Creating MultiMedia eBooks
wfryer.me/ebooks

Snowflake Gets Lost: a FREE enhanced eBook by Rachel Fryer
meetsnowflake.com

Improving Reading, Writing and Critical Thinking Skills with Media
wfryer.me/improve

Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing (eBook)
wfryer.me/pwm

Software I run on my Mac
wfryer.me/apps

Crafting Your Professional Digital Footprint
wfryer.me/footprint

19 April 2011: iPad Training for Business Productivty
www.ipadwithwes.com

Student Media Examples
share.playingwithmedia.com

99¢ Podcasts for Playing with Media
learn.playingwithmedia.com

Mapping Media to Common Core
maps.playingwithmedia.com

iPad App Coffee Chats
1st Tuesday of each month in Edmond, OK at The DIV
wfryer.me/appchat

YouTube
www.youtube.com/wfryer

K-12 Online Conference: 250+ FREE PD videos about tech integration
k12onlineconference.org

Social Media:
twitter.com/wfryer
facebook.com/wfryer

Contact Wesley Fryer
www.wesfryer.com/contact

Moving at the Speed of Creativity (my primary blog)
www.speedofcreativity.org

iPad Quick-Edit Videography
wfryer.me/ipadvideo

Tell a Story in 5 Photos
wfryer.me/5photos

Celebrate Oklahoma Voices: 940+ videos
lc.celebrateoklahoma.us

Celebrate Kansas Voices: 220+ Digital Stories
celebratekansas.ning.com

Celebrate Texas Voices: Digital Stories
celebratetexas.ning.com

Oklahoma CCSS Diigo Group
http://groups.diigo.com/group/oklahoma-ccss

Storychasers: Empowering Digital Witnesses on the Global Stage
storychasers.org

Stuff I Want to Share at OTA – Encyclo-Media 2012 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 2, 2012.

While the built-in calculator features of Google Search are extremely powerful, the syntax required to use the “Google calculator” requires some study. That process is valuable and good, but I like how Mateusz’ Percentage Calculator does not require any special syntax formatting. The layout is simple and straightforward. He has also included some helpful information about percentages on the homepage of his site.

Mateusz has also created the website Blood Pressure Chart, which provides a cloud-based / web-based way for people to save their blood pressure information so it can be shared with doctors or others the individual selects. I really like the clean look of the ‘forums’ section of his Blood Pressure Chart website, where updates are available about the project as well as other information. I’m going to try and learn what tool he used to create these, it would be great if they are powered with a WordPress Plug-in.

Technorati Tags: math, calculator, percent, percentage, web, tool

Calculate and Learn about Percentages with Percentage Calculator originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 27, 2012.

This semester I’m working on a contract basis (thanks to federal grant dollars) as an “innovative instructional coach” in Yukon Public Schools. This morning I helped one of our sixth grade teachers facilitate her first lessons using free, ad-free class blogs hosted by KidBlog.org. In this post, I’ll share some of the configuration specifics for these class blogs and a nine minute screencast in which I demonstrate each step. The teacher has six sections of students (136 in all) so the techniques described here for importing student userIDs and passwords from the district’s student information system can be HUGE time savers!

I am a big fan of free Posterous blogs for publishing student work, including media products. You’ll see multiple examples of student work shared on Posterous blogs on share.playingwithmedia.com, which I created to complement my eBook, “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing.” KidBlog is a great platform too, but it has different advantages. Posterous makes the posting and sharing of rich-media files including images, audio and video very straightforward. KidBlog lends itself best to sharing text, but it can handle most kinds of embedded media. For the teacher I worked with today, as an English teacher it’s important her students have their own directory of posts they can readily view along with their parents. KidBlog automatically creates “student pages” of all posts an individual has published. (Usually in the right sidebar, but this can vary with the selected blog theme.) Other features of KidBlog I really like are:

1. It makes moderation of both posts and comments to a blog very easy / fast
2. It shows how many comments different posts have received on the homepage, so students as well as parents/other visitors can identify posts which “need some attention” and a helpful comment.
3. KidBlog is built on WordPress, so it supports the free WordPress iOS app. One of the 6th graders this morning asked, in fact, “Is there an app for this site?” I was pleased to tell her: Yes there is!
4. KidBlog supports “broadcast” posts, so a teacher can write a single post but have it automatically cross-post (“broadcast”) to all his/her blogs. This is HUGE for teachers using KidBlog with multiple sections.
5. It supports the importing of student userIDs and passwords as comma separated (CSV) files.
6. It supports nested commenting.
7. Students can change their own display name. This is important in our district, since student’s initial network userID is a series of numbers. For the teacher’s purposes, it’s important to identify students by first name. This is also critical for peer and parent commenting, and great the students can change these display names directly.

Today in two of the classes, students submitted over 100 different comments for their peers. Even though we coached students to “be thoughtful” in their comments and not just write things like “Good” or “Awesome,” of course we had some comments like that. About half the students in the first class today had used LightSpeed Systems’ free learning management system, “My Big Campus,” in other classes. Unlike My Big Campus, however, the KidBlog sites used today and I configured for the teacher are OPENLY visible to anyone online (without a login) but all posts as well as comments are moderated.

I recorded a nine minute screencast earlier in the week when I was configuring these student blogs, which shows all the steps I performed to each KidBlog site so it was ready for teacher-moderated posting and commenting today. I encourage you to check out KidBlog. More digital text / blogging platform options are linked on the “Text” page of playingwithmedia.com.

Technorati Tags: blog, kidblog, writing, configure, configuration

Configure KidBlog for Safe, Moderated, Interactive Student Blogging & Commenting originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 27, 2012.

If you need to schedule a meeting with folks who are not all users of your organization’s calendar system, my favorite free tool to use is WhenIsGood.net.

Technorati Tags: google, howto, tutorial, calendar, appointment, slots, screencast

Use Appointment Slots on a Google Calendar originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 23, 2012.

1. Karen Montgomery on Twitter: @klmontgomery
2. Alice Barr on Twitter: @alicebarr
3. Wesley Fryer on Twitter: @wfryer
4. Technology Shopping Cart Podcast Archive
5. Technology Shopping Cart Archived Episodes and Show Links (on PBworks)
6. Educational Collaborators
7. Yarmouth High School (Maine)
8. Yukon Public Schools (Oklahoma)
9. iCreate vs. iConsumption by Scott Meech
10. Klip.me: Send content to Mobile Devices
11. If This Then That
12. Post and screencast: Create Clever Information Traps
13. Starbucks iOS app (load money on the app)
14. Pizza Hut iOS app for ordering
15. Gmail iOS app
16. Red Laser iOS app: Scan barcodes for more info in stores
17. Amazon iOS app: Amazon remembers
18. Best Buy iOS app
19. Kindle Keyboard (in between Fire and low-end Kindle)
20. iPod Touch
21. Apple TV
22. Apple Airport Express access point to extend home wifi network (Bandwidth / Networking – QOS at home / Netflix story)
23. Netflix iOS app
24. Flick Kick game app
25. Amazon Whispersync for eBooks
26. Handbrake (convert DVDs for iOS / iTunes)
27. RipIt (convert DVDs for iOS / iTunes)
28. Amazon Prime Membership
29. Time Machine iPad app
30. VoiceThread iOS app
31. BlueJeans Network (used to bridge our videoconference for this call)
32. Call Recorder for Skype (used to record this call)
33. Levelator (used to normalize audio for this recording)

Subscribe to “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” podcasts!

Receive an email alert whenever a new Speed of Creativity podcast is published!

Podcast387: TechShoppingCart Episode 11 – Christmas 2011 Apps and Gadgets originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 23, 2011.

• saves it to Diigo (my primary social bookmarking site)
• saves it to a “quick blog” I created on Posterous for stuff I’m reading (wesread.posterous.com)
• Subscribes to the blog or site in my Google Reader if it has an available RSS feed
• Tweets out the link if I choose to share it with a special tag (zt for “zoo tool”)

Update December 20th: By request I’ve created a 15 minute screencast explaining most of these steps.

All of the web services I’m using for this “clever information trap” are free, with the exception of Zoo Tool. To post links to Zoo Tool using email, a PRO account is required. You choose how much to pay for the PRO account however: From $1 to $100 per year. I paid $12 for mine.

BACKGROUND
Since the Google Reader design team made the lamentable decision to STOP allowing post sharing via its “Shared Items” API, I’ve been on a quest for an alternative article sharing solution. I like sharing articles I read via a blog sidebar widget, but at this point the Mobile RSS family of apps are the only tools I have which still let me share articles via the deprecated Google Reader “Shared Items” channel. (See my November 2011 post, “Google Reader Post Sharing Still working with Mobile RSS” for more info.) In August this year, I attended a fantastic breakout session in Montana by Jason Neiffer titled, “Capture: Setting Up Traps to Organize Mountains of Information.” I love Jason’s metaphor of creating “information traps.” Rodd Lucier (“The Clever Sheep”) showed me the fantasticly powerful website “if then that” (ifttt) about a month later in Shanghai during the Learning 2.011 conference. As I considered a replacement for the “old school” Google Reader article sharing method, I decided I wanted a solution which went beyond past functionality. Every news application on my iPad permits sharing via email, and I’ve been using a Posterous blog for several months now (wfryer.posterous.com) as a “sandbox site” for saving and sometimes sharing (via a cross-post) content I find online. Scott McLeod‘s “Mind Dump” quickblog was an inspiration to me for this.

In going “beyond past Google Reader article sharing,” I wanted to integrate my Diigo account. Since I started using web 2.0 tools around 2003, social bookmarking has been a vital cornerstone of the tools in my information toolbox. I started with Delicious and eventually moved to Diigo, in part because it supports cross-posting to Delicious. In addition to integrating Diigo, I also wanted to streamline the process of subscribing to new blogs. Typically when I find a new article I like, I subscribe to that blog in my Google Reader. This makes for a lot of feeds, but Google Reader doesn’t hiccup or stutter. I wanted to find a way to follow “the ethic of minimal clicks” which I highlight in “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing.” With just a few clicks, I wanted to do a bunch of useful things. This “clever information trap” is what I came up with, and so far I love it. I used Feedburner to ‘burn’ the feed for my wesread.posterous.com quick blog, and its free “Buzzboost” HTML code to add an additional blog sidebar widget for these shared articles and links. This is a great technique more schools should consider to add blog content on the district homepage or in the sidebars of other website pages.

BASIC SETUP: POSTEROUS-ONLY
The easiest and fastest way to setup an email-driven information trap is to create a free Posterous blog. Email anything to post@posterous.com and the site will post the content of your email message to your own website. A Posterous-based “information trap” is great for groups and teams, as well as individuals. Add team member emails to your site, and then anyone can send links, notes, images, videos, and anything else for sharing on the site. Since the site can only be the ‘primary Posterous blog’ of the creator, team members wanting to post on it will use the name of the blog followed by @posterous.com. For example, people submitting 5 photo stories to my Posterous blog on 5photos.posterous.com send emails to 5photos@posterous.com. This “information trap” setup is relatively straightforward and simple. Consider doing this first, if you haven’t worked with Posterous already, before you attempt additional steps suggested in this post.

STEP 1: CREATE ACCOUNTS
For the procedures I’ll describe below, you’ll need to create several free web accounts and 1 “pro” account if you don’t already have these. They include:

• Posterous.com account (free)
• ifttt account (free)
• Diigo.com account (free)
• Google Account (free – for Google Reader)
• Zoo Tool Pro Account ($1 minimum)

STEP 2: CREATE IFTTT TASKS
The website ifttt is the key to this “clever information trap.” Ifttt works with ‘tasks’ which are composed of ‘triggers’ and ‘actions.’ Login to Ifttt and grant authorization for it to access your Posterous, Google Reader, Diigo and Twitter accounts. You could re-create all the tasks I made from scratch, but I’ve shared these as ifttt ‘recipes’ you can import and use.

STEP 3: USE YOUR ZOO TOOLS EMAIL TO SHARE
After upgrading to a pro Zoo Tools account, visit zootool.com/pro and click “Email-Lasso” to view your personal, private email address to post to “your Zoo.” I saved this in my address book so I can readily type “zoo” and the address auto-fills whether I’m sharing an article or link on my iPad, iPhone, or laptop. Ifttt doesn’t run continuously, it has a ‘schedule,’ so it may take awhile for your link to appear on all your connected sites: Posterous, Diigo, and Twitter. Here’s an example.

Earlier this evening, I used the Flipboard app on my iPad to view my Astronauts Twitter List. For any post in Flipboard, a SHARE link is available in the corner which provides different options. I chose EMAIL LINK.

I typed “zoo” in the “to” field of the email message which popped up and my iPad auto-filled my Zoo Tools sharing address. I edited the body of the message so the link came first. Then I added several tags I wanted to use for the saved bookmark, and preceded the tags with a # sign like we use for Twitter hashtags.

Since I included the tag “#zt” (for “Zoo Tool”) my ifttt task for Twitter cross-posted this link to my account.

I love how this “clever information trap” auto-magically adds the RSS feed for a blog or other website which I share, within Google Reader. This is a screenshot of blog feeds added to my Google Reader earlier today. I used Mobile RSS Free on my iPhone to categorize several of these and delete one of them. This process was quick and simple.

That’s it: A clever information trap” built with Zoo Tool, Posterous, & ifttt! Zoo Tool is a powerful service which has MANY more features than I’m using at present, but I was most interested in finding a service which supports social bookmarking via email. Diigo doesn’t do that, but thanks to ifttt that doesn’t matter. If you give this “information trap” idea a try, please let me know via a comment here or Twitter. I’d also like to hear other ideas about similar processes for “trapping information” with a minimum of clicks, both individually and in groups.

