"The World is Flat" a book report by former Governor Angus King

The World is Flat by Thomas Freedman is a book referred to when talking about education in America today and about how education needs to change in order for our students to competitive in a global economy. I downloaded a digital copy of the book into my iTunes Library through Audible.com to discover that I need 24 hours of listening time in order to hear the whole book. Now, I downloaded it because audio books tend to play at a much faster rate than I read. If you find that you don't have 24 hours of spare listening time, but still wish to be "in the loop" when this book is referenced, I highly recommend you subscribe to the Angus King Podcast Book Report. It is an enhanced podcast complete with stills of the important points in the book. Another plus, besides being shorter than reading the entire book, is that the Podcast Book Report is free! So, click here to get to the web page where you can subscribe to the podcast. If you don't have iTunes, click here to get to the download page.

CMTC 2006 Key Note Presentation

Alan November gave the keynote speech on the opening day of the 2006 Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference. I had heard Mr. November speak on two previous occasions and found this speech to be the most relevant and thought-provoking. You can view his keynote using RealPlayer by clicking this link.
After I watch/listen to it again, I will provide my commentary and how it relates to teaching and learning. Feel free to comment with your own.

CMTC 2006 Blogging in the Classroom

Blogging in the classroom
By Susan Adams NHPTV

YouTube
Trenspotting social networking

blogging url:k12

podcasting url:k12

Develp a focus for student blogs. Whether the blogs are daily reflections, reading reflections, classroom experiences hobbies, or blog from a character for literature or history, each student should have a definite focus for their blog.

Tips
don't share personal information
parental permission
understand netiquette
set goals and expectations establish rules of conduct
consider classroom blog instead of individual student blogs

Classroom Blog
book club
comment on news and current events
rsopond to media
reviews of media

Set up account at Blogger

Showed how Blogger works

ePals now has blogging service and is a good place to find classrooms for collaboration

www.nhptv.org/kn

Podcasting for Educators: A Tutorial

So, it's the end of October?! Wow, how time flies. It seems not so long ago that it was the first day of school. With the ending of the month, I decided to take a little stock in what I had accomplished in the first two months of school. When I did this I realized that the three teachers who have their students podcasting their classrooms' newsletters have been doing so for about a month now. They have been sending their students down to my office where I record them, edit their performances, put the tracks together, and then upload them to their Gcast accounts.

I thought to myself, "If I am going to take another classroom per grade level on this podcasting adventure, I need to get the three teachers who are currently podcasting trained on how to do this on their own. I thought that I should put together a tutorial webpage (which could also be printed out) for teachers to use, which has step-by-step instructions, links to resources, and plenty of screenshots. So, I created just such a webpage. I also included some audio files so that viewers could also hear the differences in audio files after specific steps in the process. Eventually, (when I get a copy of SnapZ Pro X) I will add some tutorial videos as well.

Podcasting can be a great experience for students and provides them with another publishing genre that can also provide a world-wide audience, giving students greater purpose for their work. Teachers may not jump into podcasting with their students if they are unsure on the "how to's" so I am hoping that this tutorial page will help those well beyond my own district. I know that, for me, I struggled with podcasting, not with the "why" but on the "how". I would have embraced the tutorial that would have gotten me going on this. Now that I know the "how" I want to share it will all that have an interest or is in search of help.

Gliffy: Online Concept Mapping

Yesterday, while at a technology integrators meeting, one of my colleagues asked if there was a free version (Open Source) of something similar to Inspiration®. None of the people in the room knew of any open source application that was as simple to use or had the bells and whistles of the well-known visual learning tool. I did a little surfing around and stumbled upon FreeMind, which is an open source app for concept mapping. I downloaded it and played around with it for a little while. I found it to not be very user-friendly so I looked at what was next on my search list. I was really impressed with what I found next.

