capabilities of each of these systems. Each system often adds new features, so take the time to give each of them a try and re-visit them regularly.

Adobe ConnectNow
http://www.adobe.com/acom/connectnow/
...includes many of the features of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, such as video and VOIP for all, screen sharing, whiteboards, etc., but only allows three users to participate in the conference; I would strongly suggest this one for small synchronous sessions

Vyew
http://vyew.com
...this tool is very full-featured, and the free version allows only 5 users and the site is ad-supported; there is an easy-screenshot feature, lots of plug-ins such as a YouTube Player, a graphing calculator, desktop sharing, and much more

DimDim
http://dimdim.com/
...the no-cost version of this tool only allows for the presenter's video feed, and four users with voice, but does allow 20 users in the room, and includes a whiteboard, a chat area, and some screensharing

Yugma
http://www.yugma.com
...the free version of Yugma requires registration by each of the (up to 20) attendees you host for a meeting. There is a download of Java required as well as a small client. The free version basically allows screen-sharing and chat. There is a Skype version of the client that utilizes the audio and chat within Skype as well.

WizIQ
http://www.wiziq.com
...WizIQ is intended to allow users to teach within their system. It allows uploads of presentations, audio for all participants, sharing of a whiteboard, and video for the instructor

Addition (4/30/09)
Zorap
http://zorap.com/
...synchronous audio and the ability to share photos, files, and videos makes this tool very cool; you need to install a local client to use it, but you do not have to have an account to join a room

__________________________________
Photo located in a Creative Commons search in Flickr.
http://flickr.com/photos/mrkimmi/2922784425/
"Video Conferencing" by mrkimmi

Searching the Twitterverse

Since I very rarely visit the official browser-based Twitter site, finding it better for my workflow to run a computer-based client called twhirl, I had forgotten about the search tools available on the official Twitter site.

One of my concerns about Twitter is the amount of information that seems to be non-permanent. My Twitter feed is constantly flowing with all types of great information from my ed-tech PLN, and there are times that I want to get back to something from a month ago. (In addition, I also would like to see what the rest of the world is tweeting about, too!)

Twitter has a robust advanced search page which I recommend you try out.

As you can see from the screenshot below, it is easy to limit or broaden your search by filling in multiple pieces of information.

Screenshot courtesy of twitter.com, 2/14/09

In addition to the advanced search page, Twitter also offers a handy list of operators you can use right from the simple search box to conduct a search.

Once you conduct a search, you can easily choose to add the RSS feed for that search to your newsreader (Bloglines, Netvibes, Google Reader, etc.) to follow that person, topic, or even just be notified when a word that you are interested in is included in a tweet.

Screenshot courtesy of twitter.com, 2/14/09

Take some time to conduct complex searches using the Twitter advanced search page or conduct a search and aggregate it for "watching". At least you are guaranteed each entry is short and quick to read!

Pesonal laptops on the school network

I have been noticing a lot more of our students are bringing their personal laptops to school. (I have not seen any netbooks yet, though.) The main reasons seem to be both for taking notes in class and for moving files onto a flash drive in order to use one of the school's computers to print their homework.

I began to think about allowing students onto the wireless network with their personal computers for both printing and for Internet access. In addition, they all have Google Apps for Education accounts and would be able to work in their online space. They would still be behind the content filter, so that would be covered. The only real problem I considered is that we would have to make it very clear to them why we only allow streaming at certain times of the day (lack of bandwidth).

I posted a quick note on Twitter, asking my esteemed PLN about the process at their school or district. I received 16 answers in about ten minutes (hardly a scientific sample) but I really just wanted to get a feel for what others are doing.

Results:
11 allow the use of personal laptops at least over the wireless network
4 do not allow the use of personal laptops
1 will be offering it soon

The interesting part was the anecdotal 140-character explanations. Here are a few.

_______________________

"Our district won't allow our teachers to connect laptops (purchased by the school) to connect to our network!"

"No official policy on it but the practice is to let students/teachers/staff/student teachers/outside consultants on network."

"We encourage, but do not yet require student laptops -- allow access to hot spots."

"Not allowing interfaces at present but anticipate allowing wireless interface in near future."

"We do, but there is a process in which they need to participate."

"We officially let kids on with personal laptops if they have testing on file that indicates the need. Unofficially- we let all."

"None of the 13 school districts allow any of their students OR teachers to hook their personal laptops to the school network."

______________________

I envisioned just giving students the wireless access code to use, but then, after surfing right through the WAP and the content filter with my iPhone to any site I wanted to visit, I realized that not all devices would be allowed to be on the internal network and the WAP code would have to remain a secret. I will do some more testing, but the iPhone seemed to go directly through the filter for some sites that I know are filtered out by the Sonic Wall subscription.

Just beginning to think about the possibilities....

7 Things You Don’t Really Need to Know About Me

Today I was tagged in a Twitter meme entitled "7 Things You Don't Really Need to Know About Me". I have been on the Web for so long, and never have hesitated to share, but here are some things that you might have missed!

1. I had perfect attendance in high school.
2. I was my high school mascot.
3. I watch Days of Our Lives every day (and that is not a cardboard cut-out!)
4. I have ridden motorcycles since I was 7 years old.
5. I maintain the Unofficial American Graffiti home page.
6. I maintain the Dave DeBusschere Sports Card site.
7. We live in a geodesic dome and our son's middle name is Buckminster.

I am passing this on to the following:
1.Meg Ormiston
2.Jim Wenzloff
3.Leslie Fisher
4.Lisa Thumann
5.Leigh Zeitz

iPhone apps that sync

When the App Store opened for the iPod Touch and the iPhone, I first found myself drawn to the applications that took advantage of the great graphics, the well-crafted touchscreen, and the built-in accelerometer which enhances the use of some very cool apps!

However, as time progressed, I began to look at applications that would increase my productivity and also have a desktop component. I like a desktop component for both the ease of lots of data entry and for peace of mind, since the data is backed up on both the handheld and desktop devices.

One piece of software that I received as a demo, SplashShopper, created by SplashData, I have found easy-to-use and very useful!

SplashShopper is just what it sounds like-- it is a shopping list application, and comes with pre-populated shopping lists for all types of things, including books, gifts, groceries, movies, etc. However, it is very easy to re-create these lists to meet your specific needs and even create your own list.

The lists, especially the grocery list, can get very detailed. However, I did not care about some of the fields, so I just entered the item, the broad category, and the aisle fields when entering my grocery store's items. I used the desktop component for entering all 174 items.

I love having my grocery list with me all of the time, arranged by store aisle, and only seeing the items I need! The iPhone makes use of this application so easy, since the touch screen is so responsive one can push the cart and use the electronic shopping list at the same time! (And, if you still like the paper list, you can email a text version of the shopping list to yourself before you go to the store!)

Kathy

Cool little photo scanner

Many years ago I had a stand-alone photo scanner, back in the days when flatbed scanners were really expensive. It worked (most of the time)! I find archiving old photos on a flatbed to be very time-consuming. Just recently, I ran across the Pandigital Photolink One-Touch Scanner. As you can see from the photo comparison, the scanner is very small- it is 6"x 2" x 1.5". It only can scan up to a 4" wide image, but it is perfect for the 4"x"6 photo size.




Here's how it works. It comes with an SD card, but has a 5-in-1 card reader (Compact Flash-Type 1, MemoryStick, MS Pro, MS Pro Duo and DUO (with adapters), MMC, SD and all the little SD versions with an adapter, and xD (H-type and M-type) on the back side.

You just plug in the AC adapter, and scan your images through the scanner, one at a time, and they are saved on the card in an 1800x1200 resolution at 300dpi. It is speedy to scan multiple photos, and, although this is not a high resolution, the colors are true, and those old photos from the pre-digital camera age of the 60's, 70's and 80's look just great!

You can hook the scanner up to a desktop and it acts as a card reader, too, and you can easily move the photos off the memory card and onto the desktop for burning to your archival CD, posting to flickr or Facebook, or making your PhotoStory.

Here is an old photo I scanned and did not retouch. (This is from 1966, before I hit those awkward teenage years!) I intentionally chose one with a lot of reds to show that they did not bleed, as sometimes happens with that color. (Okay, this was also before I had any fashion sense, too, based on the colors I was wearing!)

The Networked Student

Created in the style of the Common Craft videos (with permission) here is a well-done video about the networked student, Web 2.0 tools, and the networked teacher. Thanks to Wendy Drexler and her son for creating this!

Living with the iPhone

Well, after living with the Apple iPhone for four months today, I have to say that I still love it! I can do most of what I need to do on a daily basis and the interface cannot be beat!

It was not until the App Store launched, and I installed the OS upgrade on my iPod touch to try the App Store, that I realized the power of having a well-engineered, converged device. I have been a smartphone user for years (both Palm and Windows Mobile) and there is truly no comparison. I have been following the other new devices, like the Android and Storm, and do not feel a bit of techno-lust!

The only downside is the poor battery life. I know I can shut off some functionality to prolong the battery life, but that is an inconvenience. (However, I guess it is MORE of an inconvenience to have no battery life left!) I have just purchased a small battery life extender (Kensington Mini Battery Extender) and that should solve my problem.