EXTRA INFO: SETTING UP A TASK ON IFTTT
While you’re welcome to simply import and copy the ifttt recipes I created, I did create some screenshots documenting the steps for creating a task on ifttt. I absolutely LOVE the creative ways this website is being used, and the ways it empowers “non-coding geeks” (like me) to create some very useful information functions.

Click CREATE A TASK. Click THIS to setup your trigger.

Choose the “trigger channel” you want to use on ifttt. For the examples I’ve described in this post, Zoo Tool was my trigger channel for all four tasks.

Select the specific context for your trigger. These vary according to the tool selected. For all my tasks in this example except the Twitter cross-post, I used the Zoo Tool trigger, “Any new page bookmark.” The Twitter task uses “New page bookmark tagged.”

Click to create your trigger.

If you selected “New page bookmark tagged” or another trigger requiring a specific tag or term, enter the desired info and click to create the trigger.

Click THAT to create the second part of your ifttt task.

Select your action channel. For these examples, I chose Posterous, Diigo, Google Reader and Twitter as my action channels.

Choose the desired action for your channel. Available options depend on the channel selected.

Note you can insert different kinds of content from the “trigger channel” to use as desired. In the case of my Twitter task, I chose to insert the text “Reading:” prior to the title of the link and link URL.

Last of all, enter an optional description for your task and click to create it. This description will help others decide if they want to use your task if you choose to later share it as a ‘recipe.”

Good luck and happy information trapping!

Technorati Tags: information, trap, diigo, zoo, tool, zootool, ifttt, trigger, task, recipe, education, school, collaborate, team, post, blog, posterous

Create Clever Information Traps with Zoo Tool, Posterous, & ifttt originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 20, 2011.

Please mark your calendars and adjust your schedules to join presenters, participants, and organizers of the 2011 K-12 Online Conference in an “AfterGlow” Closing Live Event on Monday, December 12th at 6:00pm PT / 7:00pm MT / 8:00pm CT / 9:00pm ET. If you’re located outside North American timezones, please use this timeanddate.com link (2:00 AM Tuesday, December 13 GMT) to determine the event time in your local area. “The Afterglow” is a fun, celebratory event held in Blackboard Collaborate. It will provide opportunities for presenters to share the stories behind their presentations as well as give participants a chance to ask questions of the presenters. The Blackboard Collaborate session link is: http://tinyurl.com/cr20live. This link may be shared with others on Twitter, Plurk, blogs, etc. Please cross-post this information on your own blog, if possible, so we can amplify this live event and draw a big crowd of educators! (HTML code to cross-post is available.)

The MC for the event will be Susan van Gelder, who will ask the questions of the panel members and facilitate the conversations among presenters and participants. The panel will consist of all of the keynote presenters for the conference, but all presenters are encouraged to join us and come prepared to “raise your hand to take the mic” during the session if desired. Everyone can contribute actively in the chat conversation. The webinar will be an hour long and not every presenter may have an opportunity to share. There is a possibility the conversation may continue after the ‘formal’ closing of the webinar into a post-show. Participation of the presenters is optional during post show as we know everyone’s time is limited.

In addition to joining our upcoming live event, we invite you to check out and comment on a special “backstories of the 2011 K-12 Online Conference” Voicethread. Several of our presenters have already chimed in. Please add your voice and commentary!

Organizers of the 2011 K-12 Online Conference wish to express appreciation to Steve Hargadon and the Classroom 2.0 Live community for providing the “virtual meeting room” for our Afterglow live event. We hope to “see you” virtually in Blackboard Collaborate Monday night! (Use this link for times if you’re outside North America) Please invite other educators you know to join us too!

Technorati Tags: administrator, blackboard, collaborate, conference, education, k12online, k12online11, learning, librarian, pd, play, playing, school, teacher, live, event, purposeful

K-12 Online Conference 2011 Closing Live Event: The Afterglow! originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 10, 2011.

Professional development certificates for participation are available this year. These are not only available for new presentations in our 2011 conference, but also for our 200+ past presentations.

If you are not already, please subscribe to our blog, follow us on Twitter, and ‘like’ us on Facebook! We’ll be updating all of these channels throughout the next two weeks as we publish 41 new presentations to complement the fantastic pre-conference keynote shared last Monday by Angela Maiers: “The Sandbox Manifesto.”

Also, remember we are discontinuing the use of our Ning website this year, so all content and commenting will take place on our main website/blog: k12onlineconference.org. Please also tweet about the conference using the hashtag #k12online and share us via Facebook and Google+.

Please share the word about our FREE, fantastic online conference with other educators. We’ve created a PDF flyer you can forward and share.

Thanks for participating and sharing the 2011 K-12 Online Conference!

Sincerely,

Your 2011 Conference Organizers

• Peggy George
• Susan van Gelder
• Kim Caise
• Jose Rodriguez (convening “Sandbox Play”)
• Ginger Lumen (convening “Level Up”)
• Darren Kuropatwa (convening “Story Time”)
• Wesley Fryer (convening “Team Captains”)

2011 #k12online Conference Starts Monday originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 28, 2011.

Before sharing setup steps, here are a few reasons to consider creating and using your own URL shortener:

1. Shortened URLs provide a handy way for people to get to your handouts and resources for specific lessons, PD or workshop sessions.
2. It looks cool. (Seriously, it does, and it can be quite professional to use a custom URL shortener!)
3. Some schools block URL shortener websites like bit.ly and tinyurl, so by using a custom shortener site you may increase accessibility for your links.
4. People can quite easily and accidentally mis-type the characters which follow a randomly-generated shortened URL… and this can have a surprising result. (Taking them to a site you didn’t intend.) If people mis-type your shortened URL, as long as they get the domain right (wfryer.me in my case) they won’t get someone else’s website… at worst they’ll be redirected to another website I’ve personally shared in the past.
5. The service provides interesting details about numbers of clicks, source countries for clicks, etc.
6. The service won’t expire or go away, as could potentially happen with commercial services.

These were the main steps I followed to create my custom URL shortener this evening.

1. I registered the domain wfryer.me on GoDaddy for $9. I used the DNS addresses for my existing website with my web host when I registered the domain.

2. I added my new domain as an “add-on slot” to my hosting account with Siteground. Since I already pay for a VPS, this was free. There may be a cost for this depending on the terms of your hosting plan. See my recent 12 minute screencast on YouTube, “Create a subdomain for a website as an add-on slot” for specific details on these steps.

3. I downloaded the source code for yourls and then uploaded the files to my hosting account using CyberDuck. (free)

4. I used KompoZer (free) to create a basic, ‘placeholder’ website at the root of my wfryer.me site. Again, tonyv.me was my model. Like Tony I chose to include a Twitter widget. I created my graphic using Skitch. (free)

5. I used CPanel on my hosting account to create a new MySQL database with a user with full access rights. I noted these credentials (database name, user name and user password) and added them to the config.php file for yourls. This is explained in the README file which is included with the downloaded files. The process is very similar to a new self-hosted WordPress installation.

6. I visited the http://mysite.com/admin website and finished installation of yourls.

7. I installed the browser buttons for yourls in Chrome. These permit one click shortening and custom URL shortening (where you specify the name which follows your domain) to streamline this process.

8. I installed the WordPress plugin for yourls. Unfortunately I ran into a problem (documented here and here) with the plugin inexplicably generating hundreds of shortened links for past posts. Fortunately these were not tweeted out, but I did have to manually delete them all. I didn’t find a solution to the problem, so I deactivated the plugin and re-activated Twitter Tools which uses bit.ly. At some point I’d like to use yourls instead, but I’m not going to spend time troubleshooting this more tonight.

This is the dashboard view which Yourls provides. So far I’ve just shared three links, but it will be good to have access to my specific statistics when desired.

Of the reasons I highlighted initially to consider using a custom URL shortener service, #2 and #3 are the real big ones in my book. You do NOT want students in a class you’re teaching or participants in a PD session you’re leading to accidentally link to an offensive or inappropriate website because they mis-typed a random string of characters in a tinyurl.com or bit.ly address. Using a custom URL shortener can eliminate that possibility entirely. The accessibility issue is a big one as well.

What do you think of custom URL shorteners? The steps involved to create this are beyond those most teachers are going to want to follow, but it’s GREAT that open source software is available which can make this a “doable” process for people and organizations who want to follow it.

Many, MANY thanks to Tony Vincent for sharing so many great ideas and being such an inspiration as a teacher-leader. If you don’t already, follow Tony on Twitter and subscribe to his great blog, Learning in Hand. Also don’t miss his outstanding presentation for the 2010 K-12 Online Conference last year, “Project Based Learning in Hand.”

Technorati Tags: website, url, shortener, custom, diy, opensource

Creating a Customized URL Shortener with YOURLS originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 26, 2011.

Today I had an opportunity to meet with the superintendent and CIO of Oklahoma City Public Schools to discuss my concerns as a parent in the district about the overblocking of Internet websites. I had heard a great deal from other people about the district’s policies and the reasons for those policies, but it was good to meet face-to-face with district leaders and hear firsthand about their perspectives on filtering. This evening, I had an opportunity to speak for three minutes before the Oklahoma City Public Schools Board of Education and share my concerns. This is the transcript of the prepared statement I shared with the board, which took exactly three minutes. A loud buzzer went off at the end of the three minute period, and I felt a bit like I was on “The Gong Show” and had done poorly when it went off. I also recorded the audio of my statement using my iPhone and the free Cinch app, which I’ve embedded below. I’m hopeful my advocacy and the work of others in the district will lead to the formation of a task force (which will include parents) that can recommend changes to some of the district’s current policies on Internet filtering. MANY thanks to those who completed my online survey/request for assistance on the content filtering policies of large, urban districts. I integrated some of those results into my prepared comments this evening.

Chairperson Monson, Members of the board and Mr Springer, I appreciate this opportunity to visit with you.

My name is Dr. Wesley Fryer, and I am a digital learning consultant in Oklahoma City. Tonight I want to share deep concerns with you as a parent of three students in Oklahoma City Public Schools regarding the overblocking of Internet websites in our district. I want to call on you to establish a task force to further investigate these issues and make recommendations so students and teachers in our district have opportunities to use interactive websites like Evernote, Edmodo, and Google Documents. These websites provide important platforms for students to practice safe collaborative writing and social networking.They are free and are being used by students and teachers in other large, urban school districts around the United States today which comply with legal requirements of E-Rate including the Children’s Internet Protection Act.

Since August 26, 2011, I have been working with teachers and staff in our district to get the website Evernote.com unblocked so the debate team at Classen SAS can use it to share research and evidence. I have worked with our classroom teacher, school librarian, school principal, and secondary schools director. This morning I met with both our district superintendent and district CIO. I have been told Oklahoma City Public Schools blocks the website Evernote.com because it poses a security risk to the network, because students could upload pornography to it, and because providing student access to sites like this would risk the loss of millions of federal E-Rate dollars.

In mid-October 2011 Oklahoma City Public Schools started blocking student access to both Google Documents and Google Mail. Last week our district started blocking student access to Edmodo.com, a free and secure website for in-classroom social networking and electronic assignment management. These decisions are not justified and should be reversed immediately.

Oklahoma City Public Schools has a professed commitment to “Preparing Students for Success in School, Work, and Life.” We have a problem, however, with a disconnect between these professed commitments involving digital literacy and the reality of draconian Internet website filtering in our classrooms.

Some of the information about the Children’s Internet Protection Act’s legal requirements provided to district staff is inaccurate. It is not true our district would lose $4 million of federal E-Rate funding if we provide students and teachers with access to sites like Evernote, Google Docs and Edmodo. Yet the threat of that monetary loss is regularly brought out at district meetings where content filtering issues are discussed. Large urban districts like Fairfax County Public Schools, Seattle Public Schools and Minneapolis Public Schools provide access to these three sites today. A district task force can research these issues further and provide recommendations to the board which support more balanced content filtering policies.

Thank you for considering these ideas and for your service to our community.

Technorati Tags:
okcps, oklahoma, city, public, schools, filter, filtering, cipa, balanced, balancedfiltering

Advocating for Balanced Content Filtering in Oklahoma City Public Schools originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 21, 2011.

THANKS. I’ll report results of tonight’s meeting as well as this survey here and on balancedfiltering.org.

Technorati Tags: block, filtering, internet, survey, blocking, overblock, overblocking

Help Needed from Urban Educators: Are Evernote, GDocs & Edmodo Blocked for Your Students? originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 21, 2011.

Please join organizers of the 2011 K-12 Online Conference on Classroom 2.0 Live this Saturday, November 12, 2011 for an invigorating conversation about this year’s conference! Local times in North America for this live webinar will be:

• 9:00am Pacific
• 10:00am Mountain
• 11:00am Central
• 12:00pm Eastern

Use this time converter link to determine the time in your local area if you live outside these time zones. We’ll meet in Elluminate Live/Blackboard Collaborate. Use this link (or this longer one) to connect “live” to the webinar. Complete details are on live.classroom20.com. Hope you can join us to learn about this year’s “Afterglow Live Event” and more elements which will make this year’s conference on “Purposeful Play” in the classroom an outstanding professional development opportunity!

Technorati Tags: education, k12online, k12online11, technology, liveclass20, conference3

Talking K12Online11 on Classroom 2.0 Saturday November 12th originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 12, 2011.