My next click sent me to Gliffy. Gliffy is an online diagramming tool. It feels like a desktop application that you download and use, but it isn't. You only need a web browser. It is FREE. You just need to spend all of about 30 seconds registering and you are ready to get started. Not only can you make several different types of diagrams, but you can post them online on a web page, a blog, or a wiki. You can also collaborate with other users. One only needs to email the link to the document to those who need access to it and they can work together. There was also a great little introductory movie about Gliffy that not only displayed what it could do, but was almost like a little tutorial. Let's put it this way, after watching the introductory movie, I was able to create a diagram myself without any further instruction. See image below:


Gliffy is a great example of a Web 2.0 application. Here are the reasons why:

• You do not need to download anything to use it.
• It's FREE
• It does not matter what operating system you use, you just need a computer that has a browser and has a connection to the Internet.
• Collaboration is not only possible but simple.
• Earlier versions of the work are accessible. Every time a diagram is saved, that version becomes available to view and work on.
• Publishing the work on a website, blog, or wiki is easy to do.
  
• It is simple to use.
  

Flash Cards are No Longer Old-School

My own two boys go through a lot of flash cards at home. With one seventh grader and one fifth grader rarely does a week go by when they haven't had to utilize this "old-school" way of memorizing vocabulary or concepts. They seem to get as much studying done in preparing the flash cards themselves as they do while using once they are made. So, I realize the importance of students writing out their own flash cards. Sometimes though, daily schedules just don't allow them to take the time to write out their own study aides. There are also times when students (my children especially) forget their study materials at school in a desk or locker. It was this later predicament that my youngest son and I found ourselves in this past weekend.

My son was to have a test on Tuesday over the first chapter of his science text. Here it was Saturday and he discovers that he did not bring home his text or any study materials. Now I happen to know the title and publishing company of his science text and that the title of the chapter was "Mapping Earth's Surface". So, I set out on an online quest to find materials having to do with this topic that he could use to study. Had I had his text, I am certain it would have provided me with url's to sites with these types of supportive materials. Since I did not have the text, I was at the mercy of Google. I typed in the title of the chapter and found a few interesting things that he could use; a crossword puzzle, a powerpoint presentation with some of the vocabulary, even a movie about making maps. But the site I stumbled upon that really wowed me, (and prompted this posting) was "The Amazing Flash Card Machine". The link I clicked on lead me to a listing of all the sets of science flashcards made previously by other members. Low and behold, there was a set with the same name as the chapter my son needed to study. I selected the title and started the study session. At this point I had my son come over to the computer and sit down. He had a choice of starting with the word and clicking Flip to see the definition, or visa versa. Not only could my son work with these flash cards online, but there was a button to view them in "printer-friendly" HTML. He worked with them online for a while, but then chose to print them out so he could study the vocab anywhere he wanted.

Not only could a user view the flashcard sets made by others, but they can also create their own. This, I think, would be a great resource for teachers to use with their student. Teachers could go into this site, create a set of flash cards for whatever topic they are teaching, and then give the url for the flash cards to their students to use at home. I was so impressed with site that I had to share my finding with a colleague of mine. When she saw it, she immediately thought of how her own sixteen year-old could use this right away on a quiz on the periodic table of elements. We did a little search on the site and found a set about the topic right away.

Before I started writing this post I wondered whether this resource would be considered to be a Web 2.0 tool or not. (not that it has to be to be included on my blog) But, I decided yes, it is, because a user can publish content on the web and share it with other users. So even though flash cards are an "old-school" tool for memorizing things, this resource gives it a modern update without the cost purchasing index cards every other week.

Give this site a try and let me know what you think or ways that teachers/students could utilize it.

Podcasting With Students

So, now that I have figured out the basics of podcasting, I am starting to work with students using this medium. I started with a 4th grade class whose teacher just left on maternity leave. My thought was that she (as well as the parents of her students) could keep up to date with what the class is doing by listening in on the podcast which would consist of an audio version of the classroom newsletter as well as writing pieces that the students read aloud.

