Moving at the Speed of Creativity

According to the English Wikipedia, a “Lip dub” is:

…a type of video that combines lip synching and audio dubbing to make a music video. It is made by filming individuals or a group of people lip synching while listening to a song or any recorded audio then dubbing over it in post editing with the original audio of the song. There is often some form of mobile audio device used such as an iPod. Often, they look like simple music videos, although many involve a lot of preparation and are well produced. The most popular lip dubs are done in a single unedited shot that often travels through different rooms and situations in, say, an office building. They have become popular with the advent of mass participatory video content sites like YouTube.

The following video is an example of a Lib Dub, created by students at the University of Quebec at Montreal. They used the Black Eyed Peas song, “I’ve Got a Feeling” to create this. It’s had over 2.7 million views on YouTube since publication a year ago in September.

The “Lip Dub” WikiPedia article cite’s a 2007 post by Tom Johnson in which he identified four characteristics for an outstanding Lib Dub. They are:

1. spontaneity
2. authenticity
3. participation
4. fun

Here is another Lib dub example, which Tom analyzed in his post. This is “Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger.” It has also had over two million views on Vimeo since it was published 3 years ago.

Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

The University Lib Dub Project has lots of other example videos, and the project is open for new contributions.

Videos like this would certainly invite interesting discussions about copyright, intellectual property rights, remixing, and fair use among school librarians. I’m looking forward to hearing what Joyce Valenza, Mathew Needleman, and other presenters have to say about copyright issues in presentations for this year’s K-12 Online Conference.

The Washington Post’s article, “Office Drones, Lip-Sync Your Heart Out” shared information about Lib dub videos two years ago, but somehow I’ve never heard of this UGC video genre until today. Hat tip to Scott McLeod and the CASTLE link list from Nebraska TAG for sharing this.

Technorati Tags:
digitalstorytelling, fun, sharing, theater, video, youtube, lipdub, ugc

The FREE 2009 K-12 Online Conference officially kicks off a week from today, on Monday, November 30, 2009. Five new teaser trailers have been added to our Conference Ning in the past week, and also posted to the conference blog. Check them out, and if you have not already:

1. Join the K12Online Ning
2. Subscribe to K12Online in Twitter
3. Become a fan of K12Online on Facebook
4. Subscribe to the K12Online blog in your favorite news reader/RSS aggregator
5. Check out the PARTICIPANTS section of our conference wiki
6. Plan to join us Wednesday December 3rd / Thursday December 4th and Saturday December 12th for conference live events!

Here are the recently added teasers!

This is Mathew Needleman’s teaser trailer for his K12Online09 presentation, “Steal This Preso!”

Here’s the teaser video for Joyce Valenza’s keynote presentation in the “Getting Started” strand, “The Wizard of Apps.” As a Kansan and someone who’s heard jokes about “The Wizard of Oz” and “We’re not in Kansas Anymore” more times than I can count, I’m really looking forward to this metaphorical approach to creative learning and digital collaboration!

Find more videos like this on K12 Online Conference

Here is Kelley Connolly’s teaser video for “Building on Analog Success with 2.0 Technology.”

Carol Broos and Carol Vrotny created the following teaser video for their presentation, “To Those Who Want to Rock – Don’t Suppose Compose!” As a fan of Garageband and other music-creation software programs, I can’t wait to see this presentation!

Find more videos like this on K12 Online Conference

Last of all, Neil Stephenson created the “Remixing History Teaser” for his K12Online09 presentation, “Remixing in the Classroom: Engagement for History Students.” As a history and social studies educator, as well as digital storyteller, I’m REALLY looking forward to hearing more from Neil.

Find more videos like this on K12 Online Conference

The 2009 K-12 Online Conference is going to be FANTASTIC because of the creativity and willingness to share of teachers like Mathew, Kelley, Carol, Carol and Neil.

And the price for admission to this amazing, global learning experience?

FREE!

See you at the conference!

