I had a great conversation with a Gamestop sales dude this past week. He shared with me the release dates of some of the greatest games next year for the PS3.

So…this Christmas, if you are a SERIOUS gamer and thinking about purchasing an Xbox 360 (or even a Wii), you may want to think again and check out these titles before you kick yourself in the butt for dropping your $$$ on some short-term fun.

1. MAG (Jan 26) Truly massive multiplayer game on steroids
   
2. ModNation Racers (Feb 2) Truly customized cart racing game. Game has LBP influence…
3. God of War III (April Fool’s Day) Unbelievable game play… (Even when it was released on PS2)
4. EyePet Bundle w/Camera (April 6) Yes, augmented reality is finally here!

All I know is that I really have to get my $$$ right to pick up all of these puppies!

After reading this article provided by my principal today, I decided to go ahead and do a little reflecting. I figured she forwarded this article to us because this style of teaching is vital in maintaining academic engagement in high-poverty schools.

I definately agree that a warm demander must enforce respect in the classroom and insist students to complete the academic tasks. But… what is warm demander? One who displays personal warmth while maintaining an instructonal style that demands achievement.

To become a warm demander, one must:

1. build relationships deliberately
2. learn about students’ cultures
3. communicate an expectation of success

 I really found it interesting that the article pin-pointed the issue of highly disengaged middle school students. These student shared that they were simply bored with the curriculum.  Warm demanders must reach out to these students to make content relevant and rigorous to defeat boredom. Check out the article for yourself and discover some additional information to assist you and your students towards the pursuit of academic excellence.

Kinda funny that I ran into some info that exposed this new national holiday that is being pushed by Story Corp. My pastor last Sunday touched this topic saying that we should practice listening to our Creator, versus speaking to Him only. In other words, when generally communicating, there is usually input and output – a bi-directional flow. So as Christians, why don’t we practice this in our prayer life? He further stated that listening requires a demands a reaction. So I am gonna stop there and ask you who will you listen to tomorrow? Check out the above video for some ideas…

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

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.

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?

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.)

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.

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…

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).