Archive for August, 2009:


I Need my Teachers to Learn (an amazing song and video by Kevin Honeycutt)

Rae Niles forwarded the song “I Need My Teachers To Learn” to me today, and I was blown away. The song was written by Kevin Honeycutt of ESSDACK, and Charlie Mahoney from Turning Point Learning Center (TPLC) helped with percussion as well as some Garageband vocal adjustments to make him sound even more awesome! The

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OKC WordPress Aug09 Users Group Notes

These are my notes from the Oklahoma City WordPress User’s Group meeting on August 31, 2009. This was my first meeting to attend of this group. MY THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS. David North – I like WordPress because I can finally say “yes” to friends and colleagues who say “I’d like to

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Welcome to back to school PD: Let’s start live blogging

Here’s a relatively amazing back-to-school professional development story, experienced by teachers in Newport News, Virginia: Watch a movie AT the movie theater together, and live-blog it together using Twitter. According to Cathy Grimes’s article last Friday, “Teachers practice blogging at the movies:” Passage Middle School’s first gathering for faculty and staff happened in an unlikely

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Spam Twitter Followers Proliferating

Well, this is unfortunate but perhaps predictable. Email and blog spammers are apparently bored and looking for more ways to generate worthless computer packet activity– and are now turning to Twitter to create spam accounts. (I know this didn’t just start happening last week, but I’ve really noticed an uptick in these accounts and followers

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Presentation for Oklahoma State School Board Association (Celebrate Oklahoma Voices)

This past Saturday morning I presented with Dawn Danker at the Oklahoma State School Board Association (OSSBA) annual conference in Oklahoma City about our statewide oral history and digital storytelling project, Celebrate Oklahoma Voices. Dawn and I put together a new presentation about our project that was better organized and simpler than sessions I’ve shared

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eBook Resources (for iPhone users and others)

A friend of mine asked me about free ebook resources earlier today via a text message, so I’m writing this post to share ebook resources of which I’m aware both with him and others who may be interested. If you know about other ebook resources I haven’t mentioned here (and are NOT a commercial vendor

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Podcast328: Students as Self-Advocates: Why/How Learners Should Craft Their Own Digital Footprints (Ginger Lumen)

This podcast features a recording of Ginger Lumen’s presentation with her students at the 2009 PodStock conference entitled, “Students as Self-Advocates: Why/How Learners Should Craft Their Own Digital Footprints.” The official conference description of the session was: When you last “Googled” your name, what did you find? All learners should ponder those results when considering

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Translate your WordPress blog into 40+ Languages

As humans living on the third rock from our sun, we’re still divided by language differences. I’ve dabbled with online language translators like Babelfish (formerly by AltaVista, now by Yahoo) in the past, but I’m amazed how far this functionality has come in recent months. Richard Byrne reported on Thursday that Google Docs now offers

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iPod Touch Camera and Mic Coming Sept 9?

The Apple rumors continue to fly. Brian Chen’s post “What to Expect From Apple’s September iPod Event” for Wired predicts we’ll see a new iPod Touch with a camera and microphone announced on September 9th, along with iPod Nanos with cameras– but no Apple Tablet until 2010. He writes: There’s a pile of evidence suggesting

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Student Reporter interviews President Obama

Cross posted to the Storychasers blog. Earlier this month student reporter Damon Weaver interviewed President Barack Obama, and the 10 minute interview was posted to YouTube: According to the school’s YouTube channel description: KEC TV is an award winning television news program that is broadcasted to the 500 students at KEC/Canal Point Elementary. The news

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Oklahoma Social Media Publishers: Throw Your Voice on October 3!

This month I become a member of The Oklahoma City Coworking Collaborative, and as a result have met a number of new folks in OKC passionate about social media and digital technologies. (We’ve got a bunch already in our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices learning community!) I’m enthused to pass along the announcement from Derrick Parkhurst that

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An iPhone-recorded International Cooking Show Episode

Cross-posted to Learning Signs, linked from the International Cooking Show project wiki. Sarah recorded a 6 min, 43 second episode for “The International Cooking Show” tonight and made Black Bean Dip. This is usually served as an appetizer, but we ate this tonight for our dinner. We need some other participants to make this project

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A mentor and new media luminary takes a blogging hiatus

Thanks to a tweet from Will Richardson, I learned today that higher education blogging luminary Larry Lessig is officially ending his blogging activities on his personal blog, Lessig.org/blog. Dr. Lessig helped found Creative Commons and was one of the first higher education professors I encountered (probably through his then-published column in Wired magazine) and inspired

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Using brain waves to control robotic arms, value of diverse podcast subscriptions

My son, Alexander, and I are commuting now in the mornings down to Oklahoma City so he can attend Classen SAS. The drive is about 20-30 minutes, depending on traffic, and last week we discussed that we should listen to a book on tape or some podcasts on our commutes. This morning we listened to

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Oklahoma City area WordPress User Group Meeting

Thanks to James Deaton, I learned we have an Oklahoma City-area WordPress user’s group which meets just down the road from our house at Oklahoma Christian University! The next scheduling meeting is for Monday, August 31, 2009, at 7 pm. I really need to learn how to manage my WordPress server logs and troubleshoot error

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Recommended resources for a new school librarian

Angie Shaw is a new school librarian in Gering, Nebraska, and was formerly a 3rd grade teacher. Gering is in the extreme western side of the Nebraska panhandle. I learned about Angie from the post “I Met Myself Today” last week by Beth Still (Nebraska Change Agent.) I left the following message for Angie on

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Hi tech Disney demos for A Christmas Carol

This past Friday after I picked up my son from school, we stopped by our downtown Oklahoma City Amtrak station for a free tour of the Christmas Carol Movie train. One of the most interactive portions of the tour was being able to use provided HP touchscreen computers (which regularly displayed application crash error messages,

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New Ustream and Qik Apps available for iPhone, but no live-streaming without jailbreak

Both Ustream and Qik now have official applications available in the iTunes Store for the iPhone GS, but neither permit live webcasting/streaming– the versions which do still require a jailbreak. Both of the official iTunes Store apps also require an iPhone 3G S, while the jailbreak versions function on any iPhone. The official iPhone Ustream

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Learning about new iPhone and iTouch Apps (Aug 2009)

Last Saturday we visited our local Apple Store in Oklahoma City, and had fun learning about several new applications for the iPhone and iTouch. The video which plays in the store window advertises several new apps, most of which are commercial. Of the apps we tried on the iPod Touches in the store, the following

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Questioning the potential value of Skype and videoconferencing in the classroom?

Are folks in your IT department, your school administrative leaders, school board members, or others questioning the educational value of Skype and other videoconferencing solutions in the classroom? If so, I commend the following resources. Neil Stephenson‘s post on ISTEconnects this past spring, “The Many Roles of Skype in the Classroom,” provides outstanding examples of

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