Interested in helping students become better readers, writers, and critical thinkers? We need to “play with media” to become more effective communicators and improve our media literacy skills as both learners and citizens. As you learn to play with digital text, images, audio and video, you will communicate more creatively and flexibly with a wider variety of options. Author and educator Wesley Fryer will inspire and empower you, as a creative person, to expand your personal senses of digital literacy and digital agency as a multimedia communicator! Learn more, order Wesley’s eBook, and access session resources on www.playingwithmedia.com.

I shared my slides from this presentation on SlideShare and also recorded the 2nd session of the day on my iPad using the free app Cinch. At some point I may download the audio and sync it to the SlideShare, but for now I’ll share it “as is.” My favorite participant quotation of the day was from a teacher prior to the first session who asked at the door, “Is this the reading session?” I answered, “Yes it is!”

Be sure to also check out the new website I created this week (learn.playingwithmedia.com) for a series of 12 repeated workshops (24 in all) I’m offering face-to-face in Oklahoma City as well as over videoconference connections in December. You connect via Skype or H.323 video to these hour long sessions, which will be from 2-3 pm CST. We’ll be connecting via the amazing Blue Jeans Network. If you want to connect via your iPad, you can do so either using the free Skype app for iPad or the free Polycom RealPresence Mobile app for iPad. Face-to-face workshops will be held from 8:30 to 11:30 am CST, with locations in Oklahoma City still being finalized. Cost to attend each one is $50 per person for face-to-face 3 hour workshops, and $50 per site for each videoconference. Registration for all 24 sessions is available online via EventBrite.

I created an updated PDF flyer for this workshop series which you’re welcome to print and share.

12 Days of Playing with Media

Technorati Tags: communication, conference, development, howto, media, pd, professional, read, reading, share, student, students, teacher, writing, write

Improving Reading, Writing and Critical Thinking Skills with Media originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 11, 2011.

Each workshop will be offered in three versions:

• a 3 hour hands-on, BYOL (bring your own laptop) workshop held in Oklahoma City ($50 per participant*)
• a 1 hour, interactive videoconference for participants using Skype or a H.323 video endpoint ($100 per site*)
• a 60 minute, downloadable video podcast (99¢)

* Pricing is for credit card payments, an additional processing fee applies if paying via school purchase order.

Sessions include:

• Dec 1: Creating Multimedia eBooks
• Dec 2: iPhoneography
• Dec 5: Tell a Story in 5 Photos
• Dec 6: No-Edit Audio Podcasting
• Dec 7: iPad Quick Edit Videography
• Dec 9: Classroom Blogging
• Dec 12: Narrated Slideshows
• Dec 13: Classroom Radio Shows
• Dec 14: Puppet Videography
• Dec 19: Classroom Learning Portals
• Dec 20: iPad Media Creation
• Dec 21: Classroom Backchannels

Each face-to-face workshop will take place in Oklahoma City from 8:30 to 11:30 am. 15 seats are available for these sessions. Workshops are BYOL: Bring Your Own Laptop. Wifi connectivity and electrical power will be provided. Videoconferences will be held each day from 2-3 pm CST, and 4 different remote sites per workshop can attend. (The number of attendees at remote sites is up to event organizers.) Videoconferences will be bridged by Bluejeans Network, which permits simultaneous, disparate endpoints to participate in the same conference. This means you can connect whether you have a fancier H.323 videoconferencing endpoint from Tandberg, Polycom, LifeSize or another vendor… or you simply have a Skype connection via your laptop, desktop computer, or iPad.

All registrations for these workshops and videoconferences are via EventBrite. Videoconference session recordings will subsequently be available as 99¢ downloadable podcasts. Participation in videoconference sessions includes agreement/permission to record and commercially share the interactive session.

I hope you’ll plan to join in one or more of these December workshops, either in person in Oklahoma City or online via videoconferencing technologies. “Bring your device and we’ll meet in the cloud!”

The image above is also available as a downloadable PDF via Scribd, if you’d like to share this with others.

Join in 12 Days of Playing with Media originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 9, 2011.

Tannis Emann, a Canadien educator and @tmemann on Twitter, writes the blog “Aspiring to Higher Tech: My teaching journey in transformative times.” Her site is tannisteaches.wordpress.com. Earlier today, Tannis shared a post simply titled, “#authorspeak.” Tannis is using a WordPress theme which does NOT show the post author’s name or WordPress ID on each post. The About page of her blog clearly identifies the site as hers, but today’s post was confusing because of image attribution at the top of the post. As you can see in the laptop screenshot above and the iPhone screenshot below, since the attribution line does not say “Photo by Wesley Fryer” it appears the actual post was written by me. This was not the case and was both misleading and confusing.

Normally something like this might not get my attention, but Tannis’s post was tweeted with incorrect attribution to me by the person at the controls of the official @authorspeak2011 Twitter account. Since then it has been re-tweeted by at least 13 other Twitter users. These include edu-Twitterers Kyle Pace and Steven Anderson (@web20classroom) who have sizable educator followings.

I contacted Tannis via Twitter and she quickly made the change, using the text “Photo by Wesley Fryer” under the image.

This image attribution situation is something that can happen to anyone who is blogging, so it’s a good example to discuss and share with other digital writers. Here are a few lessons learned, please chime in with some of your own.

1. Model Proper Image Attribution: Kudos to Tannis Emann for properly attributing my image shared originally on Flickr via Creative Commons. Not only did Tannis properly attribute the image per the Flickr Community Guidelines (linking the original photo back to its Flickr page) she also included a text link for me as the photographer. The only ‘missing piece’ was the phrase, ‘Photo by’ in front of my name. Despite this initial oversight (which was quickly remedied) Tannis did a GREAT job with image attribution and sets a good example for all bloggers.
2. Twitter Can Amplify Conference Attendee Ideas Well: Kudos to Solution Tree and the organizers of the Author Speak conference for using Twitter. All educational conference events should use Twitter and a unique Twitter hashtag, and #authorspeak modeled that.
3. A Variety of Image Attribution Tools are Available for Bloggers: Tannis tweeted me today she’s using the image tool imagecodr to obtain and attribute Flickr Creative Commons images. I hadn’t heard of that tool previously. It looks great, except they need to add “Photo by” in their attribution. I shared with Tannis I like using Wylio.com for CC image location and attribution. It’s not free, but it’s not much and I LOVE their formatting for image attribution. Another option for self-hosted WordPress bloggers is the free PhotoDropper plugin. All of these are great tools to know about as a blogger. Images in posts are important because they can help get a potential audience’s attention as well as communicate more of the author’s ideas. Tools like these help streamline the process of properly using and attributing images in blog posts. These and other image sites/tools are linked on the “Images” page of PlayingWithMedia.com.
4. The Open Web is the best context for digital citizenship lessons: If Tannis had shared his post today on a closed website like Moodle or Blackboard, I wouldn’t be writing this post and we wouldn’t be having this opportunity to learn things about image attribution on blogs. I wrote an impassioned comment today on why “Moodle is not good enough” when it comes to digital writing and publishing student work. This situation shows how the OPEN WEB is a space where we need to writing and interacting as educators, and demonstrates why we need to publish on the open web with our students as well.
5. Twitter is a great tool for solving problems fast: Since Tannis and I were both online and monitoring Twitter this afternoon, this situation on her blog post was fixed within about 15 minutes. It’s very unlikely we’d have been able to have the conversation we did via email in such a short timespan. Twitter is a great communication platform, and should be unblocked on school networks. I know it’s blocked for many students as well as teachers, but we should not accept that situation. Today was a concrete example of how Twitter is and can be used to solve real problems through rapid communication.

Are there some other lessons to learn from this image attribution / tweetribution situation?

Here’s one more I’ll suggest: Even though I’m a self-published author, I think Solution Tree should invite me to AuthorSpeak2012.

Who IS the tweeter behind @authorspeak2011 anyway?!

Here’s the original image Tannis used, attributed via Wylio.

Technorati Tags: education, image, socialmedia, twitter, attribution, authorspeak

Lessons Learned from Image Attribution & Tweetribution Confusion originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 2, 2011.

QUESTION: What should we do when parents “say no” to an email account for their child at school, when we want all students publishing some of their work online?

ANSWER:

I’d recommend the school and each classroom have a “menu” of digital publication options for student work, some of which require individual email accounts and some which do not. That way when a student’s parent has opted out of an email address for their student, there are still other publication options they can use.

Depending on the grade level of the students, a class email account can be used for some web-based tools. This approach has some drawbacks since students can theoretically edit or delete classmate work when logged into the account, but depending on how students access web-based resources this can be functional. It depends on the tool. I know VoiceThread made a change several years ago so multiple computers can’t be logged on simultaneously to the same account, discouraging this “class account” approach using a single, free account. If students are using a single classroom computer to edit their work, however, it could work for some tools.

I’d recommend several strategies to encourage parents to grant permission for individual student emails.

The first suggestion is for the school to notify parents that student email accounts are required to meet the requirements of state academic standards, reflected in NETS-S. A good case for this can be made and some schools are taking this approach. This makes school-provided email accounts a requirement, not an option for students, just like a cafeteria number for billing or a student identification number for grading. Providing student email accounts is straightforward to do and manage when a school has adopted Google Apps for their domain.

Whether or not the school opts to go with this “email is required for students to be digitally literate” approach, I recommend class-level blogs be used to share student work interactively on a regular basis in all classrooms, at all levels. In addition, a school-wide blog should be used to share announcements as well as periodic cross-posts from classroom blogs. This school blog can be linked at least with an RSS widget on the school homepage that shows recent posts. By having this school-wide blog, exemplary classrooms and exemplary student work can be highlighted for the entire campus. It can also be a way for the positive uses of digital media to be amplified in a more visible way throughout the school community. The RSS feed for the school blog can be connected at least to a Facebook page for the school, and possibly to a Twitter account. The latter things should ONLY be done if a an individual or (better yet) team of staff members at the school will share responsibility for checking and replying to inquiries on these accounts regularly. The point is the school should be intentional about its use of social media and its sharing of exemplary student work, to regularly “show and tell” for parents as well as others in the community the benefits of the digital literacy focus/initiatives at the school.

At some point it can be helpful for the school to establish recommended/supported web-based publishing environments. While teachers should be encouraged and allowed to use “other” websites, these supported environments can be more thoroughly explored for support needs by staff and teachers can therefore expect more help with them than they might with a “brand new tool” they just learned about and want to try. I’d recommend the school use free, advertisement free tools to provide at a minimum class blogs and wikis for teachers to use as “home bases” for each class. My favorite platforms for this currently are Kidblog and WikiSpaces for Educators. There are obviously lots more choices, but it’s good for the school to formally endorse and support use of these tools. I consider a class blog, a class ‘home base’ (wiki) website, and the school’s confidential/login required website for student grades and attendance the “triad of blended learning websites” which is mandatory for every classroom.

A final workaround to consider is to create different student email accounts using a single Gmail address. Sue Waters wrote a great how-to post about this a few years ago. This may not be workable in secondary settings where teachers have over a hundred students, but it can work well in elementary settings with fewer students. The best scenario is for students to have their own email accounts in a managed system like Gmail included with Google Apps, but for teachers and schools not in that situation yet this can be a good workaround. Each student will have a unique email address for creating different web-based accounts, but emails will actually be delivered to the teacher/class account.

When Parents Don’t Want Student Email originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 31, 2011.

Show Notes:

1. Digital Ethnography @ Kansas State University (blog of Michael Wesch)
2. Mike Wesch on Twitter: @mwesch
3. Michael Wesch’s YouTube Channel
4. “From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments” by Michael Wesch: Academic Commons, Jan 2009
5. Academically Adrift by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa (Kindle edition)
6. “Generation Me” by Jean M. Twenge (Kindle edition)
7. My text notes from Michael Wesch’s Heartland Learning 2011 keynote
8. Michael Wesch’s BLC 2010 Keynote podcasted by Bob Sprankle
9. Heartland eLearning Conference 2012 in Edmond, Oklahoma hosted by the University of Central Oklahoma: March 5 & 6, 2012
10. Tech or Treat: Playing with Media (on the Fuel for Educational Change Agents Podcast Channel)

Subscribe to “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” weekly podcasts!

Receive an email alert whenever a new Speed of Creativity podcast is published!

Podcast384: Michael Wesch at Heartland eLearning 2011 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 23, 2011.

Step 1: Launch the Tumblr app

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Post a Photo to a Photo 365 or 180 Blog originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 22, 2011.

(I cooked brunch and ate with my family during Joe Brennan‘s session, “Digital Storytelling: Get it Write!” so I don’t have notes for it yet. I’m going to watch the webinar recording of that later and post notes. The little I saw/heard during Joe’s session was GREAT. Joe’s resources are on web.me.com/jbtv. Webinar recordings will be posted on blog.discoveryeducation.com.)

These are my notes from the keynote presentation by Dr. Astro Teller. His partial bio is:

Dr. Astro Teller is currently Director of New Projects for Google, working to help the company explore new potential business areas. Astro is also co-founder and a current Director of Cerebellum Capital, Inc, a hedge fund management firm whose investments are continuously designed, executed, and improved by a software system based on techniques from statistical machine learning. Astro is also co-founder and a current Director of BodyMedia, Inc, a leading wearable body monitoring company… As a respected scientist and seasoned entrepreneur, Teller has successfully created and grown five companies and holds numerous U.S. patents related to his work in hardware and software technology. Dr. Teller’s work in science, literature, art, and business has appeared in international media from the New York Times to CNN to NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Teller regularly gives invited talks for national and international technology, government, and business forums on the subject of the future of intelligent technology.

