Today was a real treat. My 9 year old daughter and I spent most of the day at Deerfield Community School, in Deerfield, New Hampshire. While Sarah was hosted by a wonderful Deerfield student and enjoyed learning about their upcoming science fair projects (as well as other topics) I met with teachers in several grade
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The lament of technology reactionaries is all too familiar: Kids don’t read anymore they just text, the golden era of literacy is over, YouTube is making us dumber rather than smarter, etc. While increased access to technology and information certainly does pose challenges and have drawbacks, when it comes to reading and literacy the news
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It is imperative we galvanize the administrative and political support to empower our students with wireless, digital learning devices as soon as possible. The availability and explosive growth of high quality digital curriculum materials should make this need plain to most adults, but in many cases it hasn’t yet. “Digital refugees” view the Internet as
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I used the free, browser-based App Library builder from the Appolicious website this evening to update our family’s shared app library for iPhone / iPod Touch applications. (We’ve now got 240, I think.) I created a new list (to accompany our existing lists of favorite education apps and my son’s favorite iPod Touch games) for
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This are my presentation slides and resources for my opening keynote Friday at the Palm Beach County Schools’ annual technology conference. My session was initially titled “CCC in the 21C,” but I tweaked the name to be, “Tales of Digital Magic: gallant heroines, evil villains, and words of power.” Resources: Moving at the Speed of
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Flip camcorders and other flash-based video cameras are not new (relatively speaking in the technology world) but this Friday was still the first time I’d seen one mounted to a tripod to record a conference session. The biggest challenge of video recording in sessions like this, I’ve found, is getting good audio quality. The built-in
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In the parody spirit of “The Doritos Tablet,” commentators at “The Onion” bring us “The MacBook Wheel.” Several good sound bytes here: Everything is just a few hundred clicks away… I’ll buy almost anything if it’s shiny and made by Apple… I like how the email automatically says, sent from a MacBook Wheel, that way
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These are my notes from Hall Davidson’s closing keynote, “Deep, Deep Dive into Digital: It’s Wild in There!” at the 12th annual Palm Beach County Schools Technology Conference. MY THOUGHTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Hall’s website on Discovery.com is “Media Matters.” Hall helped found Kitzu – I HAVE HEARD HALL SHARE KITZU PREVIOUSLY, BUT DIDN’T
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These are my notes from Dr. Kate Kemker’s presentation, “Charting a Course for Information & Communication Technology in Florida’s Schools” at the 12th annual Palm Beach County Schools Technology Conference. MY THOUGHTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Information and communication technology (ICT) has become a ubiquitous and indispensable part of the way we work and the
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These are my notes from David Jakes’ presentation “Creating Immersive Learning Environments with Mixed Media” at the 12th annual Palm Beach County Schools Technology Conference. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Official session description is: This session provides participants with an understanding of how to design interactive and immersive learning environments by blending
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Congratulations to the following nineteen Oklahoma public school districts, who were awarded ARRA grant funds by the Oklahoma State Department of Education on Thursday, March 26, 2010. Anadarko Public Schools Briggs Public School Catoosa Public Schools Cordell Public Schools Crescent Public Schools Depew Public Schools Drumright Public Schools Gage Public Schools Grand View Public School
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If you’ve watched the official Apple commercial for the iPad (and perhaps even if you haven’t yet) you’ll likely find “The Doritos Tablet” spoof video hilarious! It’s 61 seconds long. Get ready for that “multi-taste interface.” Welcome to “spice 2.0!” H/T to one of my vendor friends here at the Palm Beach County Technology Conference,
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I noticed a new option in my Google Reader this evening: Google Reader Play. Turns out the creative folks at Google announced this two weeks ago. You can choose to use Google Reader Play on ALL your subscriptions, or just for a particular folder / category. As you can see at the bottom of the
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These are my comments tonight to Scott Weidig’s post, “National Pharmacy, National Plans, National Health Care…” I share your sentiments. The thing that concerns me most, however, is the constitutionality of mandating people pay for coverage. I’m glad we’re seeing some states challenge this. I definitely think there’s consensus the system needs to change, but
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I absolutely love my iPhone and can’t wait to try out an iPad. I often wonder, however, how Apple is going to balance the creativity and new functionalities offered by new iPhone app developers with their corporate desire (and perhaps contractual obligations to AT&T) to continue exerting control and influence over certain kinds of developed
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Let’s hear it for innovative ways to help students get more excited about reading… AND… the legal, transformative remixing of copyrighted works like the song, “I’ve Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas! The five minute YouTube video, “Gotta Keep Reading,” was created by students and staff at Ocoee Middle School, working with college students
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Does your school or school district provide a moderated, interactive web platform for video sharing among students as well as teachers? While education-specific video sites like Edublogs.tv, SchoolTube, and TeacherTube can and are being used by learners around the world to share video interactively (as well as YouTube and YouTube EDU) there can be a
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The April 2010 issue of Wired Magazine includes an outstanding article by Stephen Levy titled, “Rise of the Machines: How Tablets Will Change The World.” I highly commend it to you. The release of the iPad in a few short weeks is going to be a BIG deal for literacy, communication, and digitally powered learning–
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I have a technical WordPress question I’m hoping someone can help me solve. I want to add an additional link in my WordPress theme header to a “Dynamic Duo” page Kevin Honeycutt has created for us to share, in cross-promoting each other as professional development speakers / workshop leaders / keynoters. You can see the
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If you work with folks who question the time you spend “on the clock” perusing and contributing to social media websites / micro-blogging communities like Twitter, you might direct them to Brendan Koerner’s February 2010 article for Wired, “How Twitter and Facebook Make Us More Productive.” Brendan writes: Studies that accuse social networks of reducing
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