Technorati Tags:
compose, conference, copyright, creativity, k12online, k12online09, leadership, learning, music, web2

One to one learning with wireless, digital devices in the hands of every learner in the classroom is the future. With netbooks running over 100 free educational applications on Ubuntu Linux, that dream can be a reality in your classroom and school district today, not tomorrow. As I explain in the introduction to this podcast featuring two interviews, I have lost NONE of my enthusiasum for Apple and Macintosh computers, but I think it would be foolish to ignore the powerful and affordable computing and learning opportunities now offered by netbooks as well as open source software. After sharing a plug for the upcoming FREE K-12 Online Conference in December and an introduction to these interviews, this podcast includes an interview with Warren Luebkeman. Warren is a co-founder of the Open 1:1 Nonprofit organization, which is based in Maine and provides a FREE Ubuntu image for netbooks loaded with over 100 educational and productivity applications. That recording was made at the ACTEM 2009 conference in Augusta, Maine in October. The second interview is with Alex Inman, who has been implementing and supporting 1:1 initiatives for over 8 years in Milwaukee and St Louis. Alex shared a presentation at the One to One Institute’s November 2009 conference called “Saving Money on Your One-to-One Program.” In this interview Alex specifically addresses the viability and power of Ubuntu as a platform on netbook computers for student learning. He discusses powerful open source solutions like iTalc (for desktop monitoring) and iFolder (for cross-platform remote file sharing.) Additionally, he addresses the importance of support for “cultural change” in schools for 1:1 laptop learning initiatives. That buy-in from top leadership all the way down the classroom is even more important for laptop initiative success than the platform / hardware.

 

 Podcast334: One to One Learning with Open Source Netbooks is Practical, Affordable and Powerful - Learn Why [45:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (398)

Show Notes:

1. K-12 Online Conference Blog (presentation video posts and annoucements)
2. K-12 Online Conference Ning (learning community)
3. K-12 Online Conference Wiki (info to get started)
4. K-12 Online Conference Twitter
5. K-12 Online Conference Facebook
6. Warren Luebkeman
7. Resara (Warren’s company focusing on Linux deployoment in schools)
8. Thoughts on Macs and Netbooks (my blog post 27 July 2009)
9. The Maine Netbook Consortium Wiki
10. Learning about Netbooks in 1 to 1 Learning Projects from Maine Educators (blog post 30 Oct 2009)
11. Open 1-to-1 (Maine-based nonprofit, free access to education-specific Ubuntu distribution available)
12. Sharon Betts’ blog
13. Ubuntu
14. Ubuntu Netbook Remix
15. ACTEM: Association of Computer Technology Educators of Maine
16. Linux and Open Source: The epitome of 21st Century Skills (Alex Inman’s blog post from 4-26-2008)
17. Saving Money on Your One-to-One Program by Alex Inman (my blog post 9 Nov 2009)
18. iTalc (free / open source desktop monitoring software for Linux and Windows)
19. iFolder (free, open source remote storage solution, works with Linux, Windows and Mac)
20. Revolution Linux (Canadian commercial company providing Linux support for Whitfield Schools)
21. Educational Collaborators (provide PD specific to 1:1 learning environments)
22. One to One Institute
23. OLPC / XO Laptop Wiki
24. Storychasers
25. Google Workshops for Educators
26. Free & Open Source Software in Education website
27. Contact Wesley
28. Follow Wesley on Twitter

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As a blog reader, you’re most likely familiar with names like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Steve Ballmer. How about Jonney Shih? If you have no idea who Shih is, you’re probably not alone. Currently there is not an English WikiPedia article for him, despite the fact that his vision and work are reshaping the computer hardware industry.

For an introduction to Mr. Shih, who hails from Taiwan, I recommend Fortune’s article, “The man behind the netbook craze,” and the accompanying video from CNNmoney, “Beyond The Netbook.”

The article describes Shih’s company, Asus, as “Taiwan’s HP and Apple rolled into one.”

He [Jonney Shih] is the largest shareholder and chairman of Asustek (pronounced a-soos-tech), the $21-billion-a-year tech conglomerate that introduced the first netbook three years ago, ushering in a revolution in the stagnant PC industry. When it hit stores in the fall of 2007, Shih’s $399 EeePC was derided by rivals as a low-power plaything. But Asustek, or Asus for short, went on to sell millions of the mini-notebooks and soon vaulted to No. 5 in worldwide PC market share.

Today virtually every PC manufacturer on the planet, including Dell (DELL), Hewlett- Packard (HPQ), and Toshiba, offers its own version of netbook. (The exception is Apple (AAPL).) But the biggest netbook maker, with 38% of the market, is another Taiwanese tech company, Acer, which also happens to be Shih’s former employer. Asus, which had the market all to itself for about eight months, is now in second place, with a 30% share.

