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!"