The Power of Parental Expectations

I am glad that the leader of our nation is addressing this issue…

Apr 17th 2009

This date is significant due to the following tweet:

Yes… Oprah is on Twitter and if you are not…. in the tech world, you are considered LAME or just late in the game, son. In the education world, many teachers still have issues in embracing Web2.0 technologies due to the pressures of self-conduct. If we cannot behave online with a unknown audience of hundrends or even thousands, how is it that we are expected to act behind closed doors with 70+ minds to mold on a daily basis? So get on board, act like you have some couth and build your personal learning network.

Digital Savage vs Digital Alien

We have Mr. Marc Pernsky to thank for the term digital natives to define the current generation saturated by technology. However there are two types of students that we commonly overlook in the realm of digital citizenry.

Unfortunately there are some children that do not have any access to technology such as computers outside of school, so are they really apt to be label as true natives? This eludes to believe that a digital savage would address those included with technology generation but excluded by outside factors. This blog post from Full Circle Assosiates captures the essence of term digital savage. I posted info about the digital alien before, but the difference between the two would definately be the exposure and dexterity of wielding technologies. Is technology differentiation required to meet the needs for these students?

I AM A-PAIN iPhone app

Okay… iPhone you win… My BB is certified to be no fun compared to the feature of this autotune app. I am not hating, but…

This app is a great novelty at first, but we don’t need a plethora of T-pain wannabes out here! Hey Jay-Z, I think that this app definetly twists the knife in the death of autotune. (BTW, I meant to replace the the ‘T’ with an ‘A’ in T-Pain of the title of this post.)

barcampCLT 2

I was very fortunate to be in the attendance of BarcampCLT2 at Area 15. It was great being around people that are so much more geeky than me. And to think that I was once on the path of coding righteousness. I don’t regret being an educator but I do miss the joy of debugging code and troubleshooting network/server issues.

I learned few off the wall things, such as Blackberry users felt the shameful of their devices. Also, Oprah seems to be the benchmark of your Twitter Coolness. (Anyone joined after her is to be considered unoffically lame.) Oh, almost forgot to mention that men that knit are way cool.

I will share a few takeaways from the sessions that I attended.

1. iPhone App Dev Roundtable

I received some inspiriation to get on board in creating iPhone
apps for education, however an Apple laptizzle is required.  It was mentioned the iPhone for Dummies book was a good read. The process of getting an app approved for the App Store was communicated as being very difficult. Pushing apps via ad hoc for clients was mentioned as a work around.

• Web Resources referenced:
  http://appceletator.com
  http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/index.php
  http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/

2. Making $$$ Online

This session was a little similar to last year. Here’s a sample from YouTube…

3. 45 Questions in 45 Minutes

Some good info popped up here. Some discussions on Google Wave, FireFox, and Android took the show.

4. Managing Your Social Networks

Long story short, use an RSS new reader aggregator to gather all your Web2.0 sites. Outlook was mention as a good RSS reader becuase it allow you assess RSS feeds behind secure logins.  Also it was discussed the importance of adding value to tweets by linking your social networks.

• Web resources mentioned:
  http://ping.fm
  http://igoogle.com
  http://netvibes.com
  http://pipes.yahoo.com
  http://dizzysoft.com/rss/manage-your-social-networks
  http://feedtwit.com
  http://websitebiz.com

5. Simple Content Management

The presenter actually went through the stage of registering a site domain, hosting, and dumping CMsimple in a directory to making it live. Very nice… especially since CMsimple does not require having to deal with databases where CM packages such as WordPress and Drupal require.

• Web resources mentioned:
  http://dreamhost.com
  http://www.aweber.com/
  http://www.e-junkie.com/
  http://www.myemma.com/
  http://www.mailchimp.com/
  http://dotcomwebdesign.com/

Sessions that I wish I could have attended:

How to create webcasts that don’t suck
The Rabbit Hole
Google Page Ranking

Overall, this was another successful unconference. I highly recommend you to check one out that’s near you.

Web 2.0: The New Int’l Teachers’ Lounge

Back in 1994 when I began my journey as a classroom teacher, there was once a time where there was a place called the teachers’ lounge. This was where slightly seasoned and ripened ol’ educators would congregate. In my new teacher training classes long ago, I was warned to stay outta these parts. However when I did pass through, I would always hear statements that started as “these kids…” or “you would not believe what <insert challenging student> did today…”

With the lack of such places in schools and due to the nature and convenience of technology we now have these places once again virtually on social networks; but with a massive audience vesus or two to three collegues.

Things that you could say to your close professional peers behind closed doors should not be said to 200+ followers or friends. So a note caution goes out to my fellow edtech posse that embrace web2.0 technologies. The teachers’ lounge is necessary for camaraderie, collaboration and stress decompression but it has no place in an online environment without reprocussions designated by your local school district. Need any examplars?

Please choose how you use your personal learning network (PLN) wisely…

When to Double Up

I spent my teacher workday at a MathForward workshop. The presenter used a SMARTboard and an additional LCD projector onto the board. Seemed like an exhaustion of technology; however this was a logical a solution if you need to write on that worksheet that is projected by your document camera OR do not want two surface images to interact (Also this allows the user to break away from that goofy SB transparent layer).

Apple… You can do better by yourself.

Here is my last blog post dedicated to the good people of Apple Computers, Inc.

ATTENTION – Brother Jobs and the others engineers at Apple: We DO NOT NEED a music player that takes pictures or videos. We NEED a music player that has a radio FM tuner, or even a HD receiver.

 

You were supposed to dominate the mp3/music industry and crush the competition. Please prepare to get your jaw rocked by Micro$oft who is about to launch a much better product the which seems better by comparison.  Also, since I kinda mentioned the iPhone, again… please take notes from the Palm Pre architecture and do a “Apple-spin’ to it. In other words, we need a REAL qwerty-key pad on a REAL touch screen phone. We all know that you are capable in designing such a product.

So, please look at the numbers after a few quarters and go back to the drawing board or just go back to the basics. Be the true juggernaut you were supposed to be.

Screen sharing via Skype

Yes…  I actually discovered this feature today. Very convenience especially when troubleshooting computer issues remotely. Not sure how latency affects mouse movement on the screen between machines.

Technology + Education = Headache

Patience? That is what I am starting to have short of. Especially, on the eve of the release of Win7. Here is my issue.

As we all may compatibility issues in the coming months especially if you finally decide to finally upgrade from WinXP, Win2003, Win2000, Win98, WinME, WinNT, or even Win3.1. However, with the mission critical applications that I use in the classroom, I cannot afford compatibility issues.

Pressure needs to be placed on educational software developers to ensure the reliability of their products through OS upgrades by immediately producing software upgrades/patches without drama to help with the growing pains. What drama am I referring to? That will have to be in another blog post…