As a student in school, I fell into the habit of doing things more than once, like doing math problems 3 times
- this was because of my dyslexia
- it ended up being a great habit, however, because there is often more than 1 way to solve a math problem

in BC Calculus as a junior in high school
- sometimes my teacher (Mr. Benson) fumbled to remember things
- he responded: “I don’t need to remember almost anything, because I can figure it out from 1st principles”
- this was a huge “a ha” moment for me and transformational
- this moved me from seeing education as the accumulation of facts from picking up and enjoying learning the mechanics of doing different things
- with crucial thinking, you can re-derive all kinds of answers with available information
- that has really perspective-shifted me and shaped how I think students learn best

2nd story and confession: most of my experiences in schools come from teaching college age kids and talking to gifted high school students
- I acknowledge this is a unique group of kids, top half of achievers (maybe different than kids in poverty who don’t have basic needs met for safety, etc.)

My belief: Kids learn shocking amounts when they are motivated, and amazingly little when they are not
- I am talking about ‘what they get’ when they do or learn something
- simple example: Kahn Academy, it’s hugely absorbing to children (my son is ‘playing’ on Kahn Academy now downstairs at my house, the badges on the site are motivating for him)
- I know some parents who are paying their kids $1 per badge they earn on Kahn Academy (some of these parents have their kids finish high school math by 6th or 7th grade)
- it doesn’t sound like it’s possible, but it is

Motivation is the thing that separates all of us from the things we want to get done

1st Robotics organization
- is the Olympiad for building robots that compete with each other for accomplishing different tasks
- it’s phenomenal to watch these kids: who have never programmed, cut things out of metal, figure out how to solve things
- kids learn several grade levels of math, science and engineering in the 6 month period of time they are doing the activity
- motivation is the reason/key to this

At some level, kids intuit the ways they are often taught don’t often line up well with the ways they are going to spend their time later in life
- passion, persistence, integrity, critical thinking, creative thinking, adaptability, communication clarity, the ability to solve problems, etc are all keys
- the content areas of our schools are the MEANS not the ENDs (those are vertical slides… being good at the ‘horizontal slices’ (passion, persistence, etc are the horizontal slices)

Those skills are going to help people enjoy their jobs more (whatever those jobs are) as well as make more money
- the way information and skills are often presented to students is “under motivating” for kids (this is a real problem)

On the subject of inspiration: Teachers need to be inspired too!
- I’m out of touch with the prevailing winds in the teacher community
- in every other field I’m familiar with: paying for performance is the “de jure” focus
- I understand paying for test scores can lead to a test prep focus
- in the business world, we assess people’s performance in multi-faceted ways, there are LOTS of ‘soft measures” like how creative someone is, how hard they work, the qualities and not just the quantities they produce
- people in the business world are rewarded with titles, recognition, money, opportunities to learn more thing
- I would love to see teachers receive the same sort of thing
- I believe we need teaching to be seen as the most desirable and respected profession in the country
- we need to dramatically change how we interact with teachers and reward them in our nation, to focus on inspiration

Story of a teacher from the Bronx
- class expected to pass the end of course biology exam, she told all her kids they would pass
- 70% of her kids passed
- what bothers me about that story is the complaint people have: “If you have insanely motivated teachers, then the kids will succeed” – that bothers me because it’s a true solution
- all teachers DO need to be insanely motivated
- lots of the problems we see in schools today are motivation oriented

I’ve noticed we don’t teach kids to play soccer on a chalkboard (at least not for very long)
- it’s not just in grade school we make this mistake
- we do this into higher education as well, law school is a great example
- it makes no sense the things you do in law school are very disconnected from the things you actually do as a lawyer
- doctor prep can be much more apprentice-oriented, there is less of this in most law schools

We need kids at young ages to DO things they will do later in life
- I predict this will motivate them in huge ways

Aside about a NPR piece on the “Occupy Wall Street” protests
- upset student who had a history degree
- I think availability of liberal arts education is good but a luxury at the university level
- she seemed to think “our country owed her a job”
- she hadn’t seemed to think about how getting a liberal arts degree would connect with a job

BTW I have four children, two are 10 and two are 8, I worry about this a lot

There are 7 billion people in the world today, there will be 9 billion in 20 years
- resources for affluence are limited
- our children are going to have to compete at 10 times the level we did when we left college
- I’m not saying we should scare our children, but…
- people in India and China don’t mind working 12 to 14 hours to get what they want
- they understand they have to work hard, they don’t believe the world owes them a job or anything
- we need our kids to understand this so they will be motivated to work hard

Question from the audience: How do we get our school administrators to understand this perspective when they are so focused on testing scores?

Answer from Astro Teller: As a young entrepreneur I’d often sit down with my mentors and they would matter-of-factly tell me what to do
- “if you need to run your company with 50 people with no money, you just do it”
- problem with that is, I’d seen some of them do this but I didn’t know how to do it
- some of their ideas sounded as impossible as sprouting wings

Story of Ron Huberman who ran Chicago police force and succeeded, then ran Chicago transit authority and succeeded, and then ran Chicago public schools
- he said: I’m going to try and do so many good things while I’m alive, that some of the things will ‘stick’ by the time I die

my advice: Do what you think is right, and if they fire you then go and do something else
- in the end, however, surprising things may happen

If you were to ignore the standardized test and teach kids to be motivated (get them jazzed like a preacher gets you jazzed on a Sunday morning, heart-thumping excited) you’ll get all the learning and test scores you want for FREE

The “preacher issue” is a big one
- reaching inside people and grabbing them emotionally is of key importance
- there are people with that key skill, some teachers happen to have it
- teachers tend to practice that through kindness rather than trying to create a conflagration in your heart
- teaching is a marathon, it’s not a sprint
- I happen to not be religious, but we can try to create this kind of explosion in people’s hearts

Reason TED Talks are so addicting is because it leaves you with the feeling that ANYTHING is possible
- it sets your heart on fire, and we all crave that feeling (even children)
- this is more the job of educators
- more than teaching math and science, teachers need to help set the hearts of children on fire

My question for Astro: What things do you think are more cognitive/intellectual that kids need to learn in school which do NOT have a clear hands-on context?

his answer: there are some things that are hard to learn on your own
- math you can learn on your own
- but critical thinking you can’t
- you need to watch someone else do that, when you undergo a Socratic process
- to dig out what is interesting in a problem, why someone’s solution isn’t a solution
- public speaking is another example
- I believe we should teach “communication clarity” much more
- can you take your idea and install them in someone else’s mind
- that sounds much more fun than a 5 paragraph essay
- learning to become an orator is NOT something that people can typically do by themselves
- most of the things we think of as ‘most chalkboard-ish’ are the least well suited for the chalkboard
- are lots of examples of this: if a student desperately wants to win (RE First Robotics) they will work hard to learn and emerged as transformed people on the other end of that experience

When you become an adult, you learn that you can’t motivate all people the same way
- some want sense of achievement, some want recognition, some want more freedom to be left alone, some want money
- kids are the same, they fall into different categories
- kids fall into different categories
- when kids fixate on a long term aspiration, they realize you need to learn a lot (that motivation can transform kids, probably about 25% of the kids I meet have these kinds of long term aspirations)

other kids respond really well to environments of friendly competition like First Robotics

Question from the webinar chat: Do you want to start a movement?

Dr Teller’s answer: YES!
- Intro to AI class at Stanford that now has thousands of students

The slides and resources referenced in my spotlight session, “Playing with Media” are available on my handouts wiki. (See slide #11 for the eBook discount code, valid until midnight Eastern time on Sunday, Oct 23, 2011)

These are a few notes and resources from Dean Mantz‘ closing presentation, “Treat Yourself to A Story.”

Dean’s outstanding Livebinders collection of Digital Storytelling resources

www.partnersinrhyme.com is a source for legal/royalty free music/audio loops (more are linked on info.storychasers.org/home/resources/audio – also thousands of audio loops are available on Discovery Education Streaming if your school subscribes)

Dean shared two video examples from the “Celebrate Kansas Voices” oral history and digital storytelling project

A Woman Serves (student project shared by Vicki Constable

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Kansas Voices

Girl Fiddler by Jesse West

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Kansas Voices

Technorati Tags: denvirtcon, discovery, education, history, kansas, webinar, den, techtreat

Great Ideas from the Fall 2011 DEN Virtual Conference (part 2) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 22, 2011.

First we heard from Traci Blazosky, sharing her presentation, “The Monster Mash-Up.” Resources from her preso are on her wiki, files used for the Batty Mashup project are on: http://ge.tt/9JxVoy8

First example of a mashup video we saw about dolphins, created by teachers in the summer 2011 DEN institute

Kids love writing scripts, gets them writing and writing creativity
- kids get reading and writing skills during script writing work
- also good for collaborative learning
- great for reading with expression!

Blabberize is a great tool for media mashups
- doesn’t let you directly download creations as videos, however, you have to capture a screencast of your Blabberize

Voki is also great, however, and does allow you to download creations as videos for remixes / other videos

Next example we saw: Paper Slide video about where milk comes from (by teachers)

Traci did a great job describing the process she uses helping kids create media projects: dividing into groups, using a rubric, etc.

Next we heard from Nancy Sharoff sharing her preso, “No Tricks, Just Treats.”

IPEVO camera: just $70 for a document camera!

Echo Livescribe pen
- records audio as you write
- 3 types of pens: 2 GB $100, 4 GB $150, 8 GB $200
- strongly recommend the 4 or 8 GB because it gives you access to “live Scribe Connect Premium” so you can upload those “pen casts” and then embed them onto webpages, Google Docs, etc.

Great writing activity: Wordless picture books
- students see images and have to write the text for the story AND record the audio for the book
- these can be shared with students in lower grades
- Livescribe pen can be used by students to create these

iPod Touch and iPad are in my digital backpack

EyeFi Camera Card is great for digital cameras to directly share/upload
- replace your standard SD card in your digital camera with this one, configure it for your wifi network and it will directly upload images
- Best Buy is running a current sale on these in my area
- you can add up to 32 different wifi networks on the card
- Also an app is available from EyeFi if you own a card

iHome Capsule Speakers are GREAT for presentations ($30 on Amazon, even come in purple!)

my Smartphone is in my bag too!

Now applications from Nancy:

I use Evernote on ALL my devices
- supports searchable text from an image, it’s wonderful!

I use Quickoffice Pro HD ($20) on my iPad to create and edit MS Office files, if you store them on your Evernote account they merge seamlessly

Evernote brings along URLs
- is free, premium account is $45 per year
- the free account has been sufficient for me

Dropbox is fantastic free app
- I love how it transfers just the parts of files that change, not the entire file when you update something
- great for sharing large files with other people
-
- Box.net gives you 4 GB instead of Dropbox’ 2 GB currently

PDAnet lets you tether your Android-based smartphone for FREE to your other devices (computers, tablets, etc)

Jing is my go-to app for screen casting
- great to take short videos of what you see on your computer monitor
- Pro version of Jing is $15 per year, can upload to YouTube and there aren’t ads… also you can add a webcam to your mix of video

Jing has a free iPad app: Screenchomp
- ShowMe is another great screen casting option on the iPad (free too, some different options)

Bump is a great free app for smartphones and i-devices
- not just for contact sharing!
- you can share images from device to device, even between your own apps (Droid phone to iPad, for example)
- you can share a LOT with Bump!

Goodreader for my iPad ($5)
- basically a PDF reader but so much more
- can highlight and do all kinds of annotations
- can zoom in up to 50x on Goodreader
- I have all my user manuals for all my devices in Goodreader
- all the PDFs I have even for software I’ll put in there so I can access/use them when needed

Instapaper saves webpages for offline reading
- great for me because I’m in a rural area and don’t always have connectivity
- can download up to 500 articles

iPad Browsers:
- Duet Browsers: it’s 2 browsers on 1 screen ($3)
- my 2nd favorite is Side by Side Browser – free (also supports taking notes directly on webpages)

Other browser options (from webinar participants) are iSwifter (free) and Diigo Browser – free (supports annotation and offline access)

SymbalooEDU is another great tool
- I used this for photo apps for the summer institute

BrainPop is great, my district subscribes to BrainPop Junior
- the iPad app is free, but for $1.99 per month you get a featured movie plus several more related to the focus concept

Great iPad apps for images for your students:
- Guardian Eyewitness (free)
- 5,000 Amazing Photos of the Day – free (National Geographic)
- GeoWalk HD – $3

Great iPad apps for digital storytelling:
- Coolibah – - – Skrappy – $3
- Album App – 42
- ScrapPad ($5)
- Smilebox – free
- Demibooks Composer – free

Remember all of Nancy’s GREAT session links (more than I captured here) are on https://sites.google.com/site/nancysharoff/tech-or-treat
- follow Nancy Sharoff on Twitter: @nsharoff

Technorati Tags: discovery, edtech, education, learning, denvirtcon, techtreats, integration

Great Ideas from the Fall 2011 DEN Virtual Conference (part 1) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 22, 2011.

Thanks to Naomi Harm for her work on our marketing materials for this year’s conference, which will be published soon so you can help “spread the word” about K12Online. PLEASE consider submitting a proposal to present for this year’s conference. We’re all busy, but the benefit of sharing innovative ideas is a gift which “keeps on giving” in the K-12 Online Conference. We have over 200 conference sessions archived on our website, and hope to increase access and utilization of these professional development opportunities to MANY more educators in the coming year. Add your voice to our team of educator-advocates telling stories and sharing skills about “purposeful play” for learning!

