Flickeration of the Mind…

Finally picked up a copy of Todd Oppenheimer’s book, The Flickering Mind. I was introduced to this book at a NCTM math workshop last year. So far it’s a good read. I am going to try and get through with it this month.

With my personal integration of technology in the classroom I can identify with the author’s point of the student’s disconnect in learning. I will further reflect on my reading as I get more saturated with Todd’s thoughts.

Our Digitally Obsessed Nation

Dependency…

if is not with oil, it seems that our world would not be the same without it being plugged in.

I will watch this show tomorrow to see how obsessed we have become with technology. Don’t get me wrong, I am a hawk when it comes to technology. However as I get older, I am starting to see both side of how we respect and abuse the things in our digitally connected world.

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?

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.

Unifix Suduko & Your Smartboard

 This weekend I picked up a few things from the teacher store in preparation of the 1st day of school. I passed by and ended up picking up this cool Unifix Sudoku game. As you can see, when I got home, I ended up placing the blocks in ROY G. BIV order and numbered the tops to match.

I also created a Smart Notebook file to go with this activity when modelling the activity with my students. This is a great hands-on activity for students of any age that has never played Sudoku. The purpose for placing the numbers on the cubes is for you to create your own puzzles with the help of online resources such as ultra-magnificent logic puzzle site of Vegard Hanssen. I will post later reflecting what the students thought about this game.

What tha heck is a comptometer?

Here is one of my rainy day posts.

 A few weeks ago, I had a enlightening discussion about calculator usage with one of my fellow mathematicians. She stated that we were actually considered software to the contraption to left. 

This image is identified as a comptometer. Being the nerd that I am, I though I knew of every vintage calculating machine that ever existed to man. However, I learned something new that day. You actually had to be a trained comptometrist to touch this machine; and if you were trained, you were in high demand due to its high learning curve.

My collegue, a trained comptometrist, demonstrated the arithmetic operation manuevers; which to me seems to require great manual dexterity to crunch numbers with speed this way. I recorded it and have it here to share with you. In regards to calculator technology, we have really come a long way. This would be great to share with students to see how easy they have it now and we should not take that calculating device for granted; or even let them do research on this device and other vintage calculators.

 

 

Smarter Computer Troubleshooting… How?

Parents, do you have a teenager that has your computer wrecked with I-DONT-KNOW-WARE on your computer? Please continue reading this post to help you solve your problems. Well, at least learn a technique to address the issue.

I have a side hustle where I work on computers. I have one client that has a son that BSODs their laptop at least once every six months. I am not knocking my steady business, but the madness must end.

I suggested the parent to “sandbox” their computer. What is sandboxing? It is a way to configure your computer to not keep newly installed programs after the machine restarts. The concept is kinda like a real sandbox. When you are finished playing, you clean/smooth out the sandbox to leave it the way you found it.

So I referred the parent to use sandboxie to install on their machine and try it out for another six months to see if it makes a difference.  There are other sandboxing programs out there. Raviratlami’s blog (8/2006) has shed some additional light on the subject. I really hope that this resolves the issue… If not, there is always SecondChance by PowerQuest.

Generations & Technology

As I go along my way in this age of technology, I am still amazed in how little people know about the Internet and what it has to offer. For example, if you have not AT LEAST heard about MySpace, Facebook or Twitter by now, you must really have your head in the dirt.

I ran across some information from a past workshop that I attended long ago that discussed the generational differences.The generations were broken down as traditionalist, boomer, genX, and genY. It is very interesting to see the comparison between them especially when it comes to technology.

Traditionalist – Uncomfortable
Boomer – Unsure
Gen X – Unable to work without it
Gen Y – Unfathomable if not provided

It is also interesting to see people operating out of their expected technology window. For example, my grandmother that is 82 years old expressing great interest in learning how to send an email. No… not happening; Or a twenty-something year old asking for directions when they are available via GPS, or on cell phone.

After further thinking about this topic, it also dawned on me…what would be the ‘killer app‘ of each generation.

Traditionalist – Radio
Boomer – Television
Gen X - Between the Sony Walkman and the video game system
Gen Y - Cell phone

The above hints to further discussion… much later.

Senteo Madness

Due to the local & state budget crisis, there has been cutbacks on copier usage. Teachers have been running around looking for solutions to avoid making ditto sheets. The tech people at my school (me) are working on conecting our Dukane document cameras to integrate into SMARTNotebook.

Teachers are now diligently requesting to use the handheld interactive response systems from SMARTtechnologies called Senteo remotes. We have had these devices for months, however training was an issue. Teachers are eager to move forward to dare to learn how to use this technology on their own. However, due to the configuration of our school’s laptops, teachers cannot use the new Senteo Teacher software; however the Senteo Manager works like a charm.  This was the first roadblock discovered this past week.

I upgraded Senteo Manager to Teacher (version 2.0.97) on my personal laptizzle and have been creating assessments all week. Here are a few thoughts on the new software upgrade.

• There is a need to make Senteo more robust as a gradebook.  It would be a great feature to export class list (non-PDF file)  from Senteo Teacher. In other words, there is a need for the functionality to print class roster outside of the reporting feature - Creating PDF takes a very long time, well.. on my laptop anyway. 
• Import data from “on the fly” questioning into the gradebook is highly desired!
• Students need multiple representation of data. Cannot view data results as a circle graph – bar graph only.  
•  Privacy button was a great addition.

I will be going out of town this week to NCTM conference in DC. I will be looking for some great stuff to share…

 

 

Karaoke to the next level

What had happened was… I went into Walmart to pick up a few items and ran into this wonderful green-screen technology today. A company called Dancing Heads produced the right video of me for free! This event was sponsored by Coca-Cola. The setup was very basic. I could do the same with the software, camera, and the other equipment to entertain parties during my retirement. Something to definitely think about. Definitely karoke to the next level!

Unfortunately I did not get to take a picture of their setup due to cellular technical difficulties, but click on the picture on the left and see the results! Enjoy! LOL!