There are all types of apps for the iPhone, and many of the ones that I have installed have been free and low-cost. Some of my favorite add-ons include:

• Twitterfon: for keeping up with my tweeting colleagues
• MobileFiles: read-only access to my iDisk files
  
• Google: text search and the great new voice search functionality
• MightyDocs: read-only access to all my Google docs
• YouNote: write, draw, or record a to-do for yourself
• Pandora Radio and AOL Radio: two different types of streaming radio
• GPS Tracker: open it up and family members can follow your whereabouts
• iWant: based on your current location, find local essential services
• Ruler, Compass, and Dual Level: handy tools to have with you at all times
• AirMe: send your photos taken with the phone right to the Web
• Panolab: create a panoramic photo with the iPhone
• fring: access to Skype
• Google Earth: it is amazing how well it can be used on the iPhone
• HanDBase: the great database program now for use on the iPhone
• iTalk: an easy-to-use voice recorder that can sync with your computer
• Say Who: voice-dialing program
• SportsTap: easy access to sport scores of all types
• i.TV: based on your location, get the TV show lineup
• SnapTell: take a photo of a book, CD, or DVD cover in the store and get pricing
• Facebook and AIM: I could not be without them
• SearchMe: a search engine that returns "coverflow-like" results
  
• Games that take advantage of the touchscreen and the accelerometer like iBowl, TapTap Revenge, magic8Ball

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch and want to share your favorite apps and a short description, please do!

Update 12/6/08:
I have purchased Tweetie for using Twitter on the iPhone. It is a full-featured Twitter client that is very easy to use and parses well on the device.

The Kensington Mini Battery Extender arrived it and works very well! First it charges up the device, and then, when you use the iPhone, it supplies the power until it runs out of power and then you start using the iPhone battery again.

Here is a list of 50 iPhone apps for education that came out right after this post.

Macbook Unboxing

08opened

My new Macbook after I left work on Thursday to drive to Tech Forum NE (which was great, by the way!)

Many of you have asked for photos of the unboxing, so, if you are interested, they may be found in a Flickr set here

Web 2.0 Tools Database

I signed up for blist, an new online database tool today. I created a database but kept it private. Apparently, when I chose to post it to Blogger, even though I received a message that it did not work, it DID work, but, of course, no one could view it because it was private! (It was going to be a place for teachers to enter their favorite tools.)

I have to work on figuring out how one offers the entry form, not the back end data. Creating databases is simple...figuring out how to share the entry form, not so much.

I may just do it in Zoho or Google Forms if I cannot figure it out.

Kathy

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, and Digital Pioneers

I have long bristled at being called a "digital immigrant". I know the difference between the understood explanation of the "digital natives" and "digital immigrants" as outlined by Marc Prensky.

I did not grow up with technology. It grew up with me, and I was there every step of the way. I think those of us who have been there since the beginning, and have adopted each technology as it came about, should not be called digital immigrants. I do not turn to the printed manual first. I always choose reputable Internet sites to locate information. And I do speak the correct language (and still do not accept Google as a verb!) There are very few technology skills that are foreign to me.

I want to be in a third category of technology users called "digital pioneers". This group of users grew up as technology grew up. This group of users has mastered both the skills (learned from years of technology risk-taking and experimentation) and the processes (learned from the real world and the online world) of information literacy and choosing the correct tool for the task.

These users are the technology mentors and evangelists in the education field and are very passionate about the topic. They are constantly looking for new and old technologies that will support teaching and learning in a meaningful way and they always share their findings with others. There will only ever be a finite group of technology pioneers since, by the definition of growing up as technology grew up, the digital pioneers would have to be 50 years old or older at this point.

Many so-called digital immigrants, teachers who came later to the technology arena, are doing a wonderful job infusing technology meaningfully into teaching and learning. These tech-savvy educators are teaching to the current generation of so-called digital natives in ways that support these students' varied learning styles.

But please call me a "digital pioneer".

Fun with photos...

I used one of the cool options on Dumpr for my Facebook icon and lots of people have asked about it. I discovered it a while ago and have been meaning to share.




Dumpr is an easy-to-use site for creating fun photos! It would be a great site for students to use for their "about me" slide in a presentation. No registration is required to use the site to upload an image and download the project.

Fax Machines....not!

I have always disliked the fax machine. It seems like old technology that is past its prime at this point. However, since my husband and I both need to send and receive faxes, it was a necessity to have one in the house and on its own phone line.

Over the past few years, the number of junk faxes that have come in, wasting our ink and paper, has become so overwhelming that we keep the machine off unless someone notifies us that they need to send a fax. It kinda defeats the purpose.

Back in the old dial-up days, I tried to use the fax option, via the modem, that came with Windows, but that did not work very well. Recently, I decided to see if the Web-based fax services had come of age yet.


Well, guess what? They really have! After some research, we went with Faxage. They ported our existing Verizon fax number over to their service so the fax number remained the same. The company communicated with us every step of the way-- they were great!

The system allows us to set up fax folders for all of us in the family, we can each have our own fax cover sheet, and we are notified via email when a fax comes in (and the fax is attached to the email for a quick review). If it is a junk fax, it is a simple delete! The faxes are kept in PDF format within their system and are very readable.

Of course, when sending out a fax, if something is not already digital, we have to scan it to the computer, but it really is not troublesome.

The option we chose was $7.95 per month for 150 faxes. We are saving the $24 for the phone line and $10 for the long distance service per month on the line, AND our ink and paper is not being wasted by junk faxes. I think it is a win-win situation!

Working smarter

I realize I have not posted to the blog for a while. I have been micro-blogging with Twitter and Plurk and using Facebook to keep in touch with many of my ed tech colleagues. I also realize that information that normally would have been shared via blogs is getting lost in the "Twitterverse".

I have spent the last few weeks really working on making the Mac my main platform. (All my machines are Intel Macs which are dual-platform.) Those of you that know me know I am a die-hard Windows user and have been called the "terminally left-brained learner". Until OS X, I really was not comfortable using the Mac operating system and still had not spent a lot of time on that side of my computers.

All that changed two weeks ago when I moved to the iPhone 3G and MobileMe and also purchased a new iMac for home. I know there has been some bad press about MobileMe, but I have had nothing but success with everything I have done. In the past, I never had the luxury of an Exchange server and had limited access to IMAP. (IMAP allows one to keep all machines and devices in sync for email, contacts, and calendars, among other things.)

I took the plunge and moved my stand-alone Outlook folders of info up to MobileMe for my personal account, and moved my work folders to our gmail-hosted apps mail for our school domain. I also now am working on the Mac side of the machine for most of my tasks, with brief forays to the Windows side for the use of some applications.

What a difference this has made in the way I do business! IMAP is the greatest thing! No matter what device I use, I have access to all of my folders of data, so I no longer have to say "Oh, that is on my work computer and I can get it for you tomorrow."

In addition, everything is in sync all of the time. I guess maybe I have come late to this party, and all of you already have been conducting business this way for while. In any case, I am much more productive since I can easily use the iPhone for almost everything I need to do when away from the computer and I have all my data at my fingertips all of the time

I just re-read this series of articles from the Economist today, since we are studying it as an administrative team at a retreat next week. I suggest you give it a read if you have a chance. It is fascinating to think about the changes that ubiquitous access to the Internet is starting to bring to the work force.

Kathy

Pic on the bull

Just found the Flickr site with all the NECC-goers riding the mechanical bull in the exhibit hall. It is pretty funny to run the entire thing as a slide show!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/genevalogic/

We are such geeks!

Kathy

Google's Lively-- another virtual world

Maybe it has been around for a while, but I just tried Google's Lively virtual world this morning. Second Life it is not, nor does the client currently work on the Mac (note on the site says Google Labs is working on other clients), but it runs within the browser on the Windows machine very well and does not seem to take a super-machine to work it. (Maybe it might even work on the MSI Wind or the eeePC!)

Because of my Second Life experience, I had no problem creating and editing my avatar, creating a room, and decorating it. It will be interesting to try this out with some educators (and, if we make a private room) with some of our students, if that is possible at some point.

Here is my room "K-12 Educators". I cannot seem to find it in the search, but the URL, if you are trying Lively out, is http://www.lively.com/dr?rid=-5452546736007296038.

Misunderstanding at NECC?

Dear All,

It has been called to my attention that something I talked about in my presentation last week at NECC has been misunderstood. When stating that the ISTE docents had been "coerced into service" with the promise of a "virtual pat on the back", in addition to talking about how they are always there to help new users get acclimated, I was intending to point out that they are all volunteers.

They help out in Second Life because they are the type of educators who will help out in real life, too-- not for money or fame, just because it is the right thing to do. The ISTE community in Second Life has flourished in large part because of these educators.

I am sorry for any misunderstanding and I am sorry my words were misunderstood. Those of you that know me in real life, know that I would never belittle other educators. Those of you that just know me in Second Life might not realize that....

Kathy

Educators wherever we are...