Earlier this week, I recorded a two minute summary of the K-12 Online Conference for a class Leigh Zeitz (Dr. Z) is teaching in Iowa. Feel free to share this as well with others interested or perhaps not yet acquainted with K-12 Online.

Technorati Tags: k12online, workshop, k12online11, proposal

Share Your Ideas for K-12 Online 2011: Purposeful Play originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 14, 2011.

This week on Tuesday my daughter’s second grade class took their fall field trip to the Oklahoma City Zoo. I brought my iPhone and iRig microphone, and the girls in our group used the camera along with the free app AudioBoo to record some reflections during our visit. We recorded nine AudioBoos (all less than 60 seconds each) and three videos. Here are the “digital artifacts” we created documenting our field trip. This kind of mobile storytelling and archiving is exactly the sort of mobile media use by students I want to encourage through my eBook, “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing,” as well as website SHARE: Playing with Media. These are all examples of “no-edit audio recording” and media creation following “the ethic of minimal clicks!”

If you listen to ANY of these, check out the first one about the flamingos. Rachel had some misperceptions about them “easily having some of their legs cut off” which we were able to discuss because of this AudioBoo recording! If she hadn’t recorded and shared her perceptions, I don’t think the adults in our group would have realized her misunderstanding. Great example of the value of having students explain their perceptions and ideas with an audio recorder! Check out the Audio Page of playingwithmedia.com for more links to free, no-edit audio tools.

Flamingos at the Zoo (AudioBoo)

Turtles and Koi (AudioBoo)

Head-butting Goats (AudioBoo)

Cool facts about California Sea Lions (AudioBoo)

Clown Fish in the Anemone (AudioBoo)

The Giant Anteater (AudioBoo)

Galapagos Turtles (AudioBoo)

Baby Elephant (AudioBoo)

3 Month Old Baby Tigers Playing (AudioBoo)

We also recorded three movies during our field trip.

Technorati Tags: audio, audioboo, learning, oklahoma, oklahomacity, playingwithmedia, record, school, share, sharing, student, voice, zoo, field, trip, fieldtrip

A Second Grade Field Trip to the Zoo with AudioBoo originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 12, 2011.

To keep his fans updated, LegoBoy (David) has created a vlog (video blog) YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/user/LegoboyVlogs) and is posting regular updates. From what I understand, a series of individuals and/or groups have posted formal copyright infringement complaints on his YouTube videos and this has led to suspension of both his primary channels. The following screenshot is now shown on YouTube when someone attempts to view the Mar 16, 2010, “Showreel” video on the legoboy12345678 channel:

This is not only a situation of deep personal interest to my son, but also a potentially instructive situation to follow as educators from a copyright / intellectual property perspective. The screenshot above appears to indicate the official Lego organization, “Lego Systems Inc.” is among those who have filed copyright complaints against LegoBoy. His vlogs (video blogs) which I’ve watched to date suggest he suspects “haters” who do not like him or his work, and false copyright infringement claims they’ve filed. This August 10th post on the Groovebricks website asserts LegoBoy has been the victim of people trying to blackmail him. On the (apparently “official”) LegoBoy FaceBook page, David reported on August 23rd a hacker gained access to his Yahoo email account. This may have been the way hackers got access to his actual YouTube accounts, where apparently some or all the videos were deleted.

I don’t have any special insight into this situation at this point, but I definitely want to follow this and see what develops. In addition to his vlog YouTube channel LegoBoy has also created an “ALT” channel (www.youtube.com/legoboy12345678ALT) where he’s posting some reviews.

Of the LegoBoy updated videos I’ve watched to date, the following video from today (August 29, 2011) is the most compelling. Watch at the 6:35 point, as David describes how important his YouTube Lego channels have become in his life and how much he values the feedback he receives from his community of literally THOUSANDS of people around the world. I’ve customized the embedded video version below to start at 6:35.

As he describes earlier in the video, over time David’s channel views have grown dramatically and provided him (via Google AdSense) with a good revenue stream of income. At this point, with both his primary channels suspended, however, that income has stopped.

I’ve watched some of LegoBoy’s videos in the past, and have been amazed by his creativity and devotion to Lego stopmotion videography. These films take a LONG time to create. (When you’ve made even SHORT versions in the past, as I have, you REALLY appreciate longer videos and particularly ones which are so well crafted.) I’m rooting for LegoBoy in this situation. I’m not sure what all the “lessons learned” here will be, but at least a few obvious ones are:

• Everyone needs to use secure passwords and change them regularly, on email as well as other accounts.
• Internet trolls can prey on successful web entrepreneurs, even when they are still high school students
• Social media technologies provide important communication outlets for individuals to “get the word out” in a crisis so they can speak directly to their audience / interested parties.

There are probably many more lessons we can learn from this situation, so I’ll stay tuned. What’s your take on this?

Hang in there LegoBoy, keep fighting the good fight to let Google employees know the facts of your case. I hope you’ll share the details of the copyright arguments with us later. We’re cheering for you here in Oklahoma City.

Technorati Tags: copyright, youtube, lego, legoboy, legoboyfan, legoboy12345678, blackmail, hater, haters, takedown

Copyright Infringement Claims Lead to Suspension of Legoboy YouTube Channels originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 29, 2011.

Today was “Follow Me Sunday” at our church in Edmond, Oklahoma. This meant during the Sunday school hour, people of all ages were invited to our “great hall” to visit with different people involved in a diverse array of outreach ministries in our local community as well as around the world. I brought my iPad2 and iRig microphone, and with the help of my son (who was my videographer) conducted nine interviews with different outreach / ministry / mission leaders. Here are eight of the interviews! This kind of “quick edit videography,” which I discuss at length in my eBook, “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing,” supports “the ethic of minimal clicks.” Since these kinds of videos can be recorded, edited in minor ways, and shared online with a minimum of required clicks, it’s far easier to share this kind of media than it has been in the past. One result is we can record and share MORE media like this than we have in the past. I posted these as separate posts on “Eyes Right” from my iPad via a Posterous “cross-posting” blog, and also linked them on our church’s Facebook page.

Uganda Mission 2011

An interview with Tom Langdon who helped lead a summer 2011 mission trip to Uganda from Edmond, Oklahoma. Learn more on:
www.fpcedmond.org/international

Team Kenya 2011

This is an interview with Robert Menja who helps lead Upendo Kids International, a mission outreach program to Kenya from Oklahoma. Learn more on:
upendokidsinternational.org

The Importance of Student Ministries

An interview with Brian Wagner, Director of Student Ministries at First Presbyterian Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, about the importance of student ministries. Learn more on:
www.fpcedmond.org/students

Turning Point Ministries: Building Homes for Single Moms In Edmond

This is an interview with Bob Turner on August 28, 2011, about the work of Turning Point Ministries in Edmond, Oklahoma. Turning Point works with and builds homes for single mothers in Edmond, Oklahoma, who otherwise would not be able to own their own homes. Learn more on:
http://turningpointoklahoma.org

Edmond Community Thanksgiving Dinner

For 30 years, people and churches in Edmond, Oklahoma, have come together to provide a meal for others at Thanksgiving. This ministry and outreach project is The Edmond Community Thanksgiving Dinner. In this interview on August 28, 2011, Mike Laska shares the background of the event and how people can get involved this year to help.

Cooks Night Out In Edmond, Oklahoma

Cooks Night Out is an outreach ministry of churches in Edmond, Oklahoma. In this interview from August 28, 2011, Sarah Montgomery explains the regular dinner is somewhere between a soup kitchen and a church potluck. It is for needy families in the Edmond community, but also for anyone seeking fellowship and a shared meal together. First Presbyterian Church of Edmond is one congregation which supports Cooks Night Out, and anyone is welcome to join in the work and service!

Coffee Creek Riding Center Of Oklahoma: Therapeutic Horsemanship

Coffee Creek Riding Center provides FREE opportunities for children with disabilities to participate in therapeutic horseback riding. In this interview from August 28, 2011, Don Schiesz explains the work of the center and how volunteers can get involved – even those of us who haven’t been very “horsey” in the past!

Redeeming the Family: Connecting Families Separated By Incarceration

In this interview from August 28, 2011, Holmes and Cheri Fuller explain the important work of the nonprofit Redeeming the Family. By providing opportunities for parents in prison to record encouraging messages on video to their children, the organization is helping Oklahoma families and striving to overcome the challenges faced by the children of incarcerated parents.

Technorati Tags: #playingwithmedia, christian, edmond, education, imovie, ipad, ipad2, irig, microphone, mission, outreach, playingwithmedia, presbyterian, record, storychaser, students, video, mic, storychasing

Storychasing Follow Me Sunday with an iPad2 and iRig Mic originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 29, 2011.

Today I created a Google Spreadsheet and used the CONCATENATE function to create or build the email address I needed for each student’s cell phone number. This Google Help page explains how the function works. The formula is shown below.

The results of the formula, after I “filled down” to copy it to all rows of the spreadsheet, are shown below. Each person has a custom email address using their cell phone number and the appropriate mail domain for their cellular provider.

The next step was sending the email message. I tried a test message to myself first, which worked fine, so then I messaged the students. I simply copied and pasted the email addresses from my spreadsheet into an email message, but it’s definitely possible to get fancier than this and use Google Scripts to send email. For example, the “Contact Us Form Mailer” is a free script which can send a custom message to email recipients specified in a Google Spreadsheet. To find this script and add it to your Google Spreadsheet, choose TOOLS and SCRIPT GALLERY, then search for MAIL.

This 1 minute, 20 second video shows how this can work. You need to name your three columns exactly as they are specified in the script.

If you want more assistance with this process, check out the Google Apps Script Tutorial: Automating a Help Desk Workflow. This is more complex than what I attempted this evening, but it’s AWESOME to see the power of scripting in Google Spreadsheets and glimpse some of the flexible power which it can unleash for us. Also check out FormEmailer, which appears to be a more robust and customizable free solution.

I’m going to share this Google Spreadsheet with my son’s debate teacher and show her how she can use it to send SMS alerts to students as well as parents who want to receive them. I also may create a custom form tied to the spreadsheet so she can solicit new sign-ups with an online form. The one change I’ll have to make to the form is inserting a formula in column C so the celluar provider’s email domain is added automatically depending on the carrier they specify. The English WikiPedia page, “List of SMS gateways” includes an updated list.

Have you found a simpler, FREE way to send SMS text alerts to your students or to other groups? If so I’d love to learn about it. (I’m not talking about a “free trial version” of a commercial service, however. I’m talking FREE as in NO COST, ever.) I tried Textmarks Lite, but found the dating / “meet singles in your area” ads which are included to be potentially offensive to some of my undergrad students. Certainly that’s not appropriate to use for K12 settings.

Learn more about the communication tools I’ve used the past few semesters with undergrad students in my December 2010 post, “Lessons Learned Teaching EdTech to PreService Education Students.”

Technorati Tags: classroom, code, free, google, sms, students, teacher, text, alert, alerts, textmarks, spreadsheets, script

Use a Google Docs Spreadsheet to Send Text Message Alerts to Students originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 27, 2011.

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 DIRECTIONS for the Roadmap to Blended Learning.

I’ve shared a variety of resource links on my curriculum wiki. These include:

The 7.5 minute video, “Iowa Did You Know?” (August 2011)

A 3 minute introduction to Moodle.

Martin Dougiamas‘s July 2011 update and overview of Moodle on SlideShare.

In the second hour of each session (which will be repeated in the morning and afternoon) we’ll be exploring some of the Moodle demo courses available on the official Moodle.org demo site.

In addition to encouraging teachers to build and cultivate their classroom “home base” (wiki) and “newspaper” (blog) I’m throwing down the glove for the playing with media classroom challenge!

Even if you’re not a teacher in Ft Gibson, I encourage you to take the challenge! More on this to come as my advocacy for “playing with media” continues!

Technorati Tags:
blended, blog, development, edtech, education, fort, leadership, learning, moodle, oklahoma, pd, playingwithmedia, professional, technology, vision, wiki, #playingwithmedia, lms, ftgibson, gibson

The Roadmap to Blended Learning and the #playingwithmedia Classroom Challenge originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 22, 2011.

Jason’s resources for today’s session: http://www.workshophandouts.com/wildtech11capture-1

Framework for today
- let’s talk about diets
- Caveman diet?
- theory of this diet is similar to how we handle information
- we try to desperately hang onto information as if it will go away immediately
- 20 to 30 generations ago, information was used as a phenomenon to keep people oppressed
- we have learned information absolutely IS power
- ongoing debate about what Thomas Jefferson would do in the modern age (Jefferson WAS the first Library of Congress)

This has led us to a situation where we are media rotund
- we feel the pressure to consumer too much media
- story of a friend who felt a psychological obligation to follow each change in the debt ceiling debate recently
- this is a useful phenomenon to consider of rth

Last Oct 20th: Happy Information Overload Day!
stats:
- ‘the average knowledge worker’ (anyone who works on a computer) gets about 93 emails a day
- because people can be connected 24/7, many of them are
- some people draw clear lines between personal and professional lines, others have trouble with this
- we can get sucked into a massive info overload condition if we don’t draw these lines
- if I don’t limit my use of this device, it will control me

Not new: Richard Saul Wurman: Information Anxiety
- “information explosion has backfired leaving us stranded between mere facts and real understanding…”
- that was written in 1989, the year IBM released PS/2 and before the CD-ROM took the stage

The same tools which can overwhelm us can be used in clever ways to save us
- I call this a workflow
- a set of concrete steps you use to accomplish something
- this is common in business, IT, among organization gurus

Don’t just think about information IN and OUT
- think about how tools push information around in your life that help you attach MEANING for your life
- only adopt tools which have some function inside your broader toolset of tools

Goal
- create a regular set of steps to process information, content and knowledge

don’t ever just adopt verbatim someone else’s workflow

The rules:
1 – start with one process: develop more over time
2- less is more: don’t use four tools when two will accomplish the same task
3- review and evaluate: regularly review and evaluate, then eliminate, enhance or modify
4- adopt new tools carefully: don’t assume you need to use EVERYTHING that is cool, nifty or otherwise handy
5- don’t follow these rules: ignore the rules if you stumble on something that works better for you!

