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Facebook Investor Roger McNamee Explains Why Social Is Over
"Elevation Partners co-founder and Facebook investor Roger McNamee, who is also a rock musician, gave an amazing talk recently where he goes over some of the biggest trends affecting the technology industry."
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This looks pretty nice. Anyone try it yet?
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EnergizingEnergy - Our Connections
Check out this fun science project done by elementary students. Look at all the tools they used. Can YOUR students use those tools?
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Wow! Watch the initial video, then click through some of the individual videos along the outside when it's finished. What are your thoughts on the message from these students? Another Michael Wesch video
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Dgh - Golden Age of West Africa
Mentioned by Alan November a while back. A digital online textbook about Africa, built by the students.
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Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world | Video on TED.com
"Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for -- and increasingly controlled by -- algorithms. In this riveting talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine: espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can't understand, with implications we can't control."
Saturday, July 30, 2011
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Saturday, July 23, 2011
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Visual Trace Route Tool - Find, Track, and Map the Route to an IP Address
Great tool to demo trace routes!!
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PrimaryPad - Superfunky collaborative writing for schools
" PrimaryPad is a web-based word processor designed for schools that allows pupils and teachers to work together in real-time. "
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studio.M for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store
FREE music creation app for ipod touch, iphone, and ipad. OS 4.0 or later
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A great looking scientific calculator. Have the students add this page to their links bar. I wonder if it works on the ipad. Hmmm..
Saturday, July 16, 2011
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"A place to share e-learning and Web 2.0 tools for education. Computers and laptops in education are important only when used with good pedagogy. Digital content and creation is an important part of the process for educators in the 21st century."
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Straight from the DOE: Dispelling Myths About Blocked Sites | MindShift
Let's discuss
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Unshorten any URL - unshort.me
Before you click on that tinyurl that someone just tweeted to you, you might want to check it out here first. If it doesn't show up - DO NOT CLICK IT!
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"Free Children's eBooks" Make your own to sync to your ipad or iphone, etc
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70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! on Vimeo
I LOVE stuff that is very creative. This is surely one. Share it with your art teacher friends.
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Brian Crosby: Innovation Starts With Having Autonomy
Interesting article about school reform. This should start some interesting conversations
- One thing the current "reformers" have right is that we should be innovating. We should be learning from innovative teachers, schools, programs and countries already showing success, as well as promoting real innovation through our policies and investments. Currently "Race to the Top" makes it very difficult to really innovate because it demands conditions that support too narrow an approach. It actually stifles true innovation.
- One thing the current "reformers" have right is that we should be innovating. We should be learning from innovative teachers, schools, programs and countries already showing success, as well as promoting real innovation through our policies and investments. Currently "Race to the Top" makes it very difficult to really innovate because it demands conditions that support too narrow an approach. It actually stifles true innovation.
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Crap Detection 101 : Howard Rheingold : City Brights
" The answer to almost any question is available within seconds, courtesy of the invention that has altered how we discover knowledge - the search engine. Materializing answers from the air turns out to be the easy part - the part a machine can do. The real difficulty kicks in when you click down into your search results. At that point, it's up to you to sort the accurate bits from the misinfo, disinfo, spam, scams, urban legends, and hoaxes. "Crap detection," as Hemingway called it half a century ago, is more important than ever before, now that the automation of crapcasting has generated its own word: "spamming.""
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Top 15 Kinect Hacks (So Far) | PCWorld
"You've heard the rumors, and they're true: Microsoft's motion-sensing Kinect camera turns out to be hacktastic. Mouse pointers and picture shuffling? So 2010. Why not control robots with your arms? Fire lasers from your head? Steal piles of candy? Fiddle with toilet seats hands-free?"
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Technology Integration Matrix | Arizona K12 Center
Wonderful matrix to help you determine your level of Tech integration. Thanks to Sue Sheffer for sharing this with me.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
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Paste your spreadsheet data here to create interactive Google Map
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YouTube - Maria Andersen: Where's the "Learn This" Button?
Perhaps the best Prezi example I've seen. (Still not a fan, but at least I now see a good example. :)
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Great tool for filling pdfs
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Twtpoll :: From Simple Twitter Polls to Powerful Web Surveys. Social Media Feedback Tool.
A great site to post quick polls to your followers
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John Cole Cartoons » Cutting classes
PA's solution to too many well-educated kids leaving PA for better jobs. LOL!
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Turn a paper based book into an interactive book with QR Codes
Nice article to show newbies how to get started with this idea of QRCodes
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Interesting new search engine
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http://www.mapmyfollowers.com/followers.php
If you're on twitter this is an oldie but a goodie. See where your followers are on a map
Friday, July 08, 2011
For the love of beautiful writing
I'm currently teaching a Grad class for Harrisburg University. I'm privileged to work with some of the area's best teachers and learned people. Yesterday was day one of a series of days where we study "web 2.0" tools and their impact on teaching and learning.
Last night, when I read the discussion forums, I was struck by the eloquent writing of the members of the class. Having seen my share of poor spelling and bad grammar and incomplete sentences, etc, I was impressed by the writing of this group. I began the day by mentioning that.
I further confessed that I am a sucker for beautiful writing. I also told the story of when I taught 8th graders and, during a class where we were studying the Civil War (long story) I mentioned that, if they wanted to read one of THE MOST beautiful love letters ever written to research Sullivan Ballou and his letter to his wife Sarah. It was written, prophetically, just two weeks before he was killed in the second battle of Bull Run/ Manassas. I told them my class that I was so surprised to later find a few of those dear 8th graders sniffling back tears and when I casually observed their computer screens I saw that they were reading the letter.
This was just in passing. I then went on with the class.
Tonight I was reading their discussion forum (Moodle) posts. One person, Lou, pasted in this portion of the Sullivan Ballou letter. No comment. Just this portion:
Saturday, July 02, 2011
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"This site was created by Dr. Alice Christie to share an exciting new approach to teaching and learning. Enabled by Web 2.0 tools, GoogleTreks™ allows teachers and students to synthesize information in one easy-to-use map that places text, pictures, audio files, video files, and much more in one central location. GoogleTreks™ Video."
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Stanford report finds good and bad in Pennsylvania charter schools - Page 2 - Philly.com
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But he said the Corbett administration wanted to make sure charter schools were held to the same performance standards as district-run schools.
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Stanford report finds good and bad in Pennsylvania charter schools - Philly.com
- The results were more dismal for cyber charter schools: Students at 100 percent of them performed "significantly worse" than their counterparts in district schools.
- But, on average, the state's charter school students lag behind the gains of students in regular public schools - 39 percent of charter schools underperform their public school counterparts in reading and 46 percent in math.
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This looks like it has great potential.
"Animaps extends the My Maps feature of Google Maps by letting you create maps with markers that move, images and text that pop up on cue, and lines and shapes that change over time." -
"Swiffy converts Flash SWF files to HTML5, allowing you to reuse Flash content on devices without a Flash player (such as iPhones and iPads).
Swiffy currently supports a subset of SWF 8 and ActionScript 2.0, and the output works in all Webkit browsers such as Chrome and Mobile Safari. If possible, exporting your Flash animation as a SWF 5 file might give better results. " -
" Use this calculator for graphing, for calculating, for sharing, for creating. Look on the right for help or inspiration. "