It is always interesting coming home from NECC. I spent four days talking to hundreds (if not thousands!) of like-minded educators who are engaged and excited about the current and upcoming possibilities of technologies to support teaching, learning, and professional development. I had one-on-one conversations with many dedicated educators who were there to learn, and I loved the time I could spend with them, learning what they get excited about.

On the trip home, I still found myself talking to everyone. I ran into some NECC-goers in the airport, and we discussed our favorite sessions and the new things we saw. After our little group broke up, a businessman next to me started asking me about my laptop. I was more than happy to show it off.

On the plane, I sat next to a retired Army general who was very interested in the Kindle, so I continued to "spread the word". At the sandwich shop in Atlanta's airport, I was using my phone (HTC Touch) to check my email, and three employees came out from behind the counter to take a look at it and learn more about it. On the bus home from Boston's Logan Airport, I had to tether the laptop to the phone to find a hotel reservation for the woman in the seat next to me, since the amount of traffic we encountered on the 90-mile trip caused her to miss both the last boat and plane to Nantucket, where she was planning to spend the holiday weekend.

We talk about engaging our students and getting them up-to-speed on the 21st century skills. I guess I am figuring out that if we don't get the rest of the current workforce and the employers of tomorrow up-to-speed, too, our students may not get the chance to utilize these skills.

Be generous with your time with strangers. Those of us that tote the "gadgets" need to explain the possibilities to others if they are interested. An educator is an educator wherever we are!

Kathy

Photo courtesy of the American Memory Collection, Lewis Wickes Hine, Photographer.

NECC Report #4: Day 3

The Innovation Exchange today went swimmingly! The high-level group of 150 educators heard a wonderful keynote by Dr. Richard Baraniuk who provided an in-depth overview of his passion and his project, Connexions. This was followed by five short presentations and breakout sessions dealing with netbooks (like the Asus eeePC and HP Mininote) used for a portfolio project (Kurt Madden), online synchronous professional development tools such as Adobe Connect Pro (Lee Keller), an introduction to three unique Web 2.0 tools (Leigh Zeitz), the innovative use of the Nintendo DS in the classroom to support teaching and learning (Camilla Gagliolo), and my presentation about the use of portable applications on a USB flash drive (and a little about the Kindle thrown in, too!)

In the afternoon, I attended the ISTE-led session dealing with ICOT, the ISTE Classroom Observation Tool. I will have to investigate it more on my own before giving you more information.

The closing keynote was crowded, and my favorite part were the video interviews with teachers presenting poster sessions about global education projects. Without fanfare, they described the meaningful work they were doing in their classrooms. Kudos to all of them!

Once they are posted, many of the spotlight sessions, the keynotes, and selected other sessions may be found on this page.

Thanks to TCEA for hosting the conference this year and thanks to the ISTE Conference Committee and staff for another job well-done!

NECC Report #3: Day 2

Today was another info-packed day. I watched the keynote from outside of the ballrooms with many others and it was great! I continued my journey through the entire exhibit hall from beginning to end and learned some new things from vendors. I then conducted my presentation in the big theater. I felt it was well-received and it was fun to be in that venue with so many educators! You can find the links and see the presentation as a Picasa Web album or a PDF handout here if you are interested.

Later in the afternoon I went to Hall Davidson's presentation about the potential of cell phone use in the classroom. He gave an excellent presentation with practical sites and good ideas for the use of this technology that almost every student has in his or her pocket! He does not have the presentation posted yet, but it will show up here when it is.

The NEISTE get-together was fun and I visited with old friends and made some new ones. This was followed up by a quick stop at the DEN event with tons of people, and then a quiet dinner with some of my DoDEA friends.

Today is the Innovation Exchange from 8am until noon. More later....

Kathy

NECC Report #2: Day 1

I started off the day with Joyce Valenza and we visited a press suite where we learned more about PBS TeacherLine's new and upcoming professional development options and met with Discovery Education and Wilkes University to talk about their joint online master's degree in Instructional Technology.

I then worked with a group of teachers, in the hallway, on the floor, on Moodle strategies (because we were blocked out of a workshop that was full) and it was a great collaborative time.

I went to the exhibit hall to visit the vendors I wanted to catch up with, including Asus, so I could actually touch the new eeePC 901. It is sweet, out in 7 days, and all I have to decide is to get glossy black or glossy white. (The black one is cool looking!) Going back tomorrow to do the entire hall and see some new things!

I rode the bronco while I was in the hall, too.


Then I went to a Thinkfinity session with Chris Dede and Danny Edelson entitled "The Learning Multiplier: Using Multi-Device Environments to Engage Students". It dealt with innovative and practical practices for the use of smaller devices to conduct real-life data-gathering and research.

I ran into tons of people and friends, and had a good time networking, of course!

I finished up the day at a Google Apps presentation put on my Cristin Frodella and Danny Chang where they provided a very good overview of Google Apps for Education. We use it in our district, so I did not learn a bunch, but they did a very good job providing information for the audience members who were not using the suite of tools.

On to the MICCA/VSTE reception tonight and then getting ready for my talk tomorrow!

NECC Report #1: Leadership Symposium

This session focused on both defining the meaning of various NETS*T for our table, attending four short sessions from great teachers who are conducting collaborative and global projects, coming back to discuss our "discoveries", listening to a short presentation by each of the contributing educators (so we could hear from the four we did not get to visit), and a chance to ask questions.

I chose to be in the "Communication and Collaboration" strand, and was very excited about the discussions and presentations that I was able to see! The sessions were videotaped so I assume ISTE will be sharing this online as some point.

Continuing on with the day!

Gettting ready for NECC in SL!

I took a little trip in Second Life today to the TX PBS TeacherLine and TCEA's shared site on one of the ISTE islands. Took a bull ride and chatted with Joie Despres (SL) who was busy getting the site ready for NECC!

She handed me a notecard to share with all of you about an event they are having on their sim area tomorrow night.

"Howdy Ya'll!

On June 19 at 6PM SLT, put on your cowboy hats and boots and join PBS TeacherLine of Texas and the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA), your Texas Ambassadors, as we welcome you to NECC in San Antonio, Texas 2008!



We are going to fire up the barbecue, put on some country western for a little line dancing, and get real crazy with a bull-riding contest. Yeehah!! So, come on down!"

SLURL for the event:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island%202/128/175/23/

I immediately went out and found a cool cowboy hat! Looking forward to the event in SL and even more to the event in San Antonio in RL!

Kindle update...

The Kindle is a interesting device! Having 10 hours at a time (twice!) on the bus to and from Washington, DC, to put it through its paces, really gave me time to learn how to use it well.

The screen is easy on the eyes although I still have to remember I need an external light source to read it. The bus seat lights worked just fine as did reading it in the bright sunlight outside.

The "experimental" browser takes some getting used to, but once I started using the mobile versions of sites, like I do on my Windows Mobile phone, I could do just about anything I needed to do. I even posted to Twitter!

I listened to an audiobook for some of the time, and that worked well, too. I practice marking things up, creating clippings that could be searched later, and read some of my own content I had put on the device.

The battery life was really long, but I don't know how long, since I was busy taking care of chaperoning duties in-between! I did shut the wireless off while listening or reading, and I know that extends the battery life, too.

We have just purchased two Kindles for our high school library as a pilot, and I found out a couple of things. First, you can have up to 6 Kindles tied to one Amazon account, and, if you buy a single title, you are allowed to put it on all 6 of them.

Secondly, since any user of the Kindle can purchase a new title from the Kindle store from the Kindle itself, we did not know how we were going to control students from purchasing books on a whim. We are solving the problem by putting a gift certificate on the Amazon account with no other method of payment on the account. The teachers will spend the gift certificate funds to purchase a bunch of titles, so there will be no payment method available to purchase new titles by the users. We will just load the books up with the purchased titles.

(Update to clarify the above paragraph: As we do in the real library, suggestions for purchases submitted by students will be considered for the Kindle as they are for print titles in the library. I was not suggesting that the educators would control the content purchased for the Kindle. I was suggesting that, for a district that does not have a credit card and needs to carefully control spending due to limited resources, the gift certificate option would allow a designated amount of money to be spent on titles suggested by staff or students at the school.)

I will have the Kindle at NECC with me if anyone is interested in trying it out...just ask me when you see me!

Kathy's Kindle

Well, I have had the Amazon Kindle, Amazon's new electronic ebook, for a week now and will be putting it to the test starting tomorrow on the 10-hour bus ride to Washington, DC with the 8th graders!

I cannot yet comment on the screen for reading for long periods at a time, since I have really spent the week getting to know Kindle. I read the PDF guide (on the computer although it is also on the Kindle in azw format) and tried all of the functions. I read for a bit, and it is comfortable to hold, once out of its cover, and readable outside in the son and under inside light. It took me some time to get over the fact it is not backlit like a computer or my old Rocket eBook. However, once I remembered to treat it like a "real" book, the clarity of the screen was great and the ability to change the text size was neat.