Often as teachers we “preach” metacognition, but we don’t model this for our own learning / information use

Tool organization: XMarks
- try to make all your workspaces look the same
- I have five potential places I could be working: desktops at home or work, laptops either place, etc. (multiple places where I could work)
- just like a workbench you have tools in front of you, it makes a difference if you aren’t at your workbench

Bookmarks in computer browsers
- biggest problem: they are stuck on your computer

2nd tool I recommend: RSS reader like Google Reader
- this is probably the most information tool which exists for capturing information
- this is THE most critical tool if you want to be information savvy, take mountains of information and turn them into digestible chunks
- example: I monitor about 300 websites
- I’ll teach you how to use this in a moment
- for most workflows which involve capturing and using information, this is essential

I disagree that Twitter makes RSS feeds and RSS readers less needed / useful
- I love Twitter
- there are a lot of sharers, and then most people spend time retweeting and chatting on Twitter
- I think the answer is a balance of both
- If I tried to read my entire twitter feed I’d never leave my house: I use Flipboard to filter and access content

I own a side business that writes debate handbooks, one site that is our friend is
pfdebate.com
- great example of why I want to subscribe to their site via RSS, they just publish once or twice per week

Critical tool #3 for Archiving / Sharing: Delicious Social Bookmarking

Critical Tool #4: Instapaper

Scenario: World geography teacher that has a unit for each continent, looking for fresh, current content to support unit on Africa, textbooks is dated and content isn’t very engaging

Five workflow process steps

1- check existing resources / consider new topics
2- set up traps for new information
3- process collected results
4- archive and/or share
5- review

Start with a Google search
- you may be surprised about this, but many of our colleagues don’t do this
- I always click at least 10 levels into a resource
- there is always a new resource to find
- people rarely (if ever) click past the first page of search results

Example for Africa information: BBC Africa page (offers an RSS feed) and NY Times Africa Page (offers an RSS feed)

in Google Reader: Good keyboard shortcuts: press “N” to go to the next item, many more!
- scan through in RSS reader
- get a sense of what is useful and what isn’t

Options are archive, share, or ignore
- remember: you don’t have to master EVERY information source!

summary
- RSS reader
- Xmarks
- search
- delicious social bookmarks
- extra credit: Instapaper

I love Google Reader for many reasons, but the way other apps plug into Google Reader is AWESOME
1st app: MobileRSS (free version and paid version)
- supports sharing to delicious, instapaper, Google Reader, etc with a button push

Recommended by Jason: Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload by Mark Hurst
- create different philosophies for RSS reader folders/bundles

1- stars
- rare sources that consistently give useful, relevant info
- in workflow: tools that are the core tools you use all the time

2- scans
- reliably deliver at least some relevant info
- in workflow: tools that may not be used every day, but so something very well

3- targets
- sources good for a targeted, single use
- in workflow

4- (I missed the rest of this….)

Email is a real challenge
- I am convinced email will look very different in 20 years
- we’ve worked hard to get everyone access to email
- lots of old and young people today have abandoned email
- some JUST communicate via Facebook
- this is a sign of something coming in the future

In the school world, we are very dominated by email
- concept I want to introduce: http://inboxzero.com/

main concepts
- email is just a medium
- 1 place for anything
- process to zero
- convert to actions

Actions: delete, delegate, respond, defer, do

Another recommendation from Jason: The Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss (not all ideas are applicable to public ed)

Workflow prices for email
1- establish regular email practice (check email 3 times per day)
2- choose action items: immediate action, short term action, long term action
3- immediate action: complete, schedule, share
4- short term action: schedule, archive and share
5- long term action: schedule, archive, share

Less is always more if you can get away with it
- don’t use tools to try to gather all info, use filters to gather only info you think you would use
- example: the RSS feed for the NYT or even my local newspaper

Technorati Tags:
#wildtech, aggregator, google, information, montana, reader, school, wildtech, jason, neiffer, tmi, overload, strategies, New Tag

Capture: Setting Up Traps to Organize Mountains of Information #wildtech originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 8, 2011.

Are you dealing with TMI (Too Much Information) in your online teaching? Clay Shirky points out TMI issues often result from “filter failure.” In this session we will explore a variety of strategies to more effectively filter information we share with students and receive from them online. We’ll also explore ways we can use web-based audio recording tools to provide personalized and efficient feedback to our students for assessments.

Referenced resources for this presentation are available on my Google Sites wiki, and my slides are available on SlideShare. This should be a fun session, please join in if you can! Registration for the conference is free.

Technorati Tags:
conference, filter, filtering, information, online, teaching, teach, txvsn

Filtering the Information Flood: Strategies for Effectively Teaching Online originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 3, 2011.

Today at the “Building Human Connections in a Digital World” Educational Technology Conference in Missoula, Montana, I attended Terrisa Metzler’s presentation “Balancing Learning and Security in a Web 2.0 World.” I am very interested in the topics of this presentation because of the Balanced Filtering in Schools project (balancediltering.org), the “Unmasking the Digital Truth” project, and my breakout session next week at the “Technology Runs Through It” conference in Missoula, “Smart Networks.”

Terrisa Metzler, regional sales manager for Lightspeed Systems, presented this session. During the session in demonstrating the “My Big Campus” educational / social networking platform Lightspeed offers free to everyone (not just its customers.) Terrisa made a comment I’d like to address which can be misleading. Terrisa showed how teachers can embed “cleaned” YouTube videos on their webpages within My Big Campus, and stated this is good because it protects students from “non-CIPA compliant YouTube videos.”

CIPA is the Children’s Internet Protection Act and applies to all U.S. schools and libraries (both public and private) which receive federal E-Rate funding.

Here is the clarification I’d like to offer: There is no such a thing as “CIPA compliant content” or “non-CIPA compliant content.” There obviously IS content online not appropriate for school, but that determination is not made by the CIPA law, it’s made by local authorities. CIPA requires that each school or library subject to E-Rate rules have a filtering policy in place and enforce it, but it does NOT definitively state specific videos and other webpages which should be blocked and should be accessible on school networks. Tina Barseghian’s recent post, “Straight from the DOE: Dispelling Myths About Blocked Sites” (highlighted in the BalancedFiltering.org post, “Do your school administrators REALLY understand CIPA?”) is an excellent article about these issues.

Words matter, and we need to be careful that our discussions about content filtering, CIPA, e-Discovery, FERPA, COPPA, etc. clarify requirements rather than confuse people.

It is confusing to say, “My Big Campus” keeps your school CIPA compliant by filtering out non-CIPA compliant YouTube videos. CIPA requires a content filtering policy and enforcement of that policy. CIPA does not define “compliant / non-compliant YouTube videos” or other content.

Teresa also said: “WikiPedia is a site of hotlinks, and students can quickly get to inappropriate content” from WikiPedia articles. She then advocated for how Lightspeed Systems lets teachers whitelist (allow on the content filter) just a specific WikiPedia page, but then every hyperlink on that page is blocked from student access.

I have big reservations about this. I understand Lightspeed Systems is a vendor and is creating a product to meet consumer demands, which include IT personnel who want to overblock the web for students and teachers far beyond what is required by US law. I also understand a system in place which lets teachers directly unblock websites for student access, and specifically whitelist websites for student access, is a HUGE leap forward from the “digital prisons” in which many of our K-12 learners live today at school.

The perspective of educators like Matthew Kitchens, who wants to shut down open web publishing of content by students at school and for school, is also troubling. Lightspeed Systems tweeted a link to Matthew’s post and amplified this today. Matthew wrote in July:

I believe social networking has a place in the classroom, when used within a closed, monitored learning management system(s)…

LightSpeed Systems is a big company and has a lot of clout. Terrisa said Alan November as well as Kevin Honeycutt are now presenting on behalf of LightSpeed Systems at educational conferences. I am very appreciative of Terrisa’s session today, but I think it is very important to be careful and scrutinize the words and phrases we use to discuss these issues. These aren’t minor points.

Terrisa said in our session, “Every filtering company today is working hard to block Google image thumbnails, and we’ve done it.” She then went on to describe a hypothetical student who tries to search on the network for ‘Playboy.’

The issues here are both technical and human. Schools need policies in place to protect students and comply with CIPA as well as other laws. There is a significant difference, however, between protecting students from objectionable content and trying to stop all students from searching for anything inappropriate online. We also have obligations as educators to help students use sites besides Google Images which are copyright friendly and less inappropriate image content. I’m tackling that issue tomorrow at the conference in my breakout on Pecha Kucha presentations and ending PowerPoint abuse.

LightSpeed Systems has some good products and services. The ability for IT in your school/district to have access to bandwidth utilization graphs as well as data like that shown below by Terrisa in our session is vital. Many of our smaller/rural schools don’t have this kind of capability and need it. In Oklahoma, NewNet66 is a great organization putting tools with similar features in the hands of its member school educators.

I’m really interested in advocating for more balanced content filtering in our schools. LightSpeed is doing some good things to address overblocking, but I’m concerned about advocacy which would push everyone onto the “closed web” and discourage learners from publishing on the open web. See my notes from Karen Fasimpaur’s session, “Open Educational Resources: Share, Remix, Learn” at the 2011 ISTE conference for more on that topic. I’m also concerned with definitions of WikiPedia like “it’s mainly a hotlist of inappropriate links” which perpetuate misconceptions about the site rather than clarifying what the value of the site is and how it should be used AND authored by our students. I’m finally concerned about phrases like “CIPA complaint content” which are misleading and do NOT help others better understand the actual requirements and terms of the CIPA law.

On a related note: Two free websites which can be used to show “cleaned” YouTube videos “live” to students are VideoPure and QuietTube. These weren’t mentioned by Terrisa, but I want to share them since they relate to the topics of this post. Those sites don’t stop students from visiting other “related” videos on YouTube, but they do eliminate related videos, comments, etc. when showing a YouTube video to students live in class. I included those sites in the Video chapter of my eBook,”Playing with Media: simple ideas of powerful sharing.”

What’s your take on these issues?

Technorati Tags:
block, cipa, content, filter, filtering, networking, youtube, lightspeed

The phrase “CIPA compliant content” can be misleading originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 2, 2011.

Tuesday I’ll be sharing the opening keynote at the 2011 Educational Technology Conference, “Building Human Connections in a Digital World.” Use the Twitter hashtag #blackfootetc to follow the conference the next three days. A number of sessions will be streamed live online for free.

My keynote title is: “Transformative Personal Connections in a Hyperconnected World.” The official keynote description is:

Although our world is more wired and connected than ever, the most transformative uses of technology today are personal rather than technical. In our opening keynote Wesley will explore how individuals are utilizing technology to personalize learning and transformatively humanize education in the 21st century.

In the presentation I’ll focus on Screens, Stories and Sites. (Hat tip to Phillip Cummings for help with that last subtopic!) Here are the slides and videos I’ll be sharing. Among other things, I’ll be encouraging conference attendees to make time for playing with media!

Inclusion Video by Brian Crosby (embedded version not available)

USS Arizona Impressions (AudioBoo by 5 year old Rachel)

“The Dirty Thirties” by Jeanette Hale (originally posted to Celebrate Oklahoma Voices)

The Hobbit in Five Minutes

Technorati Tags:
conference, edtech, education, leadership, montana, stories, story, technology, blackfootetc, personal

Transformative Personal Connections in a Hyperconnected World #blackfootETC originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 2, 2011.

A month or so ago, my mom (who subscribes to my TwitPic account feed in her news reader) told me some strange photos were showing up in my stream. I tried to replicate what she was seeing and couldn’t. The strange photos were not showing up on the webpage for my TwitPic account, just in my feed. A few weeks ago when I was back in Kansas, I helped her unsubscribe and re-subscribe to the feed. That seemed to remove the strangely appearing pics.

Today, however, I saw that a photo I DID NOT TAKE showed up in my TwitPic feed and auto-posted to my Facebook page. Thank goodness this wasn’t an inappropriate photo!

The questions are:

1. Who in the world is in this photo?
2. How did this photo get included in my TwitPic photo stream?
3. How can I stop this from happening again in the future?

For now, I’ve deleted this auto-crosspost authorization from my TwitterFeed account. That will stop these mysterious pics from showing up on my Facebook wall. It will not, however, stop these photos from showing up in my TwitPic photo stream. I didn’t have any luck looking for answers via Google or in the official TwitPic FAQ.

If you have ideas how to address this (in addition to changing my Twitter password) please let me know. I’m submitting this as a new TwitPic helpdesk ticket and will post the results of what I learn here in hopes it will help others who also run into this problem. I’m sure I can’t be the only TwitPic user facing this.

