Invasion of the Hackintosh!

Image provided by Gizmodo

I ran into this great article last week in regards to installing Mac OSX on a Dell mini netbook. I am not condoning any type of piracy, but if I decided to take this project on, I would definately purchase the OS, and then follow the directions from the above article. Bugs are expected, but if I really was fienin’ on getting a mac, this would definately be my first option. Looks like a great tax refund project or I may just attempt this on my HP 2133.

The Digital Alien

Digital Natives as coined by Marc Prensky are students that we teach that inherently have integrated technology into their lives. On the other hand, digital immigrants are somewhat new to the technology scene and are usually described as archaic educators that struggle in the attempt to “get on the edtech bandwagon of the 21st century.” Apple has a great article on the comparison of the two groups.

In my humble opinion…

I feel that there exist another minuscule elitist group of students  (feared by school technology assistants) that go beyond the status of digital natives.

Why?

They are consumed by the love of technology and intrinsically pushed to go where they are not permitted either on or offline. Curiosity of computers or even electronic is not enough for these students; they are also not satisfied with the current established boundaries by parents or schools. So they defy or cross the designated boundaries established for them.

For many years and somewhat still today, these students when caught are labeled as hackers. Instead, please consider them as digital aliens. Pioneers such as Stephen Wozniak , Linus Torvalds, or even Kevin Mitnick are great examples of this breed of student. Let’s not be afraid of them, but instead direct their focus to a constructive direction. Also, here is an interestingly comical-to-me and very outdated (2001) satirical web treasure that shares how to detect if your child is a digital alien.

The IWB’s Enemy or Ally?

Have you ever been by a classroom that had either a SmartBoard or Promethean board where the forbidden has ever happened? Where the teacher, substitute, or even student used a dry erase marker on the surface of your pristine tech tool?!

Is it ever okay to use an expo marker on this board? I am sure that lighening bolts from the sky will not strike you however it may be considered totally unorthodox to mark it up.

I’ve found some occasions where I am drawn (no pun intended) to use my dry erase marker when I use my document camera (Elmo) with the SmartBoard. Unfortunately since I do not have the software to make my Elmo’s image ink aware, my ink awareness comes from my expo marker!

Immediately cleaning is required to maintain the surface is dry erase markered up. I have seen SmartBoards used as portable whiteboards and seen the surface quality diminish with ghost writing that refuses to go away with the strongest surface cleaner available on the market. Do if you do use DRY ERASE (not permanent) markers, do it with caution & care!

Data… The Gentle Juggernaut

data (n) : pieces of information; information

The beast of data is everywhere. We are bombarded by data so much that we take it for granted. In my honest opinion, we fail to see its importance until this smelly beast is either taken from us without consent OR we are notified that it no longer belongs to us; for example, see current Facebook Terms of Service (TOS) issue.

Another example…. In general on the  school front, there exist a  struggle with maintaining an accurate database on parent contact information (which is vital when emergencies arise) and also grades (do all of those stacks of graded/ungraded assignments get inputted into the digital grade book? One missing grade can make or break a student.)

I can go on and on about data… but my main question is when did the value of this data beast increase throughout the many years to become the humongous juggernaut today? Something to think about. Can we blame No Child Left Behind (NCLB)? The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)? What do you think?

Math help on demand…

I ran into a student that I used to teach that is currently a senior in high school. She said that she is taking honors pre-cal and not doing well at all. She actually stated that this was the worst teacher that she ever had! I tried to tell her to don’t give up and referred her to Mathway.com.

Mathway is a site that actually allows the user to enter problems and solves them! It also breaks down problems and explains how the answer is derived as a tutor would do for a fee I believe. Check it out. I highly recommend this site especially if students struggle and use it properly to check their answers, rather than to just get an answer w/o work! Teachers may use it as a resource too when they get a little deep in the water as well or have no textbook key!

Reading refined…

I am not sure if I am ready for this high price item (available on 2/24) that is supposed (to try again to) replace our beloved paper.

If I can do the same or more with my PSP, then Amazon, what is the benefit of spending $359.00 on this device. This is what they told me.

• light-weight & thin
• more battery life & storage
  
• shop wirelessly to purcha$e titles
• can play mp3s
  
• access blogs via RSS & wikipedia
  
• display reads like paper
• speech to text (now this is hott!)
  

Supports (.MOBI, .PRC) but not completely .PDFs?! Reserve my place in line? Naaa…  Sorry Amazon, PSP or even an iPod/iPhone is a little more sexy and has way more functions than both of your Kindles.

However, I really need to have one in my hand and use it before I totally dismiss this product. I really like that feature of the capability to text-to-speech feature. I wonder how it sounds? I hope not like Marvin, do ya’ll remember Marvin?

Guess I’ll check out eBay and pick up a first gen Kindle or just scrape up some cash for a Kindle 2 (Right now…I think that IKEA has first dibs of any future purchases of mine).

Also, I will have to keep my ears to the street to find out if the same issues in this blog post by Joel Johnson applies to the Kindle 2.

Virtual Worlds….

SL Alter Ego: Zeke Turbo

I am starting my virtual worlds class with LearnNC. I had the opportunity to meet my online instructor, Lucas Gillispie on Skype before class. He encouraged me to try out World of Warcraft (WoW), of course to look for educational applications. BTW, I picked up a copy of WoW and installed it on my laptop today. It really had a hefty hard drive requirement of 5GB! So I finally found my motivation to clean up my laptizzle!

I will further discuss alter what I learned with my class with using Second Life and WoW. Now…. if I am excited about taking a class where gaming is encourage, I am sure that my students will feel the same!

Attn: SB Math Teachers

Go here to sign up to receive a notice when SMART Notebook Math beta is released! Here are the features of this product:

* Equation creation and editing
* Equation handwriting recognition
* Graphing tool
* Real-time linked relationships between tables, equations and graphs
* More shapes additional to those that come with SMART Notebook 10 software
* Shape manipulation and feedback
* Advanced-measurement tools
* Ability to launch and operate Texas Instruments™ emulators from within SMART Notebook

I personally cannot wait to get my hands on this!

Nice footage… Thanks SMARTians!

Little footage from the past weekend’s seminar with SMARTtech…

If Dr. King was alive today….

Gerra Gistand articulately completes the above thought. Here is a link to the results of a MLK Jr. Oratory contest where this 5th grader that actually won!

Congratulations Gerra Gistand!