The following sentences at the end of the article are ones which really got my attention.

Shih’s instinct tells him that the “next netbook” won’t come from an engineering specification but from understanding how people use devices to communicate, get work done, and play. More than ever he is pouring company resources into design.

He pulls out a prototype of the forthcoming Eee Keyboard, an aluminum-clad keyboard with a touchscreen on one side. Via a wireless connection, it turns a flat-screen television into a websurfing, Facebook-friendly device. From his pocket emerges a smartphone that Asus developed with navigation company Garmin.

The Asus-Garmin phone has been a dud, and the keyboard isn’t out yet, but those items suggest that Shih is thinking about more easy-to-use, affordable products that are integrated as part of a digital lifestyle. “My competitors are doing their own version of the EeePC,” Shih says, “but I don’t know if they have the vision of how everything can work together.”

Key words here are “easy to use,” “affordable,” and integration. We’ve heard and seen another company focus on the first and last of these three terms quite well in the past decade. Can Shih make “affordable” go with both those other terms? The netbook revolution is well underway, and Shih has already shown his ability to creatively innovate. It’s not a stretch to say Asus is a company to watch under Shih’s leadership.

Technorati Tags:
netbook, asus, shih, jonney

Two weeks ago in Oklahoma City at the “Oral History for the 21st Century” symposium, I mentioned in my presentation that the transcription power of Google Voice suggested that exciting new transcription possibilities are on the horizon for oral historians. On November 19th, Google announced new functionality for YouTube including automatic annotations and language translation functions for uploaded videos. In the official Google blog post, “Automatic captions in YouTube,” Google announced:

…we’ve combined Google’s automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short. Auto-caps use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video. The captions will not always be perfect (check out the video below for an amusing example), but even when they’re off, they can still be helpful—and the technology will continue to improve with time.

In addition to automatic captions, we’re also launching automatic caption timing, or auto-timing, to make it significantly easier to create captions manually. With auto-timing, you no longer need to have special expertise to create your own captions in YouTube. All you need to do is create a simple text file with all the words in the video and we’ll use Google’s ASR technology to figure out when the words are spoken and create captions for your video. This should significantly lower the barriers for video owners who want to add captions, but who don’t have the time or resources to create professional caption tracks.

These announcements are timely considering our desire to promote greater accessibility for the K-12 Online Conference next month. This year we’re again using DotSub to encourage multi-lingual subtitling of videos. If we can arrange to publish our longer videos on YouTube, it would be great to try out these automated annotation options. It appears that to participate in YouTube’s Partner Program for Nonprofits, an organization “must have current IRS 501(c)(3) status.” Since K12Online is not an official organization, I don’t think we can do this. If you have ideas or suggestions on this topic, please let me know.

I’m very enthused to see the power of Google Voice’s transcriptions coming to video. Check out the video “Automatic Captions in YouTube Demo” for more details on this exciting breakthrough.

Technorati Tags:
convert, k12online, k12online09, speech, translate, video, youtube, text, automatic

I’ve been fascinated by the reactions of different people this fall (showing my North America bias here, clearly) when I’ve broached the subject of netbooks for K-12 students in 1:1 learning settings. I’ve met educators extremely enthusiastic about the power, flexibility, and durability of netbooks, and I’ve met vendors who dismissed the entire netbook technology as useless, underpowered, throwaway toys.

If you’re still a netbook-doubter when it comes to 1:1 learning initiatives, consider Google Chrome OS. The current English Wikipedia article for it predicts a stable release in the second quarter of 2010. Yesterday’s CNN article, “Google OS: the end of the hard drive?,” predicts availability even later in the year:

The first Chrome OS netbooks will be available in late 2010, [Sundar] Pichai said. It will not be available as a download to run and install. Instead, Chrome OS is only shipping on specific hardware from manufacturers Google has partnered with. That means if you want Chrome OS, you’ll have to purchase a Chrome OS device.

I’m surprised to hear Chrome OS won’t be bootable from a flash drive if you’re running a different hardware platform. Mandating that a specific type of hardware will be required to run the OS sounds more like Apple than Google. Given Google’s preference for open standards and an open platform like the Android OS, I’ll be surprised if these predictions of a limited platform for Google OS pan out. Time will tell.