I purchased a few titles from the Amazon Kindle store (Daniel Pink, Janet Evanovich, and Ann Brashares), loaded up some e-texts from the public domain e-text sites, put some MP3's on the SD card to counteract any movie playing on the bus, and spent some time with the Internet access available on the Kindle. Buying and downloading the books could not have been easier or faster, but I was surprised when Collin's "Good to Great" was not available as an e-text to purchase.

I have decided not to take a computer with me to Washington, and have been trying out the experimental Web browser on the Kindle as an alternative. (The Kindle includes no-cost Sprint cellular EV-DO access to Amazon and the rest of the Net for every owner of one!) As one that is used to using the Web on a Windows Smartphone (Treo before and now HTC Touch), using the mobile versions of Web sites comes naturally and I think I will be able to take care of business this week using the Kindle. Time will tell...

Gotta go pack!

Wii Fit Fun!

Well, as with Wii Sports, I can only do things well with the Wii Fit that I can also do in real life. In Wii Sports, I can bowl, which I can do in real life, and I cannot play tennis, which I cannot do in real life.

With the Wii Fit, there are activities in the areas of strength training, yoga, aerobics, and balance games. Well, I cannot walk a tightrope in real life, nor ski a slalom, nor ski jump, nor head a soccer ball, and I did not do so well in these balance games.

I was better in the aerobics area. I could not twirl the hula hoop, something I have never mastered in real life, but the step aerobic sessions were a good workout and I could follow those. On the island run, I became winded after a time, as I would have in real life.

I have not tried the strength or yoga areas yet-- 40 minutes was enough time for one night! It really is a remarkable combination of hardware and software. It is engaging and takes practice to master, but you do get a good workout. You get your BMI calculated and are presented with your Wii-Fit age (which I will not share here, thank you very much!)

Time for the morning workout now. If you have a chance to try the Wii Fit, go for it!

Kathy

Asus eeePC with Windows XP

Earlier this week, Best Buy started carrying the Asus eeePC with Windows XP Home installed. Mine arrived yesterday (no suprise there, eh?) and I have been having some fun with it.

The original eeePC had a 4gb flash memory drive and came with a flavor of Linux. Those are still available, are speedy little items, and come with a nice suite of office, creative, and educational applications.

The Windows XP Home version, at the same $399 price point, comes with Microsoft Works 9 in addition to the default Windows operating system applications. Since the Windows OS is larger and uses up a substantial portion of the 4gb hard drive, I had to make some application decisions since I was planning to use this device as a traveling and presentation device. I deleted the Windows Live applications and Microsoft Works, and installed PowerPoint XP (I figured it was smaller than the current versions) and some really old, tiny versions of FTP software and HTML editing software which will do what I need them to do while on the road. I also installed a very old version of Paint Shop Pro which will give me the capability to do image editing if need be.

As for new apps, I installed Skype and Trillian, AVG antivirus, and MS ActiveSync for my Treo.

When I am in a networked environment, I can use all the great Web 2.0 apps for everything from databases to full image editing. I just wanted to make sure I had the things handy I needed when not on a network. In addition, I loaded up a USB flash drive with PortableApps (http://portableapps.com/) so I also have access to some versions of pieces of software that run directly off the Flash drive. Using the SD slot to house a card for storing files, I still have 1/4 of the drive free for future needs.

For schools thinking about purchasing the eeePC, you will want to talk to your tech gurus to find out the feasability of Windows XP Home in a server/domain environment and also consider the Linux version of the device if there is a client that will work on your network. For me, it is nice to have the familiar XP environment, but the suite of apps on the Linux version would be nice to have for students.

If you have any questions, feel free to write!

Some interesting Web apps

There are so many cool Web apps out there, it is hard to just talk about a few. I encourage you to try any new Web app that you think might help support teaching and learning and add your favorite(s) to the comments below!

Alltop.com presents a categorized page of RSS feeds in all types of categories, education included. It is an easy way to quickly get feeds from the most prolific, informational, and news-worthy blogs. When trying to explain the concepts of RSS and aggregation during a professional development session for teachers, I found demonstrating Alltop a good way to introduce them to those topics by letting them investigate the site.

Voicethread has really become popular with educators. A Voicethread "is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world." It is easy to use, powerful, and a lot of fun!

Twitter is a wonderful tool. Imagine having access to all your personal and professional friends and colleagues for help and support all of the time! Educators are using Twitter to share and gather facts and information from other educators all over the world. Users keep a client open on their desktop, and another user can post a question (I asked my education friends about their school-sponsored student e-mail naming conventions yesterday before deciding what ours would be) and the wonderful, helpful education community always comes through with plenty of suggestions and thoughts! Users can write to you directly or answer the question by directing the answer to you but allowing others to see the answer, too. The "tweets" are limited to 140 characters, so I have become a very succinct question and answer creator!

These three are enough to keep you occupied for hours-- have fun and please share your new discoveries with the rest of us in the comments!

It's about time...

Am I the only one who is constantly using a time zone converter to figure out what time I am supposed to be somewhere online? With Webinars and Second Life, and other synchronous meetings, I am always asking for time verification from the workshop coordinators.

In 1998, Swatch, the Swiss watch company, created "Swatch Internet Time" to alleviate this problem. We used it in our house, and my son even has two Swatch watches that tell the time in Swatch Internet Time. Swatch Internet Time is the same all over the world!

I think this is an idea whose time has come, and urge you to try it out and see if you like it. No more wondering if that particular US state does or does not move their clocks ahead or back. No more worries about the time in Australia. Swatch Internet Time takes care of all that!

You can simply keep this URL handy to see the current Swatch Internet Time. You can even get a widget for the Mac OS here and this World Clock program for Windows also includes Swatch Internet time. This page is a bit older, but some of the Internet Time clocks are still available to use and/or download.

Let's all get in the same time zone, okay?

Macbook Air fashion statement

Here are two photos of my "blinged out" Macbook Air. It has a Unique Skin vinyl skin that I created by uploading a photo to their site. Matching desktop wallpaper and vinyl skin...cool, eh?

Macbook Air, part 3

I have had the MBA for a while now and all seemed to be well until tonight. I uploaded a presentation I am doing next week which included 5 wmv files embedded in a Powerpoint 2007 presentation. The movies would begin to play and then freeze up PowerPoint. I thought it might be PowerPoint, and re-installed, but that did not work. (The movies played fine in Media Player and I even converted them to AVIs using Premiere Elements and that did not work, either.) (4/28/08 follow-up: I found out if I save the presentation as PDF with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional and embedded the videos as AVI or MOV (which are the only two choices) into the resulting PDF, the videos played pefectly in the PDF on the Windows side of the machine. Just a simple work-around...)

It took a while, but I found the answer was to decrease the hardware acceleration of the graphics card. To do this on XP, simply right-click on the desktop and choose PROPERTIES-SETTINGS-ADVANCED-TROUBLESHOOT. I had to drag the slider down to the middle of bar in order for the wmv movies to run within the PowerPoint presentation. This disables some things that apparently could cause problem with Direct X programs, but I need the videos to work right now. It is easy to set it back to full for all other applications.

This must be an interesting chipset. I found newer drivers, but hesitate to install them because of the Bootcamp/Windows/Mac thing. However, I did find a fix for those with the Intel 965 chipset (on any computer) who cannot seem to get Second Life to run. That post is here. I successfully followed these directions on a student's Dell laptop with Vista earlier this week and he is having no problems!

I promise not to continue with many more postings on the Air. However, people are reading and responding and asking me additional questions via email, so I feel compelled to share what I learn to save others some time!

Kathy "The Techno-Geek" Schrock

Macbook Air, part 2

I finally had time to actually use the Air. A few thoughts...

Second Life works tremendously better on the Mac side and there is no lag.

The VGA-out dongle worked fine. On the Windows side, you need to use the Intel mirroring software and on the Mac side you have to set the screens to mirror. By the way, the native resolution of the Macbook Air is the same as the Macbook @ 1280x800.

Below you will find two photos of the thickness/thinness factor of the Macbook Air. Clockwise, the items are the Macbook Air, the Fujitsu P1510D tablet, the XO, an iPod Touch, a Treo 700wx, and the Asus eeePC.

Macbook Air first thoughts

My Macbook Air arrived yesterday and I have been installing software ever since. I have installed Bootcamp and Windows XP (glad I ordered the external Super Drive since it made it easy!) and all of the programs I will need on the machine. I broke the drive directly in half, which gave me about 37GB for each platform. I knew I had to pick and choose wisely.

The Macbook Air is very slim. I was surprised at its weight...seems heavier than a little over 3 pounds, but the fact it is so compact might have something to do with with that. I made my own Vera Bradley slipcase for it out of two placemets today, which you can see below.


Pros:
Thin
Compact and sturdy
The multitouch touchpad is awesome!
Comes with DVI and VGA dongles that have their own connection under the little door
Screen is brighter than bright!
External Superdrive works great for a single-USB non-powered device on both platforms
Second Life regular client (Windows) works just fine (not as well as the Macbook Pro, but just fine)
Peppy on program start up

Cons:
A tad top-heavy when it is open wide since the screen area probably weighs as much as the keyboard area.
The mono speaker comes out from under the keyboard only on one side. A tad tinny, IMHO.

