As an educator, if you believe learning is all about the passive consumption of content, you might be ecstatic to learn about Amazon’s new Kindle eBook reader, released to compete with the Sony eBook reader that hit shelves this fall. (Nod to “The Clever Sheep,” Rodd Lucier.) If you are yearning for a smaller, cooler
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In your opinion, what are the most important digital tools for teachers to use personally and with students in the classroom? That is a basic question we will start with in tomorrow’s workshop in Richardson, Texas, which begins at 8:30 am US Central time and runs till about noon. Please share your ideas and links
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I’m in Dallas this evening, and will be presenting what should be a fun workshop tomorrow at the Region 10 Education Service Center in Richardson for their staff, which I have titled “Powerful Ingredients for Digitally Interactive Learning.” As usual, I’m making some last minute adjustments to my presentation and curriculum for tomorrow, but unfortunately
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This podcast is a 40 minute interview with Alexander, a 10 year old fourth grader who has been playing the online simulation war game Travian for the past month. In addition to being fun and highly engaging, Travian requires players to quantitatively manage multiple resources (wheat, clay, iron, and wood,) negotiate alliances, effectively deal with
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Podcast209: A 10 year old discusses Travian, an online simulation war game [ 40:27 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (7574)My son and I recorded a podcast interview today in Garageband using two different USB microphones at the same time. We had not ever done this before, but learned how by using this YouTube video from MacMost as well as this Apple Garageband support article. We’ll be posting this podcast here later today, which lasted
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If you’re looking for some holiday reading related to digital learning, check out this great set of free ebooks from MIT Press Journals and the MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Thanks to Nancy McKeand, via Clarence Fisher, via Danah Boyd, for this link! What is this virtual breadcrumb trail of attribution called?
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In today’s CNN article “Bill would ban military slot machines,” Drew Griffin relates the story of Army Warrant Officer Aaron Walsh who “became addicted to gambling on military slot machines,” eventually resigned from the Army, and was homeless in Las Vegas for a period of time before committing suicide in 2006. Since moving to Oklahoma
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We had an important and thought provoking conversation this evening at home regarding digital ethics. For his 10th birthday, thanks to the generosity of my in-laws who were willing to negotiate a “trade” for their old titanium G4 Powerbook, my wife and I were able to give our 10 year old son his own laptop
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Dreaming of a 1:1 learning environment with a supportive administration and good pay to boot? Consider the Korea International School in Seoul, South Korea. Clay Burell has put out a call, writing: “Teacher 2.0″ types are eagerly sought. We’ve got the machines; now we need the visionaries and teachergeeks. The pay is better by far
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I uploaded the last set of photos from last week’s Oklahoma Digital Learning Project trip to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii this evening. All photos are now available in a collection, and they are organized by day in each set. I need to make several additional VoiceThreads with these images. This trip was filled with powerful experiences,
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Andrew Church makes a good case for teachers permitting and even encouraging students to use WikiPedia during their research projects for school. I would extend his encouragement even further, and assert that teachers should encourage students to also AUTHOR WikiPedia articles. Teachers need to author and contribute to articles themselves as well. There are multiple
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This podcast is a keynote address I shared on December 12, 2007, with teachers at the Good Shephard Episcopal School in Dallas, Texas, over skype as a videoconference to kick off a day of professional development focused on distance learning. We discussed the ways audio recording and podcasting technologies can be viewed as disruptive and
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Podcast208: Blending Learning with Powerful Ingredients [ 39:50 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1325)I’ve been keeping watch from time to time this week on the dynamically generated graph from our power company (OG&E) showing how many Oklahoma customers have been without electricity. On an aggregate basis, according to this morning’s Daily Oklahoman newspaper (NewsOK.com) over 600,000+ people are still without electricity statewide. My first screenshot from December 10th
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I have uploaded the entire dedication ceremony for the USS Oklahoma Memorial from December 7, 2007, in Pearl Harbor Hawaii to the OETA ftp server for subsequent transfer and posting to the NewsOK.com “Brightcove” video server. The entire ceremony was approximately two hours long. These videos will be subsequently “chunked” into pieces that are less
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Our 47 minute videoconference on December 6, 2007, from Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, is available in three different segments from OETA and NewsOK.com. This was a fantastic interactive videoconference, and was followed by an additional 45 minute question and answer videoconference with Oklahoma students. Dick Pryor of OETA hosted and facilitated conversations with
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I’m presenting a webinar today for COSN (The Consortium for School Networking) that starts in 15 minutes, at 12 pm US Central time. The title is “Broadband Boot Camp for Educators.” The webinar is open to anyone, and will be archived and available on the COSN website for the next 90 days. (Click here to
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It’s been quite a shock to go from 75+ degree weather in Hawaii to sub-freezing temperatures and an ice storm in Oklahoma. According to an article on NewsOK.com this morning, “More than 400,000 utility customers are without power in Oklahoma right now.” Those customers include our family in southeastern Edmond. We lost power sometime in
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It’s a relief to be home at last from Honolulu after a 25+ hour travel day. Our final flight leg from Memphis to Oklahoma City was cancelled due to ice storms, so we took a flight to Dallas and drove (I did actually) all the way back home in a rental car. Glad to be
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Our ODLP (Oklahoma Digital Learning Project) team is still in Honolulu, but we are leaving in about an hour for the airport. I’ve spent several hours this morning and afternoon importing the video of the entire USS Oklahoma Memorial dedication yesterday at Pearl Harbor from the DV camera onto a hard drive. I’ll then be
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