The three minute, 20 second YouTube video, “What is Google Chrome OS?” was published last Wednesday and gives a good overview (in a style reminiscent of Lee LeFever and his Common Craft “In Plain English” video series) about Chrome OS:

It is interesting that the video authors chose to highlight the word “stateless” to describe cloud-based computing on a browser-based OS like Chrome OS. I would have thought they would discuss “cloud computing” as a term instead.

Are client-side applications dead? Hardly. If you’ve done any serious video editing lately, you don’t need to be convinced of this. Cloud-based / stateless computing functionalities are exploding, however, and making the viability of netbooks running Ubuntu as well as (eventually) the Chrome OS stronger than ever. If you have doubts, check out the curriculum for the Google Workshop for Educators I helped facilitate with Lisa Thumann a week ago in Austin. The creative and collaborative possibilities with Google tools alone are AMAZING today. And these powerful functionalities are only going to grow in the months and years ahead.

When is your school district going to finally abandon paper-based textbooks and invest in netbooks along with digital curriculum for all students instead? 2010 won’t be too early.

Wondering how Google proposes to handle your digital music collection, if everything is stored “in the cloud?” Part of the answer is coming December 8th, according to the BBC, when Vevo is released.

Common Craft’s 3 minute “Cloud Computing in Plain English” video was released on November 11th, and provides an excellent overview of what cloud computing is and why it’s so compelling relative to older models of maintaining and supporting your own enterprise servers.

A new computing day has dawned. Has your organizational IT department officially noticed yet?

Technorati Tags:
1to1, education, google, laptop, learning, netbook, netbooks, onetoone, os, school, chrome, chromeos, computing, gwe

It’s rare I have praise for a Microsoft product, but tonight I have to share my successful experience using the default scanning functionality of Windows 7. The fact that I had to resort to using Windows7 on my Netbook is less a reflection on Apple as it is a poor reflection on HP which has failed to update their PSC 1350 product software in a timely fashion.

Thankfully this doesn’t happen too often, but this afternoon I found myself frustrated by a series of problems relating to scanning a document. Our family owns a HP PSC 1350 “All in One” printer / copier / scanner, and we’ve been generally pleased with its performance over the years. For some reason, however, HP has NOT updated the scanning software available for the PSC 1350 since Apple released OS 10.6 (”Snow Leopard”) in August this year. Since the default Apple “Image Capture” application will not work for some reason with this HP scanner, I’m still unable to use the scanning functionality of the device with any of the updated Mac computers in our home.

That fact alone is pretty frustrating, but today the situation was made worse by the fact I couldn’t get my virtualized versions of Windows XP to install and run the HP scanning software. I have an older version of Parallels for Mac, and the last time I had to scan a document (several weeks ago) I downloaded and used a trial version of the newer version of Parallels (required for use with Mac OS 10.6) to use HP scanning software. I have a still-functioning version of VMware Fusion as well, however, so today (because I didn’t want to pay $ to upgrade Parallels just to scan a single document) I tried to use my copy of VMWare. I hadn’t used it in awhile, so Windows wanted to install 61 new updates.

I skipped these updates for the time being, and just tried to download and install the HP drivers for my PSC 1350. The full software and driver installation package is over 300 MB, and sadly my small (10 GB) partition for my virtualized version of WinXP is running out of disk space. You’d think it would be a simple process to shut down the virtualized WinXP installation and simply increase the size of the virtual disk– but it’s not that simple with XP. VMWare lets users increase the size of a virtual drive, but it’s a pretty complex process to run a separate Windows program to resize the partition. I did not want to mess with such ridiculousness, so when I was on the edge of giving up on this simple task… just scanning a document… I remembered my Netbook running the Windows 7 release client.

According to HP’s instructions, the core faxing functionality of Windows 7 supports the PSC 1350 once a driver has been recognized, downloaded and installed. I plugged my HP PSC 1350 into my netbook running Win7, and eventually (it took a few minutes for some reason) it recognized that it needed to download a HP series 1300 driver. After that driver installed, I selected the included “Windows Fax and Scan” program from the START menu, under ALL PROGRAMS.

I next clicked NEW SCAN, and TIFF as my output format. The program did the rest.