All software installed like a charm and the list follows.

Apple side of the machine
Cyberduck
Fire
Handbrake
Paparrazi
Microsoft Office 2004 for the Mac
iWork 08
Quicktime Pro
Flip4Mac
(18GB of HD left)

Windows side of the machine
Windows XP Pro
Office 2007 Pro Plus
Paint Shop Pro
Filezilla
Homesite
Second Life
Screen Print Platinum
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6
Adobe Premiere Elements 4
Acrobat 8 Pro
Microsoft Photostory
MacDrive 6
ActiveSync
Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008
Twhirl
Skype
Audacity
CA eTrust AV
Fraps
VLC
Stardock ObjectDock
(24GB of HD left)

I have not tried hooking up via the Ethernet dongle or to a LCD projector. I will do that later this weekend.

(Update 2/5/08: Good review here for the ones who really need to know how it performs!)

Why Twitter? Of course!

I tried Twitter a few months ago and did not "get it" and I stopped using it. I picked it back up this weekend, and today I had that "a-ha" moment and realized why I will continue to use it.

I discovered a neat techno-trick today. I had a 118 MB, 84 slide PowerPoint presentation that I to move into someone else's template and it was not going well. So, I simply saved the presentation as JPEGs, created a photo album in PowerPoint with the organization's template as the background and imported the JPEGs of the slides, and just resized the JPEGs on the slides so their logo showed. Imagine my surprise, after saving this new presentation, to realize that the 188 MB PowerPoint presentation was now only 5.6 MB! I don't know why, but, in case you are interested, here are the steps again.

1. Save your large presentation as JPEGs which creates a folder with each slide as its own JPEG.
   
2. Open a new presentation and choose to create a photo album in PowerPoint, choose the folder of JPEGs as your "photos" and then save that photo alubum.
   
3. Miraculously, the slide show is much smaller than the orginal!
   

So, usually when I have a techno-discovery I go charging out of my office to share the news with someone-- a teacher, secretary, or even a 6th grader if they will listen. No one is usually very interested. However, today I went right to Twitter to share my discovery with people who ARE interested!

I have figured out the power of Twitter (for me) is the ability to share my ideas and thoughts with like-minded individuals who DO get excited about geeky techno-discoveries and enjoy sharing their own, too!

w00t and thanks to my Twitter buddies!

Thoughts on FETC08

I attended FETC08 in Orlando last week and learned so much from everyone I came in contact with! The DEN Preconference, the concurrent sessions, and all of the collegial collaboration that I engaged in, really revved me up for taking some new steps.

I have signed back on to Twitter to see if I can handle it, and, thus far (the last 24 hours) it is manageable. I only have a few people's tweets come through to IM, but read the rest of the feeds from the Twitter page. I have just added it to my daily routine-- work on the Schrockguide, read my Bloglines feeds, and now check the "tweets". I have even used Twitterfeed.com to feed my blog entries to Twitter. We will see how that works out.

I could not locate anyone with an XO at FETC, although I did get to show it off to a lot of educators at the conference. (And the TSA at the airport security checks!) It is a bit heavy to carry two laptops (although the other was the Fujitsu P1510D tiny tablet and by the time NECC comes will be the Macbook Air), but I think I will make the effort again for NECC. I want to try out the mesh networking option with other teachers.

I will be sending out some of the sites I discovered at FETC08 as my Sites of the School Week over the next few weeks, so, if you are interested, you can subscribe to the weekly email here.

YouTube is cool!

Okay, so everyone knows the things you can find on YouTube are amazing! One item that I searched for after I read about on a blog, was a video using Dean Friedman's song "McDonald's Girl". Dean Friedman is a folk singer/storyteller who I have been following since I first saw him perform at Rutgers in 1978. He still does some US tours, but he does a lot of work in England.

In any case, I found the following YouTube video from a high school pep rally in 2006. This video struck my fancy, and I always laugh aloud when watching it. For those of you, like me, who have attended pep rallies every year, and have seen some "not so stellar" performances, I felt this one was great!




I decided to look at the others that came up on the search, too, and have linked to some of them below. Imagine students contrasting and comparing the way the song is presented in the various videos. (Another shameless plug for unblocking YouTube in the many districts in the name of visual literacy!)



Enjoy!

Kids from England (my second favorite!)
Yale Group
Harvard Group
Conn-Men from the University of CT

Vocabulary lesson: UMPC vs. MID

As you know, I am a gadget geek! I have been seeing the term "MID" (Mobile Internet Device) bandied about lately and have heard devices such as the Asus EeePC called an UltraMobile PC (UMPC), which I knew it was not.

Today there is an entry on Engadget describing the differences.

So, let's see where my own secondary devices land based on this description.

Apple iPod touch : MID
Asus EeePC: MID
OPLC XO laptop: MID

Fujitsu P1510D: came out before the UMPC, so it really is a laptop, but it can pass for an UMPC with its passive matrix screen...

Hum, it seems the lines are blurring and perhaps the definition provided may not be as definitive as it could be. For example, the Asus EeePC (MID) does media well, also has an office suite, and it runs Linux. It could actually pass for an UMPC if it had a touch screen.

The original specifications for the UMPC included multiple input methods, Microsoft Windows Tablet OS, and that it was smaller and lighter than a laptop.

I am looking to get a device of some type in as many students' hands as possible. Since many applications are moving to the Web, and there seems to be wireless Internet access in many places in our schools and communities, I am looking at the low-cost devices such as the Asus EeePC and the upcoming Everex Cloudbook. (Update 1/12/08: The OLPC program will be expanded to the United States in 2008. More details to follow from the OLPC America branch of the OLPC Foundation.)

I need a device somewhere between a MID and a UMPC to take advantage of low cost, but with the inclusion of some power on the machine locally. I will continue the search!

XO Laptop from OLPC arrives!

This post is coming to you from my XO laptop which arrived last evening! It is an interesting little device. The learning curve, for me, was steep since it does not act like a "regular" computer. I could not figure out how to open it, the terminology used is different, and it seems to have a personality of its own! It takes more time to start applications and attach to access points, but, then again, I am spoiled by other new technologies. It is also rather heavy for its size but seems very rugged.

However, for its intended purpuse to educate students, it includes an amazing array of quality software and the collaborative functionality to allow students to work together from other XO's is available throughout the operating system.

The speakers are loud and clear, and this comes in handy with the applications that rely on audio-- both a beginner and more advanced music composition applications, and an acoustic-circuit (and electrical-circuit) construction application. The really good camera can be used for talking photos and video. There are drawing applications, a data collection tool which graphs sounds via the included microphone and one that measures the distance between XO's via sound, a memory game, computer programming via Python, and a multimedia authoring program. Of course, it includes a browser and simple word processor and several other applications, including an RSS newsreader.

I will probably bring this along to FETC to find someone else with one so I can try the mesh network and also to collaborate with someone else from within the applications to take advantage of the intended strengths of the device.

To read more about the device and its applications, you can visit the Getting Started Guide here: http://www.laptop.org/en/laptop/start/

The Wii rules!

Never having been a video gamer because of a lack of dexterity with traditional game controllers (and little interest in the titles available), I am surprised how much I am enjoying our new Nintendo Wii! I am good at bowling, air hockey, and Skee ball since I have successfully played these in real life. I am not good at tennis, ping pong, or golf since I am unsuccessful at these sports in real life. I have a little trouble with Guitar Hero since, having taken guitar lessons years ago, I keep moving my hand up the fret. Dance Dance Revolution is really fun, and seems to be very good exercise, so I will keep at that. (Not much to compare it to in real life, however.)

The bottom line is that the Nintendo Wii, with its handheld wireless controller (the Wii Remote) which can detect movement in three directions as you flail about the living room, seems pretty close to simulating real life action. I am amazed that I could be quickly successful at the things I could do in real life and performed so poorly at the sports I was not good at in real life. I guess the real test will come, for me, when I can practice with and learn some tactics with the Wii that will transfer over to the real world of games of golf, darts, pool, ping pong, "ping cup", or shuffleboard.

(Of course, the Dance Dance Revolution practice will come in handy for a dance-off with 6th graders at school!)

Kathy

The more things change...

...the more they remain the same! (Alphonse Karr)

Growing up in northern New Jersey, it was a traditional part of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (from 1966 on) to see the burning Yule log on the WPIX television station, Channel 11, and listen to the Christmas music. I always figured they aired the burning log all day long, without commercials, for both the enjoyment of the viewers and to give everyone at the station the day off to celebrate with their own families! I had not thought about it in years, though.

Here is the 1970 version of the Yule log movie which aired on WPIX.

My friend, Midge Frazel, sent me a note today letting me know that, on Comcast OnDemand, in the list of HD programs, there is a Yule log with holiday music playing. I must admit, the quality of the burning log in HD is much better than the WPIX 1970 version, but, thanks to the Internet, I was able to enjoy the original one, too!

The more things change...

Addendum: Since Tony Vincent sent the link to the virtual Yule Log for your handheld device, I decided to create a "virtual virtual Yule Log" by filming a Second Life fireplace...enjoy!

