In this two minute video, Dr. Cyndi Danner-Kuhn explains her passion for digital storytelling, oral history, and the Celebrate Kansas Voices project. Cyndi is a professor in the College of Education at Kansas State University. This video was created by Jackie Baumgartner, an educator in Phillipsburg, Kansas. Celebrate Kansas Voices (CKV) is presented by Story
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My opening keynote this evening at the inaugural conference of the Martin Center for Teaching Excellence in Memphis, Tennessee, was streamed live on Ustream and also recorded. The title of the session was, “Leading with Digital Vision in a Bubblesheet World.” My slides are available on SlideShare, as well as referenced videos and other links.
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In 1996 at Wheelock Elementary School in Lubbock, Texas, were I started my teaching career, K-6 teachers had recently received their first classroom computers. They were Macintosh LC 575s, without CD-ROM drives. They had 5 MB of RAM, they could be upgraded to Mac OS 7.5.3 which supported DHCP (woo hoo)… and they were wonderful.
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This week, as part of our VoiceThread digital storytelling assignment, my pre-service teachers at the University of North Texas enrolled in “Computers in the Classroom” are required to create a free “avatar” for themselves. In this case, when we use the word “avatar” we’re NOT talking about James Cameron’s recent film by that name! Instead,
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Steven Johnson’s four minute video, “Where Good Ideas Come From,” resonates with many of my own thoughts as well as beliefs regarding creativity and innovation. Steven is the author of “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation.” This video uses a drawing-based, stopmotion digital storytelling technique similar to that employed by Dan
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As many episodes of iCarly as my daughters have watched in the past couple of years, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that they’ve wanted to create their own web show. They created four episodes this past summer, and asked me to assist them in creating a website (www.thezebraprint.com) and associated YouTube and Twitter
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This semester I am again using the SMS text messaging service Textmarks to send periodic alerts and updates to students enrolled in my “Computers in the Classroom” section at UNT. The service has changed its terms and pricing a bit in past months, and this semester I’ve been on a free trial. Last spring I
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The English Wiktionary defines “culture shock” as: A state of anxious confusion experienced by someone exposed to an alien or unfamiliar environment. While we often think of culture shock as something experienced by people visiting different countries where people speak different languages than our own, it is not necessary to cross an international boundary to
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The Washington Post article from September 5th, “Parents use ‘digital’ grounding as a 21st century disciplinary tool,” includes some good ideas for parents of digital age kids. Facebook is a privilege, not a right. Kids CAN survive without digital access to their peers for awhile, particularly if their device use is getting in the way
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These are my notes from Karin Perry‘s presentation, “Using Social Networking Tools to Increase Discussion in the Classroom” at the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education “Reading Conference: 21st Century Learning Environments” on September 24, 2010. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Starting with discussion: What have you read recently that is fun
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I’m in the process of reading Dana Boyd’s recently published dissertation, “Taken Out of Context.” She highlights on page 120 the tendency for most teens to use social networking sites like Facebook to connect primarily with their existing face-to-face friends, rather than to meet strangers. Most youth are NOT using social networking sites to create
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These are my notes from Richard Beach’s keynote, “Different Purposes for Using of Digital Tools to Teach Literacy in the College Classroom” at the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education “Reading Conference: 21st Century Learning Environments” on September 24, 2010. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Web links for Richard Beach: – Richard
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Gary Hayes’ excellent “Social Media Count” flash widget has been updated with new statistics current as of September 2010. Be sure to notice the clickable tabs for the categories “social, mobile, and games.” The time duration can also be changed by clicking a different tab at the top of the widget. When you chose 1+
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Tomorrow at the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education “Reading Conference: 21st Century Learning Environments” at Rose State College in Midwest City, Oklahoma, I’ll be sharing a breakout session titled, “Technology Trends in Higher Education: September 2010.” I’ve shared both my presentation slides as a Google Presentation and six of the seven videos I may
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Instead of sharing the longer, 6+ minute Creative Commons video “Get Creative” during my “Trends in Higher Education” presentation tomorrow at Rose State College in Midwest City, Oklahoma, I’m planning to share the 2.5 minute (180 second) video, “What is Creative Commons? Wanna Work Together RG Remix.” This video provides a great summary of Creative
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I take a LOT of screenshots with my iPad, and a fair number with my iPhone as well. Anything on the screen of an iOS device can be captured as a photo by pressing the power and home buttons on the device simultaneously. Often I post these screenshots to my Flickr account, using the Flickr
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iPadio is currently my favorite website and mobile application to use to directly record audio and post it to the web. After you record to iPadio using the iPhone or Android application or any type of phone, recorded files can be downloaded from the web as mp3 files or embedded in a provided flash player
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PDFsam is a free, open source software program which permits users to both merge and split PDF files. After downloading and running PDFsam, to merge separate PDF files into a single document: Click Merge/Extract under the Plugins menu in the left sidebar. Click the ADD button in the upper right corner of the program and
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This evening I shared an hour long presentation at our church for parents about Internet safety and digital citizenship. Among other resources, I shared the Google Family Safety Center, Google’s Family Internet Safety YouTube channel, and the recently posted 2.5 minute video, “Parents at Google UK talking about child safety online.” I really like the
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My September 2010 adventures in China are almost at a close, after spending ten hours today and six hours yesterday at the World Expo. I have a BUNCH of additional videos to upload, but because of my limited hotel bandwidth I’ll wait to share those till I’m back stateside. It has again been quite thought-provoking
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