I saved to the desktop, emailed it to myself, and was finished with my scan job. Back on my Mac, I used the built-in “Preview” application to convert the scanned TIFF to a PDF, and then saved that PDF to a folder along with 3 other PDFs I’d created on Friday. I then used Combine PDFs (freeware) to merge all four PDFs into a single document I could email. Mission accomplished.

I regret I had to resort to using a Windows operating system to scan my document today, but I really didn’t know where else to turn. Until HP chooses to update the scanning software they provide for the PSC 1350, it’s useless to me as a Mac-compatible scanning device. It prints fine from our Macs, but it won’t scan.

Thankfully, Windows 7 proved to be very friendly and easy to use today, when it “scanned to the rescue.” Glad I have a netbook!

I created the above Windows7 screenshots using the free and open-source program, Zscreen, which does support direct uploads to Flickr like Skitch does. It doesn’t support screensnap annotations the way Skitch does, but it worked reasonably well and fast.

Technorati Tags:
apple, hp, netbook, software, update, printer, driver, psc, 1350, psc1350, scan, scanning

Cross-posted to the Storychasers blog.

This week Oklahoma educators participated in our 29th “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices” workshop since 2008, and created some fantastic digital stories about the history, geography, and people of our great state.

Did you know Oklahoma is home to a growing black bear population and just had its first open hunting season for bears this year? Brad Hill used photos from his own game camera to create the 1 min, 17 second video, “Bears of Leflore County.”

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

When you think of tar pits, you might think of southern California and La Brea. You also should think of Lawton, Oklahoma! Alba Dissinger used her own photos to create and share the video “Fort Sill Tar Pit” to tell about this unique archeological site in Oklahoma.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Do you know the bison herd in Western Oklahoma in the Wichita Mountains was repopulated thanks to several bison sent from New York and the Bronx Zoo? These facts and many more are shared by Sydney Perry in her video, “Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.” Sidney used the free website drop.io to have friend and refuge docent Katherine Hunt narrate this six minute video using her cell phone!

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Kacey Kinsey leads a Girls’ Circle each week in the after-school program at her school, and it continues to make a HUGE difference in the lives of students who participate. Her video “Girls Circle” tells this story, including the voices of her students.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

What’s the longest marriage you’ve heard of? Michelle LeAnn Slay’s grandparents have been married for 70 years! Michelle used iMovie along with Audacity to create the touching video, “70 Years of Love and Marriage” during our COV workshop this week.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Isn’t it amazing to see the creative and powerful media messages Oklahoma educators can craft in an intensive, 2.5 day workshop on digital storytelling?! All these videos and more (494 in all, as of this writing) are available for FREE and OPEN access in our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices online learning community. Our collaborative storytelling efforts continue! Great work, Oklahoma educators!

Technorati Tags:
celebrate, digital, digitalstorytelling, history, marriage, oklahoma, story, storytelling, travel, voice, voices, geography, bear, bears, leflore, howe, wildlife, bison, mountains, celebration

This is an excellent thirteen minute video of ideas from Alan November about transforming our schools into the learning spaces we need in the 21st century.

Find more videos like this on NL Connect

Among many things, Alan says:

We need to redefine learners as contributors. This requires a fundamental shift in our thinking about schools. The toughest part is not teaching teachers to use technology… What I can’t do in an afternoon is help people become comfortable with shifting control… Global communicator, global researcher, tool builder, and internal collaborator (with Google Docs)… are the types of skills… essential in the workplace. We move from “teacher as boss”… to a model as “worker as collaborator… self-directed… knows how to do research… empowered…”

Alan cites Bob Sprankle and The Room 208 podcast in this video. He also cites Darren Kuropatwa and the model of scribe posts.

H/T to Brenda Dyck and Maryann Richardson for pointing me to the post, “Essential Education: “Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom” by Alan November,” where I found this video.

Technorati Tags:
change, education, reform, school, transform, transformation, alan, november

Please join educators worldwide TONIGHT/TODAY on November 18, 2009 at 22:30GMT/ 3:30pmPST/
4:30pmMST/ 5:30pmCST/ 6:30pmEST
for a live event of the 2009 K12Online Conference

On November 18, the K12Online Conference is hosting a LAN party from 6:30PM to 8:30PM EST. We invite everyone to gather at the LAN party site with colleagues in order to view two past conference presentations and then engage in lively discussions in the EdTechTalk chatroom. The following presenters will be in attendance.