NECC 2008 presentation accepted!

See you all in San Antonio for NECC! Mark your calendars to attend my spotlight session (if you wish), on July 1, 2008, from 11am - 12pm.

Title: "Get a MUVE On: The Power of Synchronous Online Environments"
Place: TBA in mid-May

Kathy's Konsumer Korner: Holiday Edition

Well, it's that time of year here in the US, and people are starting to ask me for suggestions for holiday tech gadgets. Here is the list of my newest gadgets that others may be interested in.

1. iPod Touch: This iPod may only come in 8GB and 16GB models, but that is enough for most of us. I have 600 songs and audiobooks, lots of photos, and five TV shows on my touch right now, and I have used only 6.5GB of space. With the easy access to the Web via Safari, the ability to sync with Microsoft Outlook, the widescreen for viewing photos and movies, and just one of the nicest devices you will ever hold, the iPod touch is a great gift.
$299 and $399

2. The Asus Eee PC just came out a few weeks ago and is already available in a couple of different models. I have the 4GB flash and Webcam version and used it extensively at a tech conference this week. It performed flawlessly and many of the vendors at the show tried their Web-based solutions on the Eee PC and were happy with the results. I tried the VGA-out to a projector, and it worked great! Find out all about it on the Asus site.
$399 from Amazon (with a long wait) or the same price at NewEgg when you can catch them in stock.

3. The XO laptop from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. I have not received mine yet, but all the reviews of those who have tried them seem to indicate it is a great little machine! In addition, for $400 you get one machine, and one gets donated from you to a student in a third-world nation. Also, T-mobile sweetened the pot with a year of their hotspot service included with the device. These are only available to the public through December 31, and you can read all about it on the OLPC site.

4. I often get asked about digital cameras as presents for children, high school and college students, and adults. If a large LCD screen on the back and a small size is what you are looking for, just be sure to get the most analog zoom possible. The numbers that indicate zoom on a digital camera (i.e. 3x/5x) mean that the camera lens really zooms in 3 times and also uses a software process to digitally zoom in 5 more times. You want the one with the largest first number.

I cannot hold the smaller cameras still enough to get a good photo, so I like digital cameras that are a bit larger and have both an eyepiece, a really good lens, and a really large analog zoom. I have the Kodak Z812IS which has 12x analog zoom, image stabilization for those of us who have trouble holding the camera still, and is an 8.2 megapixel camera. It is available from Amazon for $242.23.

5. And if you want to step up to a digital SLR, I have the Nikon D40 and love it! I had the Nikon D50 before I had the D40, and the D50 did more than I needed to do. The D40 is simple to use and, with a good photographer behind it, can take excellent photos! You can pick it up from Amazon with one lens here for $479.99 and with two lenses and two DVD's here for $569.93.

Happy gadget shopping!

DEN Webinar with Hall Davidson

Tonight I attended a Discovery Educator Network webinar presented by Hall Davidson. He was great, as always, and taught us some new video skills, talked about brain-based research, and had us participate in a gCast podcast even while the presentation was going on!

Hall showed us a short video that had videos within the video in frames on a mantel. I decided to both try a test of that type of thing, as well as getting the embedded YouTube code to post the video here on this blog. I used Adobe Premiere Elements 4 (which has multiple video lines and an upload to YoutTube built right in) as well as a Soundzabound.com - Royalty Free Music For Schools music loop.

One Laptop Per Child

I am sure you have all heard about the "One Laptop Per Child" project, the brainchild of Nicholas Negroponte from MIT's Media Lab. The project's goal is to provide a rugged, useful laptop to students in areas of the world who would not historically have access. (You can find out more about it here: http://laptop.org)

For those of us in the US and Canada, from today (November 12th) through (updated 11/22) 12/31/07, we have the unique opportunity to participate in the "Give 1. Get 1." program-- we can buy 2 of the laptops (called the XO) for $400, with one becoming a donation to a child in a developing county and one for ourselves! (http://laptopgiving.org) (Update 11/22: Schools can now purchase them in lots over 100 units.)

I have already participated in the program the first thing this morning and the Schrock's XO will travel in the bicycle pack of my husband as he treks across the United States next spring!

PS In addition to getting a rugged little device here in the US, T-Mobile is including one year of Internet access at its wireless access locations with the device. Kudos to them!


Kathy

New Life for Second Life in K-12

Rather than re-post the information I posted already on another blog, here is the link to my thoughts on the current and future use of Second Life as a professional development venue for K-12 educators.

Kathy Schrock

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iPod touch online applications for education

Below is a short list of online applications I have tried with the iPod touch that may be useful to support teaching and learning. Many of the sites only work with the Safari browser on the iPod touch or iPhone, so may not be viewable in your browser.

BooksoniPhone
...over 20,000 books to read plus the ability to upload your own to allow students access to your syllabus, information, etc.

iPheed
...a simple online to-do list that also includes a mini-blog that can be aggregated

Listingly
...an easy-to-use application that would allow a student to create a list for each subject, project, or personal reason

Ask A Word
... a free spellchecker, thesaurus, dictionary, and encyclopedia

Today in History
...shows important events formatted for the iPod touch screen

World Book This Day in History
...another chronicle of events happening on this day

iPhone Web Docs
...create folders on a virtual desktop, save your notes, and even embed URL's; a very useful tool accessible from a desktop, too, for printing or editing

Glide Mobile
...a mobile component of a Flash-based desktop application, it allows you to uploads items to the mobile site

Widgetop Mobile
...a "widget-like" interface for common sites and reference tools

Moon Phase for iPhone
...see the current phase of the moon or change the date to view in the future

Starry Night Mobile
...see the view the day and night skies for anywhere in the world, on any date

UniDo
...this is an online notes creator and manager that is available via the iPod touch and the desktop

Netvibes Mobile
...one of the best RSS aggregators for the desktop is available for the touch!

Converter
...conversion calculator formatted for the iPod touch

Belfry SciCalc
...access this scientfic and programming calculator from the iPod touch

Nametag for iPhone
...type in your name and use the touch as a nametag!

Quote of the Day
...a possible use of this is a writing reflection journal

Brainy Quote
...search through thousands of quotes by person, topics, or keywords; includes today's birthdays

***UPDATE 10/17/07***
Google Docs has come to the handheld in read-only format right now, but hopefully will be editable in the future.

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Facebook and Second Life

Two of my favorite apps, Facebook and Second Life, have come together with Andy Powell's creation of a Facebook application called "Second Friends." It allows you to see which one of your Facebook friends (who use Second Friends, also), are using Second Life!

Instructions:

First search in the application listings in Facebook to add the Second Friends application to your Facebook profile.

Then, in Second Life, you must visit the Second Friends kiosk on Eduserv Island in Second Life and touch it to obtain a secret key. The SLURL for the kiosk is:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduserv%20Island/112/41/29

Andy is planning on the incorporation of some other cool features in the future!

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Tiny Devices and 1-to-1

I am writing this from my new Fujitsu U810 tablet computer with the 5.6" screen, I am investigating the use of the iPod touch with a class of high school students, I am on the list to be notified when I can purchase the XO laptop with their "Give One, Get One" program starting soon, and I am waiting patiently for the 7" Asus EeePC (at, it seems, about $200 or $250) to come out so we can start realistically thinking about one device per student.

See a trend here? I have been saying for years that much of what one needs to do with technology can be done on a "smaller" device. (And, as many of you can attest, bothering anyone who would listen to me and put up with my excitement at what my newest gadget could do!)

Now that so many applications are available as Web 2.0 applications, which are Web-based and require little processing power on the user's device, I think the time has come to start promoting a "1-to-1 Device" initiative for schools.

At the same time, we need to purchase pods of "blinged-out" computers, the production stations students will need for their heavy duty processing applications (video, CAD, audio editing). We also should include scanners, Flash card readers, Firewire ports, midi keyboards, and any other input devices students might need for their creative purposes.

Even of more importance to me is the fact students need to have wirelessly connected devices with them 24x7. We are becoming a society of information consumers, and students should have access to information sources, both on the open Web and in subscription databases, wherever and whenever they need it. They should be able to communicate and collaborate with others via social networks and Web 2.0 content-creation tools.

I think these small, low-cost, well-made, feature-rich, crop of mobile devices can meet this need. Anybody with me?

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iPod touch for students

We are considering a one-to-one iPod touch pilot project for a single classroom of students at the high school. I did some more experimenting last evening and came up with a few worthwhile discoveries.

I wanted to see if Discovery Eduation Streaming would work on the iPod touch if I chose the Quicktime and "embed in browser" option. A few of the items seemed to work while streaming, but, since the iPod touch does not have Flash capabilities and the iPod touch browser did not support some formats natively, most items did not. I found a great free video converter on the Web that worked just perfectly for taking either the downloaded WMV or MOV files and turning them quickly and easily into MP4, the movie format of the iPod. I was able to put the videos into iTunes and play them on the device.