As I got going with this project I thought to myself that there should be at least one podcast per grade level, so I got a couple more victims (I mean guinnea pigs). I chose a 6th grade class whose teacher has been doing technology integration with her class for years. I also chose a 5th grade class that has a "brand new" teacher. All of the classes seem VERY excited about their podcast and are eager to be a part of it. Now that I have got them going, I am going to start showing these three teachers how it is done so that they can one day take over and post their own episodes. Once they reach that point I will move on to another three classes so that eventually my goal of "total podcast infiltration" while be acheived, "whooa haa haa haa!" (evil laugh)

Here are the links for the three Podcasts that are currently available for subscription:

• CRES Room 101


• CRES Room 203


• CRES Room 209

I MADE A PODCAST

I DID IT!
I made a podcast! You may have already noticed that on the right side of this blog window there is even a button to click to subscribe to my podcast. This might not sound like a huge acheivment to those of you who have been doing this for a while, but to me this is like climbing Everest. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when I was listening to a Bit by Bit podcast by my fellow SEEDlings Bob Sprankle, Cheryl Oakes, and Alice Barr. In this episode they made note of a site called Gcast.com which would host your .mp3 files for you and provide the RSS feed for your podcast. Well that was like telling me the secret of life! I immediately got to work. One of the things that has held me up with podcasting was that I had an older version of GarageBand (2.0.2). Well I played around a little with it, and even though it is not as slick as the GarageBand in iLife 06 and doesn't have all the bells and whistles I managed to create a (I think) dynamic .mp3 file that could be uploaded to my Gcast account.
I didn't use iLife 06 even. I used an old version of GarageBand, Audacity, and iTunes.


Here is what I did.

1. Used Audacity to record intro.
2. Used Audacity to record post from my blog.
3. Went to a site called GarageBand.com that copyright free music to download.
4. I then used an old copy of GarageBand to bring in each of the tracks (introduction, music, and post)
5. Edited the volume of the music so it would fade out when talking started.
6. Exported it to iTunes.
7. Took it out of iTunes folder and placed it on my desktop.
8. Went into iTunes Preferences, opened Advanced, selected Importing, and changed it to .mp3 and lowered the bitrate.
9. Imported the .aif back into iTunes.
10. Under the Advanced menu converted it to .mp3
11. Created an account at gcast.com which hosts .mp3 files for podcasting for free.
12. Uploaded the now .mp3 file from my desktop to gcast account.
13. Subscribed to my own podcast through iTunes.
14. Submitted my podcast to the iTunes Music Store so others could find it.

Goals For the Year

If you read my previous posts, you know that I am returning to a job I have been away from for a couple of years. Now a lot has changed, not only in this job, but in educational technology. When I was last an integrator, WebQuests were the big thing in educational technology. Now, its Web 2.0 tools.

While I am absolutely thrilled to be back at CRES, I am feeling a bit behind the 8 ball so to speak. I so want to share with the teachers what I have learned about blogging, podcasts, RSS and such, but I have not had any actual classroom experiences with these tools.

This being said, here are my goals for the 2006-07:

1. Learn as much as humanly possible about Web 2.0 and their applications in the classroom.
2. Share what I have learned with teachers in these ways:
• Post definitions and educational uses on "What is Web 2.0?"
• Present these tools during staff meetings and professional development workshops
• Teach the teachers when working with them and their students
  


3. Take part in professional development for myself; workshops, conferences, and peer training

Movie Post-Baseball

This is a test to see how well a video post goes. This is hosted on my firstclass webserver and is a fairly small movie. It seems to only play once the entire movie is loaded. I might be able to tweak this so that it will autoplay once enough has loaded so that it doesn't catch up to itself.

About AudioBlogger

As you probably noticed, my last posting was a bit different in that it was an audio posting. I don't know if this was a new experience for you, but it certainly was for me. Now that I have done this, and seen just how easy it is to do, my mind is beginning to process the possibilities that this might exist for using this tool in a classroom.

Now when I created the audio post I used my cell phone w/ headset plugged in. When I did this I pictured myself driving into work and adding a post to my blog as I commute the 30 min. to CRES from my home in Windham. Now I find that my mind is usually at its most creative either early in the morning (post coffee, of course) or late at night. So I can imagine creating audio posts as I am driving along in my truck. For a classroom teacher who has a blog they can be providing content to their students as they are driving, sitting at the beach, or imagine this, sitting at a conference. This last possibility really gets me excited because when I am at a really good conference and listening to a dynamic speaker my wheels start turning in my head. I need to be able to process and document what is going on in my head right then and there before it gets lost or replaced by some other new pieces of information. Audioblogger could be the solution to this.