6:30 – 7:15pm Second Life: K-20 Educators Exploring Virtual Worlds – Panel

Kevin Jarrett and Sylvia Martinez

Kevin has been a K-4 Technology Facilitator at Northfield Community School in Northfield, NJ USA since 2003. In this role he is responsible for technology instruction in a lab setting for the entire elementary student body (540+ students). Rather than just “teaching computer class,” Kevin delivers engaging, informative, challenging and enjoyable lessons that integrate with content being taught by his classroom-teacher peers while leveraging state-of-the-art Web 2.0 and social media technologies. Kevin began exploring Second Life in early 2007 thanks to a $10,000 Faculty Excellence grant from Walden University where he teaches online, part-time. He works closely with ISTE via their presence in Second Life and helps to manage the very popular Tuesday night “Speaker Series”.…………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Sylvia Martinez is president of Generation YES, working to empower students in K-12 schools through digital technology. Sylvia has designed educational games, curriculum, and online experiences for teachers and students. Sylvia speaks and writes on subjects such as the use of technology, simulations and games to enhance educational opportunities and enable youth voice.

6:45 – 7:30pm Release the Hounds - Chris Harbeck

Chris Harbeck teaches grade 8 math to approximately 140 students each year. He has been teaching middle school students for over a decade and is in his fifth year of using 2.0 applications and “21st Century Learning” in his classroom. Despite the fact (or more realistically because of the fact) that math is one of those subjects students often reflect back on with distaste, fear or indifference, Chris has moved from teaching both social studies and math to the one subject. He has been involved in development of the middle years math curriculum at the divisional and provincial level. With his strong focus on conceptual understanding, Chris has discovered that using 2.0 tools and applications make math fun and interesting. An encouraging trend has emerged: students do not run away and saying “I hate math”; they love to do assignments and have started to see the beauty in math.

The EdTechTalk community will host this event at http://www.edtechtalk.com/live.
For questions or more information, contact Susan Van Gelder, Live Events Committee, at susanvg@mac.com or on Twitter at @k12online.

Cross-posted on the K-12 Online Conference blog.

Technorati Tags:
k12online, k12online09, pd, webcast, edtechtalk

Greg Thompson in his post, “The Landscape of Educational Culture” has it right. We must re-imagine our schools and end the madness of high stakes testing as well as “standards-based” educational reform. He writes:

We can’t have both. We can’t create a thriving, innovative, creative, vibrant learning environment and pair it with common standards supported by textbooks and assessed by standardized tests. The two ideas are diametrically opposed. To waste time and money attempting to force these two into a relationship would be as futile as Romeo and Juliet’s parents trying to keep them apart. And remember, in the end their kids died.

It is inevitable that students will learn . . . what is not so certain, is that they will do it within what we currently call “school.” They will find a way to generate environments much like the Meebo description – a place where they can thrive and think and explore and truly learn by doing.

Current educational “reform” is a smoke and mirrors distraction. For decades reform has been a series of piecemeal attempts to do the same thing we have always done, just differently. The real question, “Should we even be doing what we have always done?” is not being asked. What we need, is to reimagine school from the ground up, drawing on the truths we have learned about how humans learn. We need to take what we know about the power of environments that encourage and nurture creativity and innovation and not “reform” school, but finally begin to create what can honestly be called “school.”

I’m on that train with Greg. Better clear the track. We’re coming through.

Technorati Tags:
change, leadership, politics, school, standards, transform, transformation, test, naep, testing

Last week Tom Krazit reported for CNET that Google has confirmed its purchase of Gizmo5. This was confirmed on the official Google Voice blog the same day. The old Gizmo Project website (www.gizmoproject.com) now directs to Google (www.google.com/gizmo5) and new memberships have been temporarily suspended. According to Tom’s article:

Gizmo5 is a Web-based VoIP client that lets you make phone calls over the Internet, similar to programs like Skype. It’s based, however, on an open standard called SIP that fits a little better into Google’s worldview, rather than Skype’s internally-developed system.

