Archive for August, 2008:


Searching for the ideal StoryChaser camera

Over the past few weeks I’ve fallen in love with the Sony GC-1 Camera I picked up for $50 at a local electronics store after NECC “as is” without a box, cables, or instructions. I first wrote about this camera in my July 26th post, “Transformative power of flash-based video cameras.” The camera shoots 5

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Missing mobile alert in GMail

I love using Google Mail. I made a full transition from Yahoo Mail to GMail for my personal email several months ago and I haven’t looked back– much. Today I found one feature I really like in Yahoo Mail that is evidently missing in GMail, however: Mobile Alerts. Yahoo Mail and GMail let users create

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Goodstein on “Totally Wired” Students

In this video Anastasia Goodstein talks about her book, Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online, and gives us the scoop on Judy Jetson, MySpace, IM, LJ, and the always-on digital lifestyles of today’s Gen Y student. As you listen to Anastasia, think about how teens use technology and social media in

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Teachers.tv: Kids, Social Safety & Digital Literacy

Teachers.TV, a UK-based professional development site for educators, has a great video on teaching kids about information literacy, social networking and web safety. This is a refreshingly rational analysis and discussion of the issues surrounding kids, web safety and social media. This video also outlines several classroom activities that teachers can use with their students

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MNet Social Safety Resources

The Media Awareness Network (MNet) is home to one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of media education and Internet literacy resources. The website has a wide variety of free resources for teachers (en)(fr), parents (en)(fr), and students (en)(fr). One of their special initiatives is the Be Web Aware (en)(fr) program, which includes many helpful

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Geography 2.0: A Juicy Way to Mash Up Learning

WikiMapia is a “wiki meets Google Maps” mash-up intended to be used as a digital geographic encyclopedia reference tool. In its current incarnation, WikiMapia is a little rough around the edges, but keep this site on your list of potential teaching tools. Here’s how WikiMapia works: Key landmarks, such as Rainbow Arch in Utah, the

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Education, Learning and Media Megatrends

Earlier this year, the New Media Consortium and the Educase Learning Initiative released The New Horizon Report, outlining which current and burgeoning technologies they feel will “impact education over the next five years.“ The report includes several “mega trends” in educational technology, including user-generated video (or “grassroots” video), mobile, collaborative web environments, as well as

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Welcome Derek Baird, guest blogger!

I’d like to welcome Derek Baird who will be guest blogging here for the next couple of days as my son and I head to Turner Falls Park in the Oklahoma Arbuckle Mountains for several days sans technology. Since Turner Falls is right beside I-35 exit 51 Fried Pies, you can bet some of the

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Podcast273: Technology Shopping Cart Podcast08 – Screencasting for Learning

Welcome to episode eight of the Technology Shopping Cart podcast where educational innovation thrives on the food of creative ideas! This episode was recorded on August 8, 2008, and shared live over the web using Ustream.tv and Skype. Karen Montgomery and Wesley Fryer discuss reasons to use as well as create screencasts, places to find

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ReadingFirst, NCLB, School Accountability, and our Educational Future

Thanks to Doug Noon for bringing Susan Harman and Deborah Meier’s new article series “How to Resist the Growing Threat to U.S. Education” to my attention this evening. As I listened to Scott Elias and Melinda Miller’s “Testing 1-2-3″ Practical Principals’ podcast from May 2nd on my commute to and from work today I kept

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Strange podcast download spike

This is strange and I don’t have an explanation. Since December 2007 (Podcast209 to be exact) I’ve used the PodPress plug-in for WordPress to do several podcast-related things including generate an approximate total “count” of the downloads to each of my podcasts. PodPress counts the times website visitors start the playback of a podcast in

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Podcast272: A Conversation about the Cell Phone Audio Tour at the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum

This podcast is a recorded interview with Nancy Coggins, Marketing and Communications Director for the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, discussing the new cell phone audio tour which museum staff have made available for the past two months. The Memorial and Museum’s video podcast virtual tour has won national recognition in the past and

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QuickStart Guide for Internet Research with Google Notebook

I’m sharing a morning workshop on Friday for high school teachers in Mustang, Oklahoma, and will provide a brief overview of Google Notebook. In preparation for that workshop, I’ve created a ten page handout titled “A QuickStart Guide for Internet Research with Google Notebook.” Feel free to use and redistribute this as desired, as with

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Helping young people prepare for IT related careers

I’ve been sorting, digitizing, filing and discarding handouts and brochures from conference events I’ve collected the past few months, and ran across a “Talking Points” handout from the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) titled, “Why should young women consider a career in Information Technology?” The handout itself is available as a printable

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72 Years of Free Barbeque

In line with the spirit of the developing Storychasers project, I’ve created a six minute documentary about yesterday’s free community barbeque in Dalhart, Texas, offered as part of the festivities for the annual XIT Rodeo. As they have for the past 72 years, community volunteers prepared nine thousand pounds of barbeque meat with all the

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Coordinate plane graphing for Travian

My 10 year old son and I are continuing to play the free online strategy game Travian, and the game on our server has moved into its final stages. To win the game, members of an alliance must first conquer a village from the Natars tribe which contains the plans for a Wonder of the

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Storychasing the 2008 XIT Rodeo and Ranch

Our family is in Dalhart, Texas, this weekend for the annual XIT Rodeo. My in-laws are from Dalhart and are attending their 50th high school reunion, in addition to the XIT Rodeo which triples the population of Dalhart each year during this single weekend. According to the “Thumbnail History of the XIT Ranch” from the

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This is why we have so few laptop initiatives in Oklahoma

I shared this entry as a new post on the TechLearning blog, but am cross-posting here because of problems we’ve had with the commenting features over there. Feel free to comment on that post (if you can) or here. I had a conversation this evening with a professor from Oklahoma Christian University (OC) that broke

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Behold the power of photo tagging

I saw Will Richardson’s post about PicLens today, and then received the following email from an intern at Cooliris, the company which developed PicLens. Hi Wesley, My name is Luna and I’m a Stanford student interning at Cooliris. Your blog always has great topics for educators and I thought that you’d be interested in our

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MemoryArchive and wikified history

I had a wonderful visit over the phone this evening with Derek Baird, who USED to be with Yahoo! for Teachers (before Yahoo cancelled the program – although strangely the website is still up) and I’ve known through our collaborative work for the professional development committee of the K-12 Online Conference. We were visiting about

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