Technorati Tags:
photo, twitpic, twitter, mystery

Other People’s Photos Showing Up in my TwitPic Photo Stream originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 25, 2011.

As a related aside to these topics, The National Building Museum in Washington D.C. recently contacted me about licensing the image below of our kids on a Saturday morning a few years ago. They want to use it in a new animated video about entertaining in the American home and how it has changed over the years.

It’s interesting to note today, on this Saturday morning, how in just a few short years we’ve moved from laptops to iPads, iPhones, and Netflix on a television-based game system for entertainment. It’s time for a new “Replacement for Saturday morning Cartoons” photo!

It’s also time to GO OUTSIDE!

Technorati Tags:
digital, story, storychaser, storytelling, video, youtube, convergence, epiphany

Explaining Telecommunications Convergence and Its Opportunities via Video originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 23, 2011.

I use Google for my email and blog/news reading already. I “live” in Google’s virtual spaces a large segment of each day. Google is a big part of my “information radar screen” already, so it makes sense that a functional social network tied to these digital nodes would be more convenient and natural for me to use.

I’ve been surprised and impressed at high levels of activity and engagement in Google+ post discussions so far. Like everyone else I’m not entirely certain where the collaborative energy we’re putting into Google+ is eventually going, but I’m sure it is going to get better. It’s already quite good. Digital connections and collaboration are in their infancy, and even at this crude stage I’m blown away by the power and possibilities.

On Google+ yet? See you there!

Hat tip to Brooke Mulartrick for this share on Google+. Kudos to Epipheo Studios for this effective explanation of “Why Google+.” They have other great videos on their YouTube channel worth checking out.

Technorati Tags:
facebook, google, networking, social, video, youtube, google+, plus

Good Reasons to Try Google+ originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 23, 2011.

According to Alison Flood’s June 23rd post for The Guardian:

Although the author made clear that she had “no plans to write another novel”, the fresh Potter material – to be unveiled later this year – already stretches to 18,000 words about the novels’ characters, places and objects, with more to come. From Professor McGonagall’s love for a Muggle as a young woman, to how the Dursleys met (Petunia was working in an office); from new information about Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff houses, to details about wand wood, Rowling’s writing will be just one part of the richly interactive, free Pottermore.com website, which is intended to bring the Harry Potter storylines to interactive life for readers.

To stay updated on the project, check out the official Pottermore blog and follow @pottermore on Twitter.

Henry Jenkins’ post “Three Reasons Why Pottermore Matters…” highlights the importance of Rowling FINALLY embracing transmedia. I see this announcement as yet another reason we, as educators, need to be regularly playing with media to become more comfortable learning with digital text, images, audio and video. The interactive website powered, to a large degree, by user generated content (UGC) promises to be the kind of participatory learning environment our students want and increasingly EXPECT given the powerful tools in our information landscape.

Are you utilizing and experimenting with different kinds of digital, interactive communication possibilities today? As 21st century educators, we each need to be.

Thanks to Camilla Elliott for sharing this announcement.

photo © 2007 rmkoske | more info (via: Wylio)

Technorati Tags:
book, books, education, playingwithmedia, rowling, potter

J.K. Rowling Announces a Magical World of Digital Text: Pottermore originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 19, 2011.

http://playingwithmedia.com/pages/copyright

I hope this chapter helps provide you and your students with clear and accurate guidelines for using media in legal ways in projects. I welcome your feedback on this and all other aspects of the “Playing with Media” book project!

Technorati Tags:
advice, copyright, edtech, intellectual, student, teacher, technology, ip, property, curriculum, guidelines

How to Talk to Your Students About Copyright originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 14, 2011.

This was the first screencast I made with a Dell netbook running Windows7. Screenr is an excellent, free, web-based screencasting service for many reasons– including the fact that you can make them on any computer (regardless of platform) which has a connected microphone. More resources about creating screencasts are available on my “Technology for Teachers” course curriculum from Spring 2011.

Hat tip to Chris Smith for sharing Screenr with me in Hong Kong back in 2009.

Technorati Tags:
howto, moderation, video, youtube, comment

How to turn on YouTube video comment moderation originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 12, 2011.

OPTION 1: GOOGLE DOCS

Google Docs is free and not only permits sharing Google Docs-based documents, spreadsheets and presentations, but other file types as well. Simply log into your Google Docs account and choose the UPLOAD button in the upper left corner of the menu. Select the files you want to share with others just like an attachment for email. See the Google Help page, “Uploading files and folders to Google Docs” for more assistance with this process. After files are uploaded, specify the desired sharing settings (sharing them with one or more people) either individually for each file or by specifying sharing settings for the COLLECTION (previously called a “folder.”) You’ll want to leave the document sharing / visibility setting as PRIVATE if you want to restrict access to the document to ONLY those individuals you identify specifically with their email. Google Docs files are accessible via multiple devices including iOS / Android smartphones and laptops / desktop computers. The following two videos from the Google Docs Community Channel on YouTube provide a great overview of file sharing with Google Docs and specific setting options for docs.

Sharing in Google Docs

Google Apps – Shared Settings for Google Docs

As of this writing on July 1, 2011, Google Docs “…gives you 1GB of free storage for your Google Account, and you can purchase additional storage for $0.25 per GB.” Uploaded files in your Google Docs account can be up to 1 GB in size. You may have a larger file quota if you are using Google Apps for your organization. Note the “25 cents per gig” price for Google Storage is an average, plans are available for 20 GB, 80 GB, and more. The least expensive option for the least amount of storage is 20 GB for $5 per year.

OPTION 2: DROPBOX

Dropbox is another web service which provides free storage up to a certain amount and then offers additional paid storage for file sharing. The Dropbox tutorial and video, “How do I share folders with other people?” provides specific steps for these processes. Dropbox offers client apps for smartphones (iOS and Android) as well as Blackberry. Files can be shared and accessed via a web browser on a Windows, Mac or Linux-based computer as well. Dropbox files must be smaller than 300 MB, and free accounts (as of this writing) are provided with 2 GB of storage. Two different account options are available for paid Dropbox users: $9.99 per month for 50 GB of storage or $19.99 for 100 GB of storage. Unlike Google Docs, users cannot purchase additional account storage by the gigabyte.

My favorite feature of the free Dropbox account is the ability to provide a direct download link to others for a shared file. To do this, upload or move files you want to publicly link to your PUBLIC folder in your Dropbox account. Then click the arrow to the right of the file details (after the upload is complete) and choose “Copy Public Link.”

Although this file and file link is technically “public” so anyone with the link can access it, it CAN be accessed by others. Google Docs offers the same option, and I like how the video above compares this to an “unlisted phone number.” If you have the number, anyone can use it. You have to receive and have the number to use it, however, so access to the file is limited by access to the link. This kind of sharing can actually be easier since people don’t have to create accounts or login to access a file you want to send them, but not post on a public website.

OPTION 3: BOX.NET

Similar to Dropbox, Box.net provides file sharing via web browsers and custom smartphone apps. 5 GB of free storage is provided, and individual files on free accounts are limited to 25 MB in size. (If you switch to a paid plan, uploaded files can be up to 1 GB in size.) Free accounts only allow people to VIEW or EDIT files saved into folders on Box.net. Paid account holders can choose from more folder sharing options including:

• co-owner (with equal rights as the creator / owner)
• previewer uploader (with rights to see all files plus add new ones)
• Previewer (I’m not sure what this means)
• Uploader (ability to upload files into a folder)

The most outstanding, free feature of Box.net at this point (from a teacher’s perspective) is the ability to let your students directly email their assignments into a specific folder you create. This means you could create a folder as an “assignment drop box” but students would turn in their files via an email address. If you are not using a learning management system like Moodle at your school, this can be a way to streamline student assignment turn-in. To do this after logging into a free Box.net account, create a folder. Then click the small arrow next to it and choose UPLOAD – EMAIL FILES.

Box.net will provide you with a secret, custom email address which you AND others (like your students) can use to send files into that specific folder of your account. Remember the 25 MB file size limit applies for free accounts. Also note you don’t have to have student email addresses and enter them manually into Box.net to use this technique. Other people DO, however, have to use the exact email address so it’s best to share that as a link on your class website.

Thanks to Maria Henderson for sharing this Box.net tip during her presentation about Managing iOS Devices in the Classroom at the TCEA Region 7 Conference in White Oak a few weeks ago.

Please chime in with your own suggestions and experiences with free file sharing services, and also correct me (with links) if I’ve incorrectly cited any of these web service features.

Technorati Tags:
gct, google, share, sharing, file, box, dropbox, docs, googledocs

Comparing Free Ways to Privately Share Files with Others Online originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 1, 2011.

This sixth episode is an interview with Dr. Leigh Zeitz, or “Dr Z.” Dr. Zeitz is an Associate Professor at the University of Northern Iowa, and is passionate about (among other things) helping K-12 teachers as well as students create compelling digital portfolios. He blogs on drzreflects.com. Digital Portfolios Made Easy and keyboardingresearch.org are also his websites. In this interview, I ask Dr. Z to share about his ISTE 2011 sessions as well as his philosophy for helping K-12 learners develop compelling and useful digital / electronic portfolios.

Technorati Tags:
digital, iste, portfolio, leigh, zeitz, portfolios, iste2011

Voices of #iste11 – Dr. Leigh Zeitz (Dr Z) on Digital Portfolios originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 29, 2011.

Combined with an audio recording made at the time, however, this photograph can “say” much more.

I created a 90 second screencast of this AudioBoo using Screenflow software, so I could embed this file into my ePUB eBook. It’s also shared on YouTube. I included some explanatory text boxes in the screencast which provide some additional information about the features of AudioBoo. One of the best: It’s entirely FREE!

Cross-posted to “Playing with Media.”

Technorati Tags:
audio, audioboo, play, record, share, playing, playingwithmedia, pearl, harbor, hawaii, arizona, memorial

Explaining No-Edit Audio Recording Power with an AudioBoo from Pearl Harbor originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 24, 2011.

I already share quite a few “digital breadcrumb” activities on my Friendfeed account: friendfeed.com/wfryer.

I wish Google Sites created an RSS feed for recent activity, like PBworks does, so I could add that feed as well. I’ve been using a free Google site I mapped to wiki.wesfryer.com for several years now to share handouts and my presentation / consulting schedule.

Trunk.ly is a very interesting ‘digital breadcrumb’ site which I discovered a few months ago, which can aggregate links you share on the social bookmarking site delicious.com, as well as Twitter and Facebook. I setup an account on trunk.ly/wfryer. I also have this site archive the articles I share on Google Reader as well as links I post to wfryer.posterous.com. I primarily use that Posterous site to archive good links which I can’t readily save to Diigo, which I use as my primary social bookmarking site. I have my Diigo set to cross-post to delicious.com/wfryer. Lots of iPad news apps include a ‘share to email’ option, so this makes a Posterous site (which uses email for posting content) ideal to use as an iPad idea archive.

Is all this “digital breadcrumb sharing” TOO MUCH? I’m not sure. I do know I frequently use these sites myself to find / rediscover links I found in the past. This is analogous to making these websites part of my “offboard brain.” By saving links to trusted websites, I know I can go back to them later and find them. This is a HUGE benefit of using social media websites like these. The fact that “digital breadcrumbs” of these virtual activities can be shared with others is a big bonus. I learn a TON every week from people I follow not only on Twitter, but also on Friendfeed and Google Reader. Currently on Google Reader “254 people are following me, I’m following 82 people.” I’m not sure what my stats are for Friendfeed. I actually don’t “maintain” my Friendfeed account much, but since I’ve set it to be my Google Chrome homepage I frequently will see a link there others have shared. In this way, Friendfeed is part of my browser ‘dashboard.”

How much “digital breadcrumb sharing” do you think is TOO MUCH?

photo © 2010 Rachel Davies | more info (via: Wylio)

What are you using as your “information dashboard” these days? I find sites like Google Reader, Twitter and Facebook, which can be funneled and redirected into other tools and channels like Flipboard, are the ones I find most valuable. I want to “digitally invest” my time in these tools. They are “powerful ingredients for blended learning!”

Technorati Tags:
digital, facebook, footprint, google, googlesites, posterous, share, sites, twitter, youtube, breadcrumbs, trunk.ly, delicious, pbworks

Sharing YouTube Activity Digital Breadcrumbs originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 22, 2011.

We can do something about it, and I did… I changed the embed code on the blog post so “related YouTube videos” are not included / shown after the initially embedded video plays. This is something I’ve known about for years, but forgot to address with this cross-posted YouTube video. This isn’t the “end of the world” for our WordPress-powered troop website or the cause of using social media with our Scouts, but it’s unfortunate this happened with the FIRST YouTube video we posted to the site. I’m sharing this in hopes you can utilize YouTube effectively with organizations and avoid this pitfall. I wrote about this on the Eyes Right blog back in December 2008, on the post “Dark side of YouTube Related Videos.” A few months later, Ken Pendergrass shared a few links (including this post) about disabling related videos. Since YouTube has continued to change/enhance their video embed code options, those instructions may or may not still work. Here’s what I did this week to “fix” this YouTube related video problem.

As you can see in the screenshot below, initially (following a cross-post from Posterous) ‘related videos’ from YouTube were displayed on our scout website after a visitor viewed the embedded video.

To obtain different embed code which does NOT include related videos, I visited the specific page of our video on YouTube (NOT viewing in the ‘channel view, but instead clicking the video’s title to bring up THAT video’s page on YouTube) and clicked SHARE, then EMBED. I made sure the checkbox next to “Show suggested videos when the video finishes” was NOT checked.