Gizmo5 works on both PCs and mobile phones, and the technology will likely be used in some way to enhance Google Voice. Google Voice isn’t a VoIP client; it lets you use a single number to ring multiple phones and get voice mails transcribed into e-mail, but it does that over existing phone networks.

While detailed implications of this purchase are not available, it seems reasonable to speculate (especially given the fact that this announcement was shared on the “Google Voice” blog) that we’ll see some VoIP (Skype-like) calling features as well as videoconferencing capabilities added to the menu of communication options available for Google Voice users in the not-too-distant future.

AT&T wasn’t ready for or initially supportive of VoIP calls with the iPhone, and Apple has yet to approve the Google Voice iPhone application. According to the August 21st Reuters article, “Google Voice App Rejection: AT&T Blames, Apple Denies, Google Hides:”

AT&T and Apple told the FCC that they did have an agreement that Apple would not help iPhone owners use VOIP calling services like Skype on the iPhone. VOIP calls use the data, rather than the voice plan, and would cut into the companies’ profits. Thus, Apple and AT&T agreed to cripple the Skype iPhone app so it would only work when the iPhone used a Wi-Fi connection. The companies say they also agree not to let in apps that stream live television, which AT&T says would strain its network.

Given these historic reactions by AT&T as well as Apple, it seems reasonable to expect neither company will like the new developments which follow the Google acquisition of Gizmo5 either. Consumer responses, however, may differ markedly from these corporate reactions.

John C. Dvorak, writing for PC Magazine today, is all smiles for the moves we see Google making in the telecommunications world:

The notion of the IP routed free phone call has been openly discussed for a decade or more. You have to wonder if Google is the only company out there that is actually on the ball. It’s as if they have zero competition in the ideas department. Apple has a lock on handsome designs and the cool factor, and Microsoft has a lock on the mainstream OS, because it understands the concept of legacy computing. But who is as aggressive as Google?

Yahoo might have been able to create such a service, but the company lost its way when it went Hollywood under Terry Semel, and it has failed to reset itself. Yahoo could have done Google Voice.

Once it dawns on everyone what Google has really done here, you can be sure mediocre clones from companies like Microsoft will suddenly appear. But those products will almost certainly be polluted with notions like “free phone calls for $10 a month!” and other idiocies.

Once again Google has managed to make other tech companies look foolish. It’s a recurring theme.

“Kirk to Enterprise. One to beam up!”

Hat tip to my Mom for letting me know about the Gizmo5 acquisition by Google.

Technorati Tags:
google, purchase, skype, video, videoconference, videoconferencing, gizmo, sip, acquisition

The Oklahoma State Department of Education announced last week via a letter to superintendents in our state a “1:1 Digital Classroom Project Applicant’s Leadership Conference” scheduled for Monday, November 30, 2009. The conference will be held at Metro Technology Center in Oklahoma City, and registration is open for three individuals per eligible site on the SDE Conferences website.

According to the letter from Oklahoma State Superintendent Sandy Garrett:

Title II, Part D, Enhancing Education Through Technology, has received funds as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). These funds will be allocated through a competitive grant process. It is my hope this process will result in the transformation of classrooms around the state, with a focus on 1:1 learning environments in our middle and junior high schools.

To support the application process, the Oklahoma State Department of Education (SDE), in partnership with Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation, will host the 1:1 Digital Classroom Project Applicant’s Leadership Conference, Monday, November 30, 2009, at Metro Technology Center, 1900 Springlake Drive, Oklahoma City. This conference will provide an in-person opportunity to ask questions of SDE education technology staff to assist potential applicants in clarifying their understanding of the scope and nature of the work required in this application. The conference is open to eligible applicants defined as a local educational agency (LEA) that serves eighth-grade students at a school site with at least 50 percent of children that qualify for Free or Reduced School Lunch Programs as identified by the October 1, 2008, child count.

This grant initiative promises to provide much needed funding and incentives to help Oklahoma school leaders equip educators as well as students with the skills and tools needed for success in the 21st century learning environment. Kudos to our state educational leaders for launching this initiative. We need 1:1 learning environments in all our schools, so it will be exciting to see which school district and campus leaders in our state step forward to embrace the opportunities offered by this grant initiative.

