This morning I shared a presentation titled “Multimedia and Social Web School Publishing Exemplars” with educators gathered at the University of Oklahoma for the Oklahoma RTNDF Multimedia Workshop. Many thanks to Tammy Parks of Howe, Oklahoma, for getting me involved with this GREAT summer learning opportunity for teachers. After my presentation, Dr. Syb (“The Multimedia
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At long last, the U.S. Department of Education released guidelines for states utilizing ARRA (stimulus) funds for educational technology. Here are the highlights from today’s eSchoolNews article, “ED issues rules on ed-tech stimulus funds.” My thoughts, comments, additions, paraphrases and clarifications are included [in brackets]. States can use up to 5% of funds for “state-level
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Katie Ash‘s July 12, 2009, article for Education Week’s Digital Directions magazine, “Digital Voice Recorders Turn Students Into Interviewers,” includes several quotations from Don Wilson, director of instructional technology for Mid-Del Schools in Oklahoma as well as yours truly, concerning Storychasers and our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices project. Katie did a GREAT job with her quotations
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Jason Kinkaid’s post on TechCruch today, “Apple Yanks The Cord On GV Mobile. Is It Trying To Kill Google Voice On The iPhone?” is worth reading. Jason reveals previously approved applications in the iTunes Store have been removed by Apple which supported Google Voice and development has been killed on an iPhone native app for
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I absolutely love using Apple computers, Apple mobile devices, and Apple software. Netbooks have really challenged my thinking about 1:1 computing in schools in the past year or so, however, and I am definitely not alone. Yesterday at an Oklahoma City AT&T store, I had a chance to get my hands on a Dell Inspiron
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Great photo from Will Richardson. When your classroom looks like this (hopefully with fewer students) are you still going to teach the same? Based on what little I’ve heard locally from a university that’s gone 1:1 with both laptops and iPhones, the answer often is sadly, “Yes.” This Kaplan ad as well as the latest
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Thanks to a Creative Leadership Forum blog post today, I learned about and watched Clay Shirkey’s YouTube video, “How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history.” In 17 minutes, Shirley relates his views on what government officials need to understand about social media and the fundamental shifts we are witnessing in our communications landscape. These lessons
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This podcast is a recording of the presentation “R U In My Space? Y Have A Social Media Policy Guideline?” at the NECC 2009 conference in Washington D.C. on July 1, 2009. Karen Montgomery and Wesley Fryer shared this presentation, along with Gina Hartman who joined us via Skype. Gina and Karen collaborated with others
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Podcast323: R U In My Space? Y Have A Social Media Policy Guideline? (NECC09 Preso by Karen Montgomery and Wesley Fryer) [ 1:11:30 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2244)
We wrapped up our tenth 2.5 day “phase 1″ Celebrate Oklahoma Voices digital storytelling workshop for summer 2009 today in Hugo, Oklahoma. These were five of the fifteen wonderful stories created by the K-12 teachers who participated in our workshop this week. All but one of those stories are available now on our COV learning
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This past Wednesday I drove up to Wichita, Kansas, and saw a brochure for “Lincoln in Kansas” in the Kansas visitor’s center located at the rest stop just south of Wichita on I-35. The sponsoring organization is: … an all volunteer group representing various agencies, museums, historical societies and visitor centers/chambers of commerce working to
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The highlight of my visit to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at the end of June this summer, when I was in Washington DC for NECC 2009, was definitely seeing the completed UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) exhibit. My son, Alexander, helped me film and upload (from the Smithsonian, on-site) a five minute video from
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I love this quotation from Seth Godin, which is included as slide #83 in Marta Kagan’s new SlideShare “What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later.” The word blog is irrelevant. What’s important is that it is now common, and will soon be expected, that every intelligent person (and quite a few unintelligent ones)
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If you use a commercially hosted blogging platform like Blogger, EduBlogs, WordPress.com, Squarespace, or Typepad, count your blessings when it comes to upgrade headaches. I do enjoy using and love self-hosted WordPress blogs, but there is a periodic price to pay in time as well as hand-wringing which comes with self-hosting. Updating / upgrading WordPress
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Full solar eclipses don’t happen very often. One just did on July 22nd. The Flickr images are coming in. From Shenzhen, China: From Hanoi, Vietnam (I think): Some of my favorites are not embeddable from Flickr, like this one from Hong Kong, this one from Guam, and this one from Manila in The Philippines. Hat
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Two new book recommendations worth noting from Ric Murry in his post, “Why Don’t Students Like School (ch. 3).” I’ve added both to my Amazon Wish List. (Hint to all you wealthy benefactors out there, my birthday is next month on the 20th. ) First, “The Back of the Napkin” by Dan Roam. Second, “Made
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If you were going to start an after-school club at an elementary school focusing on exploratory and collaborative learning with Scratch software, what clever name would you give the club so it appeals to both boys and girls in 4th and 5th grades? Bob Sprankle’s Bit by Bit podcast 84 inspired this question today.The book
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File templates can be a teacher’s best friend. I published the article “Teaching With Templates” in TCEA’s TechEdge magazine in 1999-2000, and the opening paragraph still rings true in school computer labs and classrooms in 2009: It is amazing how easy it is to waste time on a computer. Whether a student or a teacher,
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The “four tigers” of East Asia established a model of export-led economic growth in the post-World War II global economy which demonstrated the potential for smaller governments to become economic powerhouses without a rich foundation of “traditional” natural resources like petroleum or other raw, natural materials. According to the current English WikiPedia entry: The term
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My name is Dawn Danker. I’m the Director of Operations for Oklahoma A+ Schools and the not so faithful blogger of Subtle Conversations. When Wes asked me to guest blog during his vacation, I too was honored by the invitation. Today I had the distinct pleasure of attending the Annual State Superintendent’s Leadership Conference, sponsored
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