I copied that embed code, and replaced the original embed code on the blog post in WordPress. I noticed there is extra code (“?rel=0″) which specifies that related videos NOT be shown.

Now when a visitor to our scout website plays the YouTube video, afterwards NO OTHER VIDEOS are shown.

Problem fixed. We’ll need to remember this when cross-posting YouTube videos to the site in the future, however. This is also a potential discussion item with parents: Letting them know the default setting for shared / embedded YouTube videos is to include ‘related’ videos which YouTube specifies and we don’t control. It’s good in this case the ‘related videos’ were’t egregiously inappropriate. Still, they didn’t have anything to do with our Scout troop, and we don’t want them “representing us” online when people happen to visit our site.

Remember to avoid controversy when embedding YouTube videos by DISABLING related videos! Here’s to hoping you can avoid a similar situation in the future!

Technorati Tags:
embed, scouts, website, wordpress, youtbe, code

Avoid Controversial Related YouTube Videos When You Embed on a Blog #gct originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 22, 2011.

The theme of the FBISD conference this year is “Inspiration, Innovation, and Integration.” In addition to the opening keynote, “Leading Schools with Digital Vision in a Bubblesheet World,” I’m sharing four breakout sessions. One of them is repeated. Here are links to my session resources and presentation slides for each one. All of these are linked from my primary handouts page on Google Sites, available from wiki.wesfryer.com. Kathy Schrock, Tammy Worcester, Howie DiBlasi, Susan Anderson, Jim Holland, and Michael Garfield are among the other featured speakers at the conference. Former Sugarland mayor, David Wallace, will close out the conference. It should be a great day!

Here are my session links:

Leading Schools with Digital Vision in a Bubblesheet World (Slides available as a 1.7 MB PDF)

Today I’ll be sharing a shorter and redesigned version of this presentation!

Much of the world has gone digital, so must learning at school. Creativity is vital, and good leadership matters. Stagnant, accomodation-level technology integration makes technology investments in our schools a waste of money. School leaders can and should encourage teachers to use digital learning tools in transformative ways to open new doors of opportunity for students as well as parents. By focusing on creating, communicating / sharing, and collaborating, principals can help develop a shared instructional vocabulary with teachers which is focused on student engagement. Without creation, there can be no creativity. How will you let your students create? How will you give students choices? How will your students teach the curriculum? These are essential questions to ask together with teachers, as we seek to effectively (and legally) “talk with media / pictures” and leverage the constructive power of digital media tools for learning inside and outside the classroom.

Digital Storytelling on a Shoestring & Celebrate Texas Voices (repeated)

Digital storytelling is applicable to learners of all ages, in all content areas. In this session we will view different examples of digital storytelling across the curriculum, and explore free tools which are available to get started creating and publishing digital stories on your classroom website. Digital stories can take many forms. In the context of this session, digital stories which include digital images/photographs and audio narration will be explored, using the website VoiceThread. Options for creating digital stories in software programs like PhotoStory3 and iMovie will also be addressed.

In addition to the website PlayingWithMedia.com, the Celebrate Texas Voices Ning learning community, and my wiki session links, I’ve updated presentation slides for this session on a Google Presentation:

Simple Ideas for Powerful Sharing

As learners and educational leaders it is critical that we share our ideas with others. Publishing our ideas online should not be limited to just “final drafts” of our work, we also should share ideas that occur to us during the day, great videos we see, student work in progress, and more. If you can send email, you can publish rich media with Posterous. In this session we’ll learn specifically how to create and use a personal publishing website with your email account. We’ll also explore other tools for creating and sharing curriculum under open licensing terms (open educational resources.) It’s critical ALL teachers learn to share ideas online and PUBLISH curriculum using rich media. Come learn how.

iOS Apps for Productivity & Fun (iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch)

Bring your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to this hands-on, interactive workshop as together we explore some of the best applications for productivity as well as fun available for Apple’s mobile devices! Free as well as commercial apps will be demonstrated including applications for education, photo sharing, news, social networking, digital storytelling, musical expression, art, audio recording, games, and more! If you have an iOS device (iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch) you’ll learn about a wealth of useful as well as engaging applications in this dynamic workshop.

Technorati Tags:
conference, edtech, educator, houston, learning, media, teacher, technology, texas

Playing with Media in Houston, Texas originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 9, 2011.

See more examples on “Tell a Story in 5 Photos for Educators” on Flickr. Consider contributing your own!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Carvel Ln,Houston,United States

A 5 Photo Sushi Story originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 8, 2011.

For most photos (not new ones including ‘certain’ family members, however) I am in the habit of both saving the photos to my computer hard drive and uploading them to my Flickr account. Some of the photos on my phone readily “fit” into event categories, which was nice, but LOTS did not. There were over 400 photos which I initially had in a “miscellaneous” category.

My temptation was to simply upload ALL the photos to Flickr either without an organizing “set” or into a “miscellaneous” set for the Spring. The problem with this would be a liklihood of future photographic irrelevancy: If I didn’t label, tag, organize, and otherwise assign “meta information” to these photographs NOW, it is very likely I’d be relegating those photographs to an irrelevancy shelf both for myself and for others.

Tagging media with “meta information” is important because those pieces of information can serve as virtual “card catalog entries” for ourselves as well as others who want to find those media files in the future. Kevin Honeycutt says uploading media online WITHOUT meta information is like throwing it into the ocean. It’s likely to get lost in the HUGE sea of content which continues to grow in size online.

photo © 1942 The U.S. National Archives | more info (via: Wylio)

I could have spent many hours today adding very detailed meta information to my photos, but I settled for about ten new photo sets which made sense along with some tags and titles on a few. My “Spring 2011 Signs” and “Technology Snapshots” sets are among my favorites, and ones I’ll be likely to go back to later and use in blog posts and for presentations.

It doesn’t happen every week, but sometimes other individuals and organizations utilize one of my photos for a blog post or website pic. Last week on May 17th, Mathew Ingram utilized a photo I took several years ago on his post for GIGAOM, “Shhh! Don’t Tell Google News You’re a Blog!” About a year ago, I heard a story about a college instructor in a course my cousin was taking in the Dallas area, who used the following photograph I took of my kids on a Saturday morning.

In an ideal world, I’d add titles and tags to ALL my shared photos on Flickr. At times I go back and add meta information later, but typically I find if I don’t add meta information when I upload photos it doesn’t get done. Remember the value of adding meta information to your photos! Especially if you share photos online with a Creative Commons license, it’s possible others will utilize your images down the road if you’ve labeled and tagged them!

Technorati Tags:
flickr, information, meta, photo, photos, share, sharing

The Value of Photographic Meta Information originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 23, 2011.

The in-app resolution is a lot better than the exported JPG versions, even at a larger resolution. Hopefully a PDF export will be more readable.

I’ve registered the domain playingwithmedia.com for the book project, and am going to move my current site at talkwithmedia.com over to it. This book and website will (hopefully) complement my BYOL session at ISTE 2011: Simple Ideas for Powerful Sharing.

Have you tried an iPad app for mind mapping and brainstorming? What is your favorite and why? I really like Popplet! The lite version is free, fully featured, and limited to just one file. The $5 full version lets users create multiple files.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Brainstorming PlayingWithMedia.com with Popplet originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 18, 2011.

I’ll be sharing a breakout session at the conference after lunch on technology integration, and will focus on “Simple Ideas for Powerful Sharing” using the website TalkWithMedia.com. I’ll also share digital storytelling examples from “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices” and discuss how people can get involved with upcoming summer workshops offered by Storychasers in Oklahoma as well as Kansas. Many thanks to Ines Burnham and the planning committee for the conference for their hard work and the invitation to participate. Please join us Saturday in Edmond at UCO if you can!

Technorati Tags:
art, conference, edmond, media, oklahoma, technology, uco, american, indian

7th Annual American Indian Learner’s Conference: May 21, 2011 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 18, 2011.

It’s a wise move by school chapter sponsors to prohibit technology use by students involved in school politics, since social media use worldwide is in sharp decline and most futurists predict technology outreach campaigns will be totally irrelevant in the future for our communities and nations.

NOT.

Ironically, the homepage of the National Junior Honor Society encourages all visitors to “like” their official organizational Facebook page.

Apparently, the message here is that social media use is ok for adults who will maintain responsible control over web-posted content, but not ok for young people who cannot be trusted.

If we are not willing to trust some of our highest achieving students in school (those already inducted into NJHS) with responsible use of social media platforms, that says a great deal about the perceptions of local school leaders about the importance of teaching digital citizenship.

I can think of few contexts better suited for important discussions about digital citizenship than school club election time. Perhaps NJHS adult leaders in Lubbock ISD will reconsider their social media prohibition policy at some point, and use this as an opportunity to help many people in the Lubbock community practice responsible digital citizenship.

Do the middle school NJHS election policies at your school prohibit student use of Internet websites and social media? What about other student organization elections?

Life can seem simpler when authorities restrict and censor the free expression rights of citizens. That seems to be working pretty well for government leaders in communist China, as well as school leaders in Lubbock, Texas. That strategy hasn’t worked as well lately in Tunisia and Egypt. How about your community?

For more resources related to content filtering in schools see balancedfiltering.org and Unmasking the Digital Truth.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

No Internet Election Campaigns for NJHS Candidates in Lubbock originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 15, 2011.

An even easier option for soliciting contributor posts to a team blog, however, is available by using the free website Posterous.com. After creating an account and a free blog on Posterous, configure your site to “autopost” to a variety of different services. Then, you can simply send an email message to “post@mysite.posterous.com” (where “mysite” is the unique subdomain address you selected when you setup the site) and your email message will “magically” become a post both on your Posterous site AND the blog site you configure to accept auto-posts. You can also configure Posterous to auto-post to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites too.

This evening, at long last I got my son’s Boy Scout Troop website moved over to WordPress and configured a Posterous site to cross-post directly to it. We’re doing this so our patrol “webmasters” can directly post news and other items to our site easily, including (if desired) directly from their smartphones. Posterous can cross-post to many types of blogs. There were two important steps I learned this evening when configuring Posterous auto-posting to WordPress.

First of all, be sure to select ALL CONTRIBUTORS when configuring the autopost options in Posterous. Then, after adding each person’s email as CONTRIBUTORS to your Posterous blog, they will directly be able to post to your WordPress blog.

Secondly, be sure to use a WordPress ADMINISTRATOR account when you enter login credentials into Posterous for cross-posting. If you don’t (and use a WordPress user account with “author” or “contributor” permissions, for example) some of the rich media content from cross-posts may be “stripped out.” This can include YouTube video embeds, which will “auto-embed” from Posterous. This means you just need to add the direct link to the YouTube video on its own line in the email message, and Posterous will “magically” grab the YouTube embed code for your post.

I LOVE Posterous and think it’s a fantastic tool to have in our “digital tool belts” for sharing and publishing ideas. Hopefully the configuration steps I took today will empower our young scout “webmasters” to publish a lot of news and information in the months ahead!

If you have not yet tried cross-posting content to your blog via Posterous, I encourage you to give it a try. Particularly on the iPad, which has lots of apps with the option to “share via email,” the power to post/blog with an email message is a nice option to have. And it’s free with Posterous!

Technorati Tags:
autopost, blog, blogging, empower, posterous, wordpress, crosspost, scouts, scouting, webmaster

Configure Autoposting to a WordPress Blog from Emails via Posterous originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 9, 2011.

First, make sure you setup your Google Map for collaboration / shared editing. If you don’t have the map set for everyone to edit it, you’ll need to add each student by email address (using the same email they use for their free Google Account) so they can have edit rights to the map. Click the COLLABORATE link on the map to change these settings.

The image you want to add within a placemark in Google Maps needs to be saved somewhere online so you can add it by web link. Google Maps doesn’t provide image hosting, like Google does for other services like Google Sites and Google Docs. You add the image with it’s direct link, starting with “http://” and ending in “.jpg” You’ll want to copy that image link FIRST before trying to add it to the map.

Once you (or a student) clicks EDIT on the map, make sure you’re in RICH TEXT mode and click INSERT IMAGE.

The image should then appear in your placemark. Click SAVE and DONE when you finish editing. That’s it!

This is the collaborative map workshop participants and I created during our time together at Heartland eLearning.

View Heartland 2011 Favorite Places in a larger map

Collaboratively edited Google Maps like this are a great way for students in one class or different classes to cooperatively add links as well as rich media content (images and YouTube videos) to a project.

I love geography, maps, and Google Maps! Creating shared maps like this is a super way to “talk with media.”

Cross-posted to “The Infinite Thinking Machine” and “Talk with Media.”

Technorati Tags:
google, share, map, gct, collaborate

Tips for adding images to Custom Google Maps #gct originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 15, 2011.

In the following five minute screencast, I demonstrate this process. This requires several things:

• A free account on Twitterfeed
• An active Facebook account, which has admin / administrator rights over at least ONE Facebook page (this can be a page you created or someone else created and later made you an admin on)
• The web feed address of a blog you want to auto-update to the Facebook page

I cross-posted this Screencast to YouTube as well.

Hat tip to Dean Shareski for sharing Twitterfeed and it’s powerful capabilities a few months back!

photo © 2009 Franco Bouly | more info (via: Wylio)

Technorati Tags:
blog, facebook, howto, page, publish, screenr, tutorial, youtube, autopost, socialmedia

How to automatically publish blog posts to a Facebook page originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 10, 2011.