Another use that just came to mind is if a teacher is sick or away from their class for some reason and they want to alter an assignment or give special instructions that the substitute does not have in their plans then they could upload this audio post right from the comfort of their bed or doctor's office. I am sure that other uses will come to mind as the days go by.

Now at first I thought there were some limitations to AudioBlogger, but, if you know a litte about html code there is a way to get around these limitations. First, let's talk about using the phone. You don't HAVE to use a phone if you are willing to host your own audio files to your web server. Second, you are not limited to only 5 min of recording if, once again, you are willing to host the audio on your web server. Third, now this is a biggie, you can also include a video post.
Here's how:
Below is the html code that is generated to make your audioblogger play as a post:
[div class="audblog"][a href="http://www.audioblogger.com/media/131264/398283.mp3" class="audLink"][img src="http://www.audioblogger.com/media/images/audioblogger.gif" class="audImg"border="0" alt="this is an audio post - click to play" /][/a][/div]


If you upload an audio file to your web server all you neet to do is change the url that the audioblogger play button is pointed to and it will play the audio you uploaded. For example: I can copy this code, start a new post, paste this code in, change the url to www.sad61.k12.me.us/~rpalmer/baseball.mov and once I publish the post I have myself a link to a video post. In this case it is my son's baseball team. In doing this, I can create a snazzy and professional sounding podcast-like post, upload it to my server, and then point a new post to that file. So, I can basically alter few limitations there are to AudioBlogger just by tweaking the code a little. Pretty Cool!

My First AudioBlog

This was my first attempt at AudioBlogger. This is very cool, making audio posts to a blog using a phone. Too Cool :-)



At first I thought there were some drawbacks, but as you read my next post, you will see how I get around them. Where there is a will there is a way.

Former SEEDling Social and Overload

Those who know me know that I was once a Technology Learning Leader for SEED (Spreading Educator to Educator Developments) for about four years. This organization provided not only opportunities for me to develop my technology skills and knowledge, make some extra money, develop my presentation skills, but it also gave me the opportunity to develop friendships with many like-minded geeks like myself.

Our group of TLLs in Southern Maine became a very tight-knit group who revelled any chance to get together, share what is going on our lives (personally and professionally), and of course, share what new "Geek Tool" we have discovered. We always had a great time sharing with one another and working together. When the grant that financed SEED ran out and SEED had to come to a close, it was a very sad time for us all and we all vowed that we in Southern Maine would keep it going in some way, if not for the personal relationships, but to also be a means of support to us technology integrators and coordinators. Many of us do not have colleagues within our own district that we can discuss these things with.

We have had a handful of SEEDling get-togethers that have been wonderful. It is always great to see these people, catch up, and share. I just came from one of these social gatherings at L. Girr's house in Freeport. It was so great to see some of my old buddies. These people are so up to date and cutting edge! They have so much to share and are really pushing the envelop with Web 2.0 tools. It made me realize just how much I have to learn about those things so that I can be a good resource for the teachers at my school. We talked a lot about blogging, podcasting, Edublogs vs. Blogger, the new Garage Band, Flickr, NetTrekker, del.ioic.ous, Skype and a host of other things. So, many things that my mind started to go into OVERLOAD. My brain started to feel like it did at the end of the day when I took the National Teacher's Exam back in 1990 (I know, I'm dating myself here).

This album is powered by BubbleShare - Add to my blog

One thing that I am glad I remembered when I got home was Cheryl Oakes telling me about a Web 2.0 tool called >BubbleShare. She told me it was a place to upload pictures into albums and that you could share the albums with other people by emailing them to others or by posting a slideshow on to a blog. Another feature she mentioned was that you could add 30 seconds of audio to the album so that you can explain your pictures to those you share with. So, as you can see, I just had to try this out for myself. Once I set myself up with an account I discovered some really cool things you could do with this site and its tools. First, I downloaded and installed a Pluggin for my iPhoto so that my pictures could be exported from my iPhoto directly to my Bubbleshare account. Next, I discovered that not only could you add audio, but you can also add little text captions (like comics) to your pictures. You can order prints and gifts that contain your pics as well.