I next took a slide presentation, saved it out as JPEGs, and put it in the photo section of the iPod. With the large screen, you can easily read the slides, and could share information with a small group. With the cable output to video coming soon, students could use the iPod touch as a presentation tool.

I have not yet found a "regular" online word processing option that works. Zoho has an option for the iPhone, but I cannot seem to get it to work on the iPod touch. However, Gmail, Google search, ning.com, and many other of the online Web 2.0 applications seem to work just fine on the device A student could do word processing directly within an email message, blog entry, or wiki page to have it accessible once he or she is out of the classroom. As long as there is a text entry box available, students can use it. (This seems like a workaround, but I am sure students would have no problem with it!)

I then started thinking about iPod management...how do we allow the students to sync at home and also offer content to them at school? Luckily, some great Apple Distinguished Educators have written a guide outlining these processes already! The bottom line is, to allow syncing of an iPod to multiple computers, the account at school has to be set to "manually manage content" and items can simply be dragged over to the attached iPod. I know there are hardware options available, too, for multi-syncing and charging, but these iPods will be going home and can be charged there.

Well, this is the latest installment of using the iPod touch to support teaching and learning. If only it did Flash....

Kathy

PS I heard, through the Twitter grapevine, that people were saying I had an "in" and was able to get the iPod touch before anyone else. Rest assured, I have no "in" with anyone, and I just ordered online it the second it came out! I was lucky enough to get it very early and get the model that did not have the initially reported video color problem.

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iPod touch day 2

Now that I have had time to explore and have settled down a bit, I have some additional thoughts on the iPod touch.

I brought it to school yesterday and put it in the hands of teachers without any instruction. They could easily figure out how to use it, but did have questions on how to get items onto it and such. (Some of these were non-iPod owning educators.) I kept hearing expressions of excitement like "cool", "wow", and "I am asking for this for the holidays!" as I kept working at my desk.

One teacher asked me if he could use the iPod touch as a handheld computer. There are some limitations, such as the lack of included applications such as email, a word processor, and an IM client. However, I am using some Web-based clients and Web 2.0 tools to do some of these things successfully, and will report back about that later. The one disappointment with the touch is, although you can sync your calendar entries from Outlook through iTunes to the device, you cannot add calendar entries on the device itself. This is too bad, because it would be just about perfect if you could. (You can sync and add contacts on the device, though.) I guess a user could just use a Web-based calendar and overcome the obstacle that way.

I demo'ed it in an eighth grade class for a few moments. They thought it was neat, but did not think 16GB would be enough storage for all of their songs. And, since they cannot bring in personally-owned devices to hook to the school's wireless (at this point), they realized the wireless component of a touch of their own would be useless to them. My thoughts are, if we are going to look into purchasing wireless devices for students, such as the touch or the new crop of low-cost Linux-based handtops, and we are supplying them, the students will be able to attach to the wireless network and life will be good!

In my opinion, the most appealing feature of the device is the way it handles Web pages. Some online protocols do not work yet (most notably Flash), but the ability to see an overview shot of the page and then easily zoom-in to the portion you need to read is impressive. I use lots of devices with small screens, and this technology truly solves the problem of small screens and the use of the Web. Here is a sample of what it looks like. (It is really hard to get a photo because of the glossy screen, so excuse the photographic quality!)

More about apps in a later post...

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Kathy Schrock iPod touch

The iPod touch is great!

I am having trouble keeping up with all the new technologies, but I am managing! My new 16GB iPod touch arrived today, and it is sweet!

I did not jump on the iPhone wagon since our AT&T reception is less than stellar here on Cape Cod and I love my Verizon Treo 700wx, but I had the chance to try some iPhones and was hooked on the touch screen concept!

The iPod touch has a beauteous big screen and a very easy interface to use. The best part is that it does the Web wirelessly and wonderfully! I am not a huge music user, so my device has about 3GB of music and books (555 items), 4 full-length movies, all my contacts and calendar, all of my Internet Explorer bookmarks, and about 20 photos, and I still have 10GB left. Gotta love it!

I would like to go on about its other features, but I have to go play! Find out more about the iPod touch for yourself here: http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/

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Kathy Schrock

Neat wiki!

One of the problems I am finding in our school district is finding both a wiki site that can be kept private and does not require a student email account to sign-up. Well, I have come across a rather simple one, called Jottit.

It is very simple to use, although it is a tad unconventional to create the classroom wiki. First you type in some sample text to create the site, next you choose settings to create your unique URL, and then you simply put in a password to claim your site. It is at this point that you are able to choose the option to require the password to both edit and view the site. This allows teachers to have a classroom wiki that is only accessible to students who have the password and students do not need an email address to sign-up.

Just in case you were running into the same frustrations we were...

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w00t!

Edutopia just named this blog one of the
"10 Edublogs They Love." Thank you to them for the honor, thanks to all of you who read, subscribe, and comment, and congratulations to the others on the list!

As you probably know, I maintain a number of blogs-- one dealing with our professional development efforts in Second Life, one that houses the podcasts I have done for my school district in the past (and have to get going again this year!), and this one.

Each blog has a separate purpose intended to demonstrate to educators the differing ways blogs can be used. The Second Life blog is more of a journal as we break the stereotypes of MUVEs and use them synchronous online virtual environments to support teaching and learning. The podcasts blog is a place to share the technology accomplishments of staff and students in the school district. And the Kaffeeklatsch is a way for me to quickly post items of interest to me, and, hopefully, to you.

Thanks again for reading and listening!

Kathy

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Two new "gadgets"

Update: Today (9/3/07) I sold the Kodak Easyshare Z712IS and purchased the new Z812IS. Same price and this model includes an 8.2 megapixel camera and the ability to record video in HD (720p). w00t! It should be here soon!

Original post: 7/30/07

I just wanted to let you know about two new (to me) gadgets that are reasonably-priced and useful!

The first is the Kodak EasyShare Z712IS digital camera. It is a 7.1 megapixel camera with a 12x optical zoom (36mm-432mm) with a great Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon lens. I had an earlier generation of this camera with a 10x zoom, and was always impressed by the quality of the photos. In addition, the image stabilization allows me to take great photos even when zoomed all the way in. Too often, with smaller point-and-shoot cameras, I wound up with blurry shots no matter how careful I was.

This model is easy to hold and takes crystal-clear photos, as you can see in this quick shot I took before boading the Spirit of San Francisco for a harbor cruise. It is currently selling as low as $229.88 (US). It does not come with a rechargeable battery, but the Kodak CRV3 it does come with is seeming to last forever! In addition, the front is threaded for the addition of a wide angle or telephoto add-on.

Click here to see full-size.

I have also just purchased the 7" Axion AXN9701 digital photo frame. The price was reasonable with a $10 rebate through 7/31/07. I read some reviews of digital photo frames, but I really just wanted to try one out and not spend a lot of money. I was pleasantly surprised!

The resolution is only 480x234, but, given the low cost, does a good job. Here is a link to a review.

If you are in the market for a higher-end 7" photo frame, here is a recent review of five of them with the summary comparison chart found here.

Kathy Schrock

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Kathy Schrock

Geek Alert

As many of you know, I use an iMac and MacbookPro with Bootcamp (on the Windows side) for most of my work. I just purchased the new, thin, metal Mac keyboard, and for those of you that are considering it and are Bootcamp users, you need to know that the OPTION key on start-up no longer displays the two drives for choosing between the operating systems. (I am assuming this will be fixed soon, but it is not yet.) One solution I finally found is to use the remote and hold down the menu key during start-up to get the screen you need. Just in case you were wondering...

Kathy

Second Life: Teen Grid Ideas

(This is a link to one of my Lighthouse Learning Island blog entries.)

For those of you who already use Second Life, or want some ideas on how to "sell" it in your district, please take a look at this post (and any comments that are posted by others) and add some ideas of you own!

Kathy Schrock

Adobe Summer Camp 2007

I am here in San Francisco for the Adobe Education Leader Summer Institute 2007 (affectionately called "Summer Camp".) We spent the day yesterday listening, learning, and contributing as a large group, and today and tomorrow will be attending hands-on training sessions for software to help us support our teachers and students.

The Adobe Education team consists of a passionate group of people, and the collaboration and collegiality among the amazing Adobe Education Leaders attending is wonderful! I am learning so much from others who live in the United States and all over the world.

There is little down time, but I did get a chance to swing by Mel's Drive-in for a picture last night! (Of course, as the creator of the American Graffiti Home Page I really had no choice!)

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Adobe Education Leader

Wikis in plain English

Thanks to Scott Merrick for the tip to this awesome video entitled "Wikis in Plain English".

Enjoy this easy-to-understand and humorous description of a wiki!

Kathy

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Scott Merrick

New cool technologies...

Okay, so I played with the iPhone today for the first time. Nice machine and very easy to use, but I decided last week not to jump ship from Verizon. I need a smartphone to do many things and enjoy the ability to customize. I have had a Motorola Q for the past year, and tolerated it, but I sold it on eBay and went back to a true Windows Mobile smartphone, the Treo 700wx. I am a happy camper again!