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I learned this morning video content from the September 30th symposium at UCO in Edmond, Oklahoma, “A New Renaissance: A Revolution of Creativity and Learning” is available for download via iTunes. Here is a direct link to the event’s iTunesU site, which is part of UCO’s iTunes site. A link to the event’s mobile site is also available. That mobile site was created with the free platform MobilAP: The Mobile Academic Platform. I blogged about this on September 21st.

I’m downloading the “Student Presentations” video, which is 203.7 MB on the site. Note the links also available on the site to Howe Public Schools, student Jackson Fall’s personal vodcast website and channel, the KC3 contest, the Storychasing Creativity project, Storychasers, and more. Also note the deadline for submissions for the OKC3 Project (Oklahoma Kids Create, Communicate, Collaborate) has been extended!

Kudos to Apple, UCO, Creative Oklahoma, and other organizers for providing this learning opportunity and the chance to download event video via iTunesU.

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I received the following comment today on my August 21, 2009 post, “Questioning the potential value of Skype and videoconferencing in the classroom?” from Ricky. He began his comment by quoting a sentence of my post with which he took issue, and then shared his views:

“we need to make sure that networks work FOR THE USERS, not the IT department.”
99% of end-users have no concept of how IT/Networking works. It is the job of the IT department to ensure that the network continues to function first and foremost for legitimate educational purposes. While being a potentially great technology tool, it should not put other online educational applications at risk for failure simply because it’s the new “super cool” technology kid on the block. I’m also certain that taxpayers would be thrilled to know that they pay the salaries for educators to use skype/youtube/facebook/etc. for things that aren’t instruction related throughout the workday!
Enabling access to Skype for all users with clients operating in “SuperNode” mode is network suicide.

Here is my response, which I also left on that original post in the discussion thread.

Ricky:

Interesting I’m able to use Skype on numerous commercial and residential networks and those networks do not seem to have committed “network suicide.”

Skype has numerous “legitimate educational purposes.” I use it all the time for professional work as well as providing professional development. Many in IT are unaware of the educational benefits of Skype and similar desktop videoconferencing programs. One of the largest public school districts in our state decided in the last year not to order any webcams for any laptops that were going to be used by students, because they did not consider webcams to have any valid educational use. This perception is both false and unfortunate. Like any tool, a webcam can be abused. The inappropriate uses of a tool by a small minority of users should not result it the banning of the tool for use by all users. Sadly this is what we see time and time again in educational IT circles.

Of course you are correct that “online educational applications” should not be put “at risk” by other technology tools being used on networks with limited bandwidth. That is why our school / educational networks at the K-12 level need to look more like networks at our colleges and universities: Separate VLANs for public wifi, allocated bandwidth for institutional IT purposes, student/public use, etc.

I have never advocated the use of educational networks to distractedly watch YouTube videos all day long and social network using sites like Facebook. Users should be permitted to make these choices, however, and network use should be monitored and discussed with users. If a teacher is watching YouTube all day long instead of teaching his/her class at school, that’s certainly a problem and would be an ADMINISTRATIVE problem for the principal to address, not the IT department by banning all staff and students from using the website YouTube.

The decision to prohibit these destinations by the IT department is inappropriate censorship which can be more readily understood in a closed society like China, but not in an ostensibly free society like ours in the United States which values both free expression and open access to ideas.

Most of our school districts need far more bandwidth today than they have currently. We need greater involvement by state and federal government to make high speed Internet access more accessible and affordable in many areas, especially our rural communities. The differences in access and pricing for broadband in countries like Korea and Japan is stark when compared to the United States. We didn’t wait for corporations with ROI calculations to provide electrification for our rural communities in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. We formed co-ops which had governmental support to insure these needed services were supplied to all areas. We need to do the same thing with broadband.

Larry Lessig discusses the phenomenon we’re seeing here with IT administrators in his book, “The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World.” Technological tools provide great latitude for censorship in our organizational networks today. The availability and possibility of such censorship does not coincide with its propriety in a free and open society. Certainly we have limits and constraints on openness in our country, I am far from an anarchist and am not saying the IT department doesn’t have an important role to play in monitoring and at times regulating bandwidth utilization on the network. I am saying that blanket prohibition of sites like YouTube, Skype, Facebook, etc, is wrong and inappropriate in our educational institutions because it amounts to censorship above the paygrade of the IT department to mandate.

A few quotations to consider, thanks to the publisher of the Flickr photo above.

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” — Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

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