Anyway, I wanted to add a slideshow to this blog so I opened iPhoto and exported my pics of the tour of Fenway Park that my oldest son, father in-law, and I went on earlier this summer. It was prettly slick! Next, if look at the instructions for putting a slideshow in a blog. Not only was it easy, but what really WOWed me was the different formats there were for the slide show. As you can see, I used the vertical format. What I do wish though was that I knew how to alter the HTML so that the words from this blog posting would wrap around the slideshow like it would a picture. What I ended up doing to make it look like it does is to create an invisible table (border=0) and then paste the code for the slideshow in one skinny column and a couple paragraphs of text in the larger column.

So now I am pleased. I have caught up with friends, learned a few things, eaten well, and have applies something I learned to something I find meaningful. All in all I would say it has been a good day.

The Return of TechnoMan

Let me start my explaining the title of this post....
Technology can sometimes be pretty fickle. I don't think there isn't anyone out there who has not struggled over some sort of glitch with a computer or an application. What makes it so frustrating is that sometimes, all it seems to take is just the mere presence of another person to suddenly make your computer behave the way you want it to or the application to do what you have been trying to get it to do for the past hour. Some other person just has to look over your shoulder and suddenly, "Poof" it works.

This phenomenon has happened to me a number of times. Once I was stuggling with some image in Photoshop and I could not for the life of me get it to do what I wanted it to do. My boss stopped by on one of his journies (to escape the confines on his office and see the light of day no doubt) and just about as soon he peeked his head over my shoulder, Photoshop suddenly came to life and made the image as I had wanted it to.

While this can be annoying if you are the person for whom the computer is not working, it can be most gratifying if you are the onlooker, like you have the Midas touch. Being a technology integrator, I am often in this position. A student comes to my office saying, "Mrs. ******* can't get her computer/projector/application to work. Can you come and help her?" So I go to that teacher's room. Now sometimes, I just have to step into the room and the problem ceases to exist. Sometimes, I have to just look over the teacher's shoulder and it suddenly works. Most often though, there is some reasonable explanation as to why things weren't working the way the teacher wanted it to and it ends up being a 30 second fix.

Now, when this sort of thing happens to me, I get a little frustrated and then laugh it off as one of those freak things that happens when using technology. But when this happens to some teachers, I become their hero. When all hope was lost, I swooped in and made things work. There is this one educator at CRES (JVP) to whom this happened many times. She would joke each time about how I had saved the day. She was the person who came up with the name TechnoMan. I shared this with my family one night at the dinner table. My wife thought it was pretty funny but thought TechnoGeek would be more appropriate. But for my boys, who really didn't understand just what it was that Daddy did all day at school, it helped to simplify my job for them. Daddy sometimes helps people with their computer problems.

So, now that I have explained the origin of the name, I will explain the "The Return of.." portion of the title. Here is the short version: I was the Technology Integrator for CRES for three years. I left for two years to be the Computer Teacher at Windham Middle School. I am now returning to CRES this fall to resume my job as Technology Integrator. Hence the title, "The Return of TechnoMan." Picture by: Brandon Palmer
Age 9

To say that my job will have changed from the time that I once held it would be an understatement. Two or three years ago the big buzz around educational technology was WebQuests and teachers who had a web presence at all were considered on the cutting edge. But since I have been gone there has been the widespread use of Web 2.0 tools. Some experts in educational technology feel that while K-12 education has been slow to get started with these collaborative Internet tools, they will transform teaching and learning as we know it.

I myself, while knowing what many of the Read/Write Internet tools are, have yet to use them or to apply their uses in an educational setting. So, over the next several months, I hope to learn more about them and how they can be used in the classrooms at CRES by both teachers and students.

Gone are the days when my job consisted of being a technology trainer who taught mini courses on specific applications before and after school. My job now requires that I become a one-on-one coach who aides individual teachers as they work on specific projects which utilize technology. Gone are the days when I wished teachers had to have a technology goal that they had to accomplish within the year. Now regardless of what the goal is a teacher chooses to focus on for the year, I hope that they will look at how technology can be a tool for helping them attain those goals.

In closing, I have got to go on the record about how thrilled I am to be returning back to CRES. I do feel a little bit like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" though.
"If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with!"