I also picked up the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 this week. It is a sweet little Bluetooth mouse that has function keys on the bottom to control a PowerPoint presentation as well as including a laser pointer and volume controls. It comes with a Bluetooth USB dongle, but worked fine with the Bluetooth built into the MacbookPro on both the Windows XP and Mas OSX sides of the machine. Great new toy and one of the most innovative packaging systems I have ever seen!


I am so glad to have time to "play" in the summer months!

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Lighthouse Learning Island update

The island is up and getting ready to go in Second Life! It is now open to the public, although there is not a lot to see after 48 hours!

Rather than clog up this blog with Lighthouse Learning Island information and notes about the process, I have created another blog just for that purpose!

URL:
http://nausetschools.org/lighthouselearning/

Feedburner feed for your aggregator (i.e. Netvibes, Bloglines, etc.):
http://feeds.feedburner.com/lighthouselearningisland

The SLURL of the island in Second Life is:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lighthouse%20Learning%20Island/6/134/24

Here is quick picture of the island thus far:

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Lighthouse Learning Island

Thoughts on NECC07

NECC07 in Atlanta is over, and I have the luxury of staying over one more night before flying back to Cape Cod in the morning. I think this option might become a tradition since it gives me a chance to reflect on everything that I saw and learned before getting back to my "regular" routine.

The conference was a great success, in my opinion. Thank you to ISTE and the GA and NECC Conference Committees for a job well-done! The amount of energy from the participants and the presenters kept me excited the entire time! It was great to spend time with colleagues from all over the globe and to listen carefully (although not always quietly, which is no surprise to anyone!) to what others had to say.

I would like to thank all of the wonderful educators who took the time to stop me and make me feel so special. I appreciate all the feedback and suggestions and the new friends that I made. I look forward to seeing everyone in San Antonio in 2008!

Tired and full of new ideas,
Kathy

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Lighthouse Learning Island

Well, we did it! Four school districts in Massachusetts (Nauset Public Schools, Barnstable Public Schools, Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District, and Plymouth Public Schools) have purchased an island in Second Life!

We are calling the island "Lighthouse Learning Island" and it is intended to prvide two things. The first is an engaging venue for traditional professional development and collaboration including staff meetings, presentations on topics of interest to the educators in our district, and training materials. Noticess about workshops and events that are open to the public will sent to the members of the Second Life group "K-12 Educators", so you might want to join that group within SL if you are interested.

Secondly, the environment is intended to ramp up the Second Life skills of the teachers in the four districts in order to move ahead, in year two, with content-specific Teen Grid islands. The plan is to staff the Teen Grid islands with teachers who will use those venues to enhance student content-area instruction.

The island has been approved and should show up in a week or so. I requested a certain area for its location, but I will not know the location until it shows up!

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Lighthouse Learning Island

NECC07

Each session at NECC07 has been assigned a tag. My tag is n07s800 and, hopefully, after the conference you will be able to read about the session and perhaps see photos!

Google Blog Search
Blog RSS Feed for your aggregator
Flickr Tag
Flickr RSS Feed for your aggregator

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Best Practices Conference Archive is live!

My presentation was "streamed" from the Best Practices Conference last week. I specifically chose not to utilize the voice function, since, for most of us, that would not be available on other occasions. Here is a direct link to my presentation: http://slcn.tv/bpe-kathy-dryburgh



A conference committee member conducted a "play-by-play" voiceover of my presentation in the video, and, although it was a bit rocky in some places since she did not have the script ahead of time (mine went smoothly in SL!), I think it came out fine. It is interesting to see how slowly the slides came into focus on the video, since, in Second Life, on my computer, they were appearing in focus right away.



This was a learning experience for all of us, and we all learned a lot, so I feel it was truly worth all of the effort. Thanks again to the hard-working conference team who put it all together!


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Kathy Dryburgh's Guide to SL for Educators

Sites presented at the
Second Life Best Practices
in Education Conference
on May 25, 2007.




Flickr slide show of slides in the presentation.

Flickr "photos" during the presentation.

Second Life Cable Network archive of presentation.


Sites to Support Teaching and Learning

NOAA
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Meteroa/177/161/27/

Genome Island
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Genome/127/128/49/

Solar Eclipse Planetarium
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Midnight%20City/94/76/27/

Second Life Library
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/129/208/2

Second Life Medical Library
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Healthinfo%20Island/178/202/25

International Spaceflight Museum
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spaceport%20Alpha/23/51/22

Global Kids
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cincta/89/95/23

Literature Alive
http://slurl.com/secondlife/lukekini%20island/162/239/357

Commonspace for Progressive Organizations
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Commonwealth%20Island/193/84/315

Sites to Suport Professional Development

ISTE
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland/33/225/38

Terra Incognita
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Terra%20incognita/128/128/0

Elven Institute
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cybrary%20City%20II/95/188/22

NMC Campus
http://slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Campus/184/101/33

Angel Learning Isle
http://slurl.com/secondlife/ANGEL%20Learning%20Isle/128/128/0

CATER (member of C.A.V.E.)
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%20II/234/146/22

Carl F. Spackler Hall (member of C.A.V.E.)
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%20II/128/75/37

Discovery Educator Network
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%20II/93/93/22

ISTE Emerging Technologies Task Force (member of C.A.V.E.)
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%20II/159/146/23

Math Playground
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%20II/31/88/22

Podcast Central
http://slurl.com/secondife/Eduisland%20II/129/76/47

Technospud
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%20II/128/75/37

Meg Writer
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%20II/70/16/22

Lighthouse Learning Island
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lighthouse%20Learning%20Island/6/134/24

Please add any other SLURLs you find interesting and how they can support teaching, learning, or professional development!

Update on conference presentation location

I will not be presenting my session on Eduisland II. Current info is below.

Second Life Best Practices in Education Conference
May 25, 2007

Title: Kathy Dryburgh's Guide to Second Life for K-12 Educators
Time: 7am SLT
Location: Hyperstring Conference Center

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Presenting in Second Life

I have been accepted to present at the Second Life Best Practices in Education Conference to be held in-world on May 25th.

My presentation is entitled "Kathy Dryburgh's Guide to Second Life for K-12 Educators" and will be presented at 7am SLT at Hyperstring's Conference Center. Directly after the presentation, the links to the sites covered will be available on this blog.

The presentation schedule for the entire event may be found here. Please register for the conference if you are planning to attend and hope to see you there!

Kathy

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Second Life Update

Well, Kathy Dryburgh has been busy in Second Life. Kathy's Kaffeeklatsch, the professional development area, is complete and plans are underway for some upcoming sessions.

I have also purchased some plots of land on the island, Montbard, and have put up a vacation home. Decorating and figuring out how to build things has been fun! I am trying to get a geodesic dome put up, since I live in one in real life, but have not quite made that work yet.

Thanks to all the K-12 educators who have joined SL and have said hello. I have created a group just for you! Directions are below for joining the group. There is a cool t-shirt available at the Kaffeeklatsch if you are interested. I am using the group to send out messages of interest to the K-12 crowd about professional development opportunities being held in SL dealing with areas of interest to us.


To join the K-12 Educators group:

Click on the SEARCH button at the bottom of the screen and choose the GROUPS tab. Type “K-12 Educators” in the search box and look down the list until you see that specific title. Click on the group to open the description and choose join by choosing the JOIN button which is found directly under the picture of the school crossing sign. You can then right-click on your avatar, choose groups, choose K-12 Educators, and choose ACTIVATE. That will put the group name over your head.

Try it, and, if you cannot do it, send me your avatar name and I will send you an invite!

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Dollhouse c. 2007

Way back in 1977, I purchased an unfinished dollhouse and painstakingly put cedar shingles on the outside, wired the rooms for electricity, used old wallpaper books to create the wallpaper in the rooms, and crocheted my own rugs for the floors. Well, fast forward to 2007, and I am doing the same thing again!

I now have rented my own house, Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch, but not because I did not enjoy sharing a space with Hodjazz and Leigh. I simply wanted my own place to have more prims (the construction faces that make up the objects in Second Life) so I could both gather and create my own furniture and decorations. I will also be putting in links to lots of educational URLs in the house, but, for now, I am simply having fun creating and decorating. Guess it is the craft-lover in me!

There are plenty of apartments and offices available for rent on Eduisland II, and Fleet Goldenberg, the "landlord", is very responsive and helpful with any technical problems that occur. The cost to rent office space or an apartment is very reasonable, and you would have 250 prims all your own!

See you in SL! (Okay, I really do feel this 3-D MUVE has huge educational implications, but I can still have fun, can't I?)

Kathy Schrock aka Kathy Dryburgh


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Second Life Articles and Info

Well, I sent out Second Life as my site of the school week this week, and am happy to see so many educators signing up! I am helping them out a bit, but the tutorials in SL are easy-to-follow, so they don't need too much of my help.

I came across a short YouTube video that gives a brief explanation of Second Life and the role of businesses in the environment.

In addition, here are a variety of articles about SL that discuss various aspects of the metaverse environment.

A Second Life for Middle School Science
Second Life: A Venue for Professional Development?
Second Life: It's Not a Game

Kathy Schrock


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