The enhanced / multimedia version of my eBook, “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing,” is now available for online purchase and immediate delivery to your computer! This version (currently) is for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch users with Apple’s free “iBooks” application. The book is available in three different eBook formats and shortly
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My 13 year old son is a HUGE fan of Legos and stopmotion lego animation videos. He has been pretty upset this weekend and today by a string of events which have affected one of his favorite YouTube Lego builders and animators. “LegoBoy” (real name “David”) is a U.S. teenager who has built a following
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These are my notes from the August 29, 2011, OKC WordPress meetup. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. The div (thediv.org) is a nonprofit foundation created by iThemes to help train a local workforce in Edmond, OKlahoma for web development – this space is available for meet ups in tech – want to
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We need to encourage more people to become “storychasers” modeling ethical, responsible, and constructive uses of social media technologies. Storychasers can and should utilize mobile videography tools and “quick edit” journalism platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and blogging websites to document causes and events in our communities. This post features some examples of this kind of
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SMS or cell phone text messaging alerts can be extremely handy. Research shows most people read text message alerts almost immediately, and when students have an unlimited text messaging plan no additional costs are incurred by them to receive SMS updates. The last three semesters I’ve used the lowest commercial version of TextMarks to send
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Oklahoma has the highest incarceration rate for women in the United States. Of women in Oklahoma prisons, 85% are mothers or grandmothers. Oklahoma has the 4th highest incarceration rate for men in the United States, and many of these guys are dads also. 28,000 children in Oklahoma don’t have one of their parents at home
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The three minute video, “Geography & Google Earth” includes interviews with “an Ocean Explorer, Global Rower and Adventurer” explaining why they love geography and why GEOGRAPHY MATTERS. Check it out and share it with your students! The Google Earth YouTube channel is one of the suggested resources for the Google Geo Teachers Institute which I’ll
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Media access and media consumption behaviors are changing in our homes. A few weeks ago, I received an email (via Flickr) from the Interactive Project Coordinator of the National Building Museum‘s “House and Home” exhibition. She was asking for permission to use and license the photo, “Laptops at Home,” which I took in June 2009
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Diane Ravitch‘s article today, “The reform movement is already failing,” is one of the best I’ve read highlighting both the misdirected agenda and LACK of research support for the GW Bush / Obama / Bill Gates / Jeb Bush / “Waiting for Superman” crowd of educational reformers. Ravitch writes: We are in the midst of
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Podcaster is a wonderful, free iOS application which supports podcast subscriptions, downloads, listening and sharing on the go. A sync to iTunes is NOT required. The latest version supports subscription backups and restores via Dropbox. In this post I’ll describe how to subscribe to a new podcast (on Podomatic) using Podcaster. First, copy the podcast
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I’m presenting a repeated workshop for teachers in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, Monday. I’ve titled the presentation, “The Roadmap to Blended Learning.” The session description is: What is blended learning and why should educators embrace it? How can we move towards a vision of blended learning in our schools? This session presents an OVERVIEW, WAYPOINTS, and
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Cross-posted from Balanced Filtering in Schools. eSchoolNews’ August 17, 2011 article, “ACLU sues Missouri school district over internet filtering,” provides details about a new lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Camdenton R-III School District in central Missouri. The lawsuit is part of the ACLU’s “Don’t Filter Me” campaign. Camdenton Schools are
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This week we’ve had “back to school nights” at the grades 6-12 public magnet school where both my older children attend, as well as the local public elementary school where my youngest child studies. This evening was elementary back to school night, and I snapped a few photos (aspiring iPhonographer that I am) which beg
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Faculty and staff in O’Neill, Nebraska, have kicked off a new school year with a fun new media twist: In two hours they planned and recorded a wonderful lip dub set to
Mobile learning can be wonderful. Unlike laptop or desktop computers, mobile computing devices are generally more accessible. They can fit in our pocket. They’re almost always available. As I use Twitter during the day (often with the Hootsuite app) I often find blogs I’d like to read later. My favorite thing to do when I
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The Puffin Web Browser is a 99 cent application for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch which (unlike the default Safari web browser) supports Flash content. This means users can not only play fullscreen Flash videos natively on their iOS devices, it also means many Flash-based online games can be played. I first tested the Puffin
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“Technology integration” can mean many different things to many different people. Some folks advocating for “blended learning” these days intend to virtually chain students to screens and online computer aided instruction (CAI) systems for hours each day. (Hopefully those folks aren’t leading your school or state department of education.) While some CAI programs can be
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“Dad, I just learned about this great website for playing games and meeting friends! Can I join it?” My eleven year old daughter asked me this question a couple of weeks ago about the website Spark City, which is part of the larger website AllGirlsArcade.com. I told her I would check it out and decide
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If you have an opportunity to share a presentation with a group of people equipped with their own iPads, consider using the application “Idea Flight” instead of a projector and screen. Idea Flight is a free app for your audience members (up to 14 “passengers”) to view slides YOU share and control as the “pilot.”
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We are living in the midst of a “sea change” for books, literacy, reading and writing. The way in which official standards for EPUB eBooks are transitioning to support embedded video and audio files provide vivid a case in point. I spent most of this afternoon and evening debugging and fixing the enhanced (or “multimedia”)
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