Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Month: September 2012

  • HDR iPhoneography at Camp USAFA

    This weekend is the 20th reunion of my graduating class at the US Air Force Academy, and (as always) it was a pleasure today to be “photographically armed” with an iPhone and the Pro HDR app. Here are a few of my favorite takes from today. It was a gorgeous Colorado fall day! I applied…

  • Common Core Writing Lesson With AudioBoo: 9/11 Narrated Art

    (Cross-posted from the Yukon Public Schools Learning Showcase website) Kayleen Browning teaches 6th grade Social Studies at Yukon Middle School. This year, she asked her students to identify a word which summarized things they had studied and learned about the 9/11 attacks in 2001 by al-Qaeda on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Mrs.…

  • First iPad Digital Story with Hokusai and iMovie for iPad

    I spent eight hours today continuing to develop and refine the 2 day workshop curriculum on “iPad Digital Storytelling” which I’m developing with others for Storychasers. We’re creating an “iPad only” workshop which doesn’t require the use of a laptop or desktop computer: Just an iPad. We want to help participants create narrated slideshow videos…

  • iPhone5 Weight & Form Factor

    I don’t have an iPhone5 yet. I did place my order this week, however, and the following description from John Brownlee has me waiting with bated breath. YES, I have done exactly what he describes multiple times in our local Apple Store: Have you ever picked up an iPod touch at the Apple Store and…

  • Copying the Textbook is NOT an Acceptable Assignment

    This evening my 7th grade daughter worked on an assignment for one of her classes: Copying verbatim an entire chapter of her textbook. This is not acceptable. I’m emailing the teacher to meet with him, to discuss this and some other issues, and I’ll meet with him face-to-face (I’m sure) in the next two weeks.…

  • Please Vote for my SXSWedu 2013 Book Talk: Why We Need to Play with Media

    SXSWedu 2013 will be held in Austin in March. A couple weeks ago I submitted a book talk proposal titled, “Why We Need to Play with Media,” and you can vote for it using the SXSWedu PanelPicker website. The description is: I’d like to share my passion for playing with media and helping learners of…

  • AT&T Unlocked My iPhone4 Today

    I’ve almost reached the end of my contract for my iPhone4 with AT&T. Last week, after reading Jacqui Cheng‘s article for ArsTechnica, “AT&T unlocking some under-contract iPhones—for now,” I filled out AT&T’s official web form to request an iPhone unlock. I received an email that my request could not be completed because my account number…

  • Amazon Isn’t a Consumer Electronics Company: It’s WalMart Online

    Last night I showed my kids (including Rachel, who has been expressing a lot of interest in science and learning about how to become a scientist) some of the free science podcasts available via iTunes on our AppleTV. AppleTV really makes it easy to subscribe and watch video podcasts… much easier than this can be…

  • Rachel Wants to Be a Scientist

    (cross-posted from our family learning blog, “Learning Signs”) Rachel (my 9 year old) recorded this last night, following several discussions we’ve been having over the past few weeks about science and becoming a scientist. Last spring I took Rachel to Chris Simon’s classroom at Independence Elementary School in Yukon Public Schools, and she was VERY…

  • iTunes Match: All My Songs Now Available in the iCloud

    iTunes Match is a $25 per year service from Apple which was announced in November 2011, but this weekend I finally got around to paying up and giving the service a try. Wow am I ever enthused about this! It took a LONG time for my entire iTunes